Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
So, they both had brothers. “Do you have other siblings?”
“No, just the one. You?”
“Pax is my only full sibling. Once we turned eighteen, our parents dissolved their co-parenting agreement.” Which hadn’t applied to Theo since she was seven, regardless. “After that, my father had two more children. We weren’t raised together and I don’t know them as anything but genetic half sibs.”
As a child, she’d sometimes dreamed that her father would rescue her and bring her back to Pax; it had taken until she was a teenager to realize that her father had never held any true power in the Marshall household.
Miles Faber had been chosen as Claire Marshall’s partner in procreation because of his Gradient level, high IQ, and pleasing appearance, and had been granted co-parenting rights as part of a business deal. Any kindness he’d had in him had stood no chance against the vicious coldness of her grandfather’s reign—a reign in which her mother had always been complicit.
Part of her had always believed that her half siblings were her father’s attempt to do it all over. Replacement children for the ones to whom he had no rights and that he’d “co-parented” only in name. It was her grandfather who’d made all major decisions when it came to her and Pax. She might’ve judged Miles for his inability to fight for his two firstborn, but it’d be akin to judging a sparrow for not standing up to a falcon.
Even teenage Theo had been tougher than Miles Faber would ever be.
“Big age gap.” Yakov’s voice was a warm brush of fur over her senses, an unspoken invitation to continue the conversation.
Perhaps that was why she carried on speaking of matters she spoke about to no one else. “I do wonder how things will change now that Silence has fallen. If it will change on any major level.” Theo couldn’t see her mother ever being anything but a cold and pragmatic machine.
“Love has a way of changing a lot.” Yakov turned onto the main thoroughfare that would lead them to central Moscow.
“A parent who loves their child,” he continued, “will move mountains to keep them safe. You ever try to take a child from a bear mother? She’ll rip off your face, make a mask of it, then wear that mask to your funeral.”
Theo blinked.
“Too violent?” Yakov winced when she didn’t reply.
“No.” Theo understood violence on the most intimate level. Only her grandfather had known the entirety of what she was capable of. And he was dead, bombed into innumerable fleshy shards that had then mostly been incinerated in the ensuing fire. The authorities had run his DNA from a blown-off hand that had survived the fire, done the secondary scan on a small piece of his skull that still had brain matter attached.
Too bad he’d been at one of his other residences at the time and not the estate.
Theo knew that there was probably something wrong with her for not being horrified by the mental images of Marshall’s obliterated body, but all she’d felt at the news of her grandfather’s demise was a soul-crushing relief—and a fierce joy. The fucking bastard was dead. She’d shake the hand of his murderer if she knew their identity.
“I suppose the idea of such parental protectiveness is strange to me,” she said in response to his question, and her words were an understatement of mammoth proportions. “What are your parents like?” Her curiosity about him was a tree with ever-emerging branches, even if to him, she was nothing but an assignment.
“I’ll introduce you to my mama before you leave Moscow,” Yakov offered. “She’s tough but friendly and she once tore off the head of a man who tried to kidnap me and Pasha.”
Chapter 20
Do not ever get between a mama bear and her cubs. You will most certainly be in pieces before you realize your mistake and start to apologize.
—The Traveler’s Guide to Changelings (revised edition, 1897)
THEO’S SPINE WENT rigid. “You were almost kidnapped?”
“No. Our mother was too fast—I guess they figured one small woman and two cubs in an isolated section of the park against four big males was fair odds.”
He bared his teeth. “Two dead in seconds, third guy—she ripped his arm off. That leaves the one whose insides she clawed out while we cheered her on from the spot where she’d told us to stay put and keep out of her way. Wasn’t even a close fight.”
Theo was beyond fascinated at this point, her anger at the old incident no longer the dominant emotion. “How old were you?”
“Five. Had our claws out and were straining at the bit to go for the attackers, but Pasha and I knew better than to disobey our mother when she used that voice. So we just threw up our arms and cheered every time she got in a hit. Afterward, one of the injured men called us ‘fucking bloodthirsty animals.’ And our mama punched him in the face for daring to insult her sweet little babies.”