Grace of a Wolf-Chapter 89: Grace: Mama?!

Bun burrows deeper into my lap, trembling against my chest. The cave has gone deadly silent except for her sniffles.

"I can explain," Owen says again, taking another careful step back when Caine’s eyes lock onto him like heat-seeking missiles.

My heart pounds, trapped somewhere between panic and a bizarre protective instinct for the toddler currently using me as a human tissue. I’ve known this child for less than a handful of hours, but the bone-crushing tension radiating from Caine makes me want to shield her with my body.

"She’s not—we’re not—" My voice is thin. "This isn’t what it looks like."

The words are lame, but it isn’t as if I was expecting to defend myself against a toddler calling me her mother.

Caine’s jaw twitches. The tattoos on his skin seem to pulse darker, shadows writhing beneath his flesh. I can practically hear the calculations happening behind his stormy eyes—dates, timelines, possibilities...

Not that there’s much to calculate.

No. Wait. Is he really wondering if Bun could be Rafe’s...? No.

Owen clears his throat. "Bun has no parents. None of the children do." His voice remains steady despite the death stare Caine is drilling into him. "They’re all soulspliced aberrants I rescued from various facilities. Bun is the youngest."

It’s the most words I’ve ever heard him put together at once.

"Soulspliced?" I echo, glancing down at the little head tucked under my chin.

"Their souls are..." He moves his hands awkwardly. "Mixed with more than one source. Aberrants."

Bun raises her tear-stained face to look up at me. Her features shift slightly—bunny ears pop out of her head, and whiskers sprout her cheeks again. Then they’re gone.

It happens so fast I might have imagined it if I hadn’t seen it multiple times already.

"MAMA!" she wails again, louder this time, pressing her face back against my collarbone.

Caine’s expression darkens further, if that’s even possible. His hands curl into fists at his sides.

Jer sighs from behind us all. "Grace, you have to acknowledge it."

Acknowledge—what? That I’m her mother?

But he’s continuing, "She’ll keep repeating herself if you don’t. It’s right there—on her knee."

I twist my head to peer down at the knee pressed against my side. It looks a little red. "Her knee?"

"Doomed," Sara moans from behind her hands.

Bun pulls back, her lower lip jutting out as she sniffs hard. "Mama," she whines, sounding a little more pathetic and less... loud. But there’s a promise of escalation if I don’t handle this right.

The dark-curled boy rolls his eyes. "We know it hurts, Bun. Grace, you have to kiss it. Bun, you want Grace to kiss the owie?"

The toddler brightens. "Mm! Mama. Hee. Mama." She kicks her leg out, proving it doesn’t hurt at all—except in her memory.

"What’s she saying?" Lyre asks, looking way too amused by this entire situation. Her cat-slit eyes are dancing from person to person, her lips twitching every time she looks at Bun.

"She’s saying ’owie here’," Jer translates as I kiss Bun’s knee.

"Wait—are you saying she isn’t calling Grace mama?"

"Huh?" The boy frowns at Lyre, crossing his arms. "Why would he call her mama? We just met her. ’Mama’ means ’owie’."

Oh.

Ohh.

The relief on Caine’s face is immediate and palpable, like someone just lifted an entire truck off his chest. His shoulders drop a fraction of an inch, and the murderous gleam in his eyes dims to merely threatening. He even smiles.

Smiles.

"She’s hurt," he says, still smiling.

I narrow my eyes in his direction, but he doesn’t seem to notice, still with an absurd tilt of his lips as he nods, as if the world is right again.

And in a way, it is. I get it. To go from motherhood to not-motherhood in the span of three seconds, I also feel relieved. And no one’s getting murdered over a misunderstanding, so even better. But as I look down at Bun’s tearful face, at the smudge of red on her knee I’ve already kissed, there’s a tiny, sharp pang of disappointment.

Ridiculous.

I’ve known this child for hours, not days or years. I’m not her mother. I don’t want to be her mother. I’m eighteen and just escaped a pack that treated me like dirt for being human. The last thing I need is a shape-shifting toddler calling me "mama" and meaning it.

And yet.

For one brief, insane moment, someone needed me. Someone chose me, specifically. Not because I was convenient, or there, or because a mystical bond said so. Just... me.

I swallow hard and force a smile. "See? Not my kid."

My heart breaks a little.

Bun beams, wiggling her magically better leg.

The tension drains from the room by degrees. Jack-Eye looks like he might start breathing again. Owen’s no longer tense, though as soon as he meets Lyre’s eyes, he jerks back until he bumps into the wall.

Unsurprisingly, Lyre looks disappointed.

"That’s a shame," she drawls, stretching her arms over her head. "I was looking forward to the whole ’you have a secret baby’ drama. Really would’ve spiced things up."

Caine glowers at her, but she doesn’t even look at him. I used to think she was suicidally stupid to stand up to the man, but after seeing her fling him across the room? I’m starting to see there’s a lot more to Lyre than I ever expected.

Bun turns her face back toward me, rubbing her nose against my neck. I wrap my arms around her, careful not to squeeze too tight. There’s something uncomfortably right about holding her. Like my arms were designed for exactly this.

"So all these kids are... what did you call them? Soulspliced?" I ask Owen, desperately needing to change the subject before I think too hard about the maternal instincts apparently lying dormant inside me.

He nods, relieved to be discussing something other than perceived parenthood. Lyre takes a step closer to him, and he stiffens further. I wasn’t sure it was actually possible. "Yes. Their soul has the essence of multiple souls within it, which is considered—"

"—Fuck."