So was she. “I lost them when I was too young to really appreciate them.”
“Then you went with Cain to live with the Brookwell Pack?”
She nodded. “His uncles pretty much adopted me.”
“What’s the pack like?”
“Large, boisterous, would use any excuse to throw a celebration to get blind drunk.”
“Do you keep in touch with any of the Brookwell wolves?”
“I talk to my uncles by phone. And they visit me when they can.”
“I thought Cain kept them away from you so that you stay off the humans’ radar.”
“No, leaving the pack kept me off the radar. But my uncles still slip away and meet me sometimes, just like Cain does. I’ll never forget how they took me in and accepted me.” Still, she’d always felt like she was leeching off someone else’s family. Although she adored her uncles, Ally had never felt settled there. Never found her place. And so she’d flitted from pack to pack over the years, searching for it. But she never found it.
For a short while, she’d thought she’d found it in the Collingwood Pack. She’d let her guard down a little, but that had come back to bite her on the ass when Zeke—
“Don’t think about him.” Derren cupped her face, trapping her gaze with his. “He’s not worth an ounce of your time.”
It freaked her out that Derren could read her so well. “It’s not that I’m dwelling or anything. It’s that—”
“You trusted him not to hurt you, but he did. And now you wonder if you can trust your own judgment anymore.” Derren understood that well.
She nodded. “If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?”
Derren curled his arms tight around her. “You can trust me.” She’d no doubt find that difficult to believe, considering he’d been a total ass in the beginning. But it was true.
“And you can trust me, but you don’t.”
He tapped her nose. “That’s where you’re wrong. I was a complete bastard to you, but you healed me—even though the burns were severe, and even though you knew my agony would then become yours, you did it. You had to have known that using that much energy would knock you unconscious; that it would put your safety in the hands of people who hadn’t exactly been welcoming to you. But despite all that, despite all the prejudice you received because of your gift, you used that gift to heal me. You have my trust.”
Ally understood that wasn’t something she should overlook or take lightly. Having someone have such faith in her—especially after her previous pack had withdrawn their trust—healed a little rift inside her. Ally rested her forehead against his. “I’m honored to have it.” And she wanted to keep it, but she might just lose it when he realized she hadn’t corrected his assumption that Cain was her mate. “Derren, there’s something you should know. About Cain—”
Derren cut her off with a kiss. “I don’t want to hear about him.”
“But—”
“No.”
“This is important.”
“Cain’s got nothing to do with us.” Derren bit her bottom lip when she would have spoken again. “I don’t want him here.”
Between us, he didn’t say but she clearly heard. Not wanting his mood to turn sour by pushing him, Ally sighed. “Fine. But you can’t say I didn’t try to tell you.”
“I don’t want to know.”
Maybe it really wouldn’t be important to him, thought Ally. After all, they had agreed their relationship would be temporary, so whether or not Cain was her mate wasn’t relevant.
Derren nipped her neck, wanting her attention solely on him. “I have another question. Who taught you to shift so easily between forms?”
“My mom taught me how to be at peace with my wolf. Without that, it isn’t possible. But if someone can manage that, it’s easy for them to do what I do.”
“So it’s not a Seer thing?” he asked. She shook her head. “When did you have your first vision?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been having them for as long as I can remember.”
“They must have been hard to handle when you were a kid.” They seemed hard enough to handle now.
“They could be scary. But even back then it bothered me more when something happened and I didn’t see it coming. People don’t understand that Seers don’t ‘see’ everything.” She shook her head as she added, “You wouldn’t believe the amount of times someone blamed me when something bad happened. Some even accused me of having a vision but not warning them. Even when I was a kid.”
He double-blinked with astonishment. “You were advising a pack when you were a kid?”
“My grandmother—who sadly died with my parents—was considered Seer of the pack, but, yes, if I had a vision that needed to be shared, then I was naturally expected to share it.”
Derren traced her collarbone with his finger. “So you got the gift from your grandmother?”
“Yes, it skips a generation. The eldest Seer always trains and guides the child until they hit at least eighteen. At that point, the eldest Seer will either ‘retire,’ or one of them will move to another pack. Two adult Seers can’t exist in one pack without being at each other’s throats.”
“A little like two Alpha males or two Beta males.”