Chapter 43

“They converted the place into this coffee shop around fifteen years ago. I’m sorry that you couldn’t see it while it was still a home but I wanted to show you nonetheless. I thought even just being here, knowing that she was here once, would help.”

Kira nods and exhales slowly. Her eyes flit up around every corner of the café, like she was  expecting to see lines drawn on the walls to measure her mother’s height when she was a child, or little drawings left in marker pen down by the skirting boards from her childhood. 

There is nothing, of course. The building has been gutted and rebuilt, turned into something new for the town to enjoy. But now that Jungkook has said it, she senses something.

Home.

“Sometimes I feel like she was never really here,” Kira whispers.

“The way everyone talks about my father it’s like he permeates the walls in this town, but my mom is a ghost.”

“I know. That’s why I wanted you to know,” Jayden says, squeezing her hand on the table. 

“And I – I asked my mom about it too.”

Kira’s eyes snap up from their joined hands to his face. “Asked her what?” 

“Just about the two of them.”

“You didn’t tell her anything, did you?” She says, anxious. Some things are too personal to ever be shared. 

Some scars are to be shown only to the people he loves most intimately.

“I didn’t say anything,” Jayden promises. “I just wanted to ask if she knew anything about your mom. I know there’s so much that you don’t know. Small towns are difficult. On the one hand, people have very long memories. But on the other hand, they also have very long silences. I thought I’d have more luck talking to someone outside of the pack line, and my mom knows everyone and everything about this town.”

“What did she say?” Kira whispers, suddenly thirsty for information.

“She told me about this place, and she told me about the two of them at school. But what I really wanted to ask her was why they left.”

Kira’s heart pounds in his chest. He tries to occupy himself by nibbling on his cookie, but his hand is shaking. He’d given up on ever getting answers.

Jayden hesitates before continuing. “I think it was a difficult time to be a woman. Things move slower here than they do in the cities. It was probably even more difficult to be a woman and a wolf; expected to be loyal to your pack, expected to be deferent to your husband. You know that people here blamed her. They said that she abandoned the pack, stole you away from them. But for what it’s worth, my mom said that she always got the impression your father was the one who wanted to leave.”

“She said that?” Kira whispers.

“She said that they were very private, and people in town didn’t know much about their relationship. But she said your mother loved this place, and she wouldn’t have wanted to take you away.”

Kira swallows. This answers an anxiety deep inside that has been bubbling away in her hollow stomach since the day she arrived. 

“Do you think she’s right?”

“I think... You asked me once whether I thought he was jealous of her for having this gift when he didn’t. Maybe you were right.”

Kira squeezes her eyes shut and palms over them. 

“There’s so much I wish I could ask her... so many things I’ll never know.”

“Maybe...” Jayden hesitates. “Maybe the reason that she never told you the truth was that she was scared he’d shift that jealousy onto you, if he knew that you were gifted too. Maybe in her mind it seemed safer if you thought you were ordinary, and he thought you were ordinary too. I’m sure that everything she did, for whatever reasons she did it, was to try to protect you.”

Kira looks down, blinking her stinging eyes. 

“Thank you for asking.”

“You can talk to my mom any time you want. She knows the women of this town better than anyone. And she doesn’t let men talk over her, so you get some real answers.”

Since moving into his house, Kira has been slowly assimilated into Jayden’s life, but the thought of growing closer to his family is something different entirely.

Jayden’s parents are kind, his mother smart and his father much milder than him. They’re proud of their son being the Alpha, but they’re quiet and unassuming around town. People treat them with respect. 

Jayden’s mom runs the only bookshop in town.

“I want you to know that if you ever want people to know the truth, we’ll set them right,” Jayden adds, but Kira shakes her head.

“I don’t want them to know.” Her childhood is something she’d rather leave behind, imagining it where she grew up, never here.

“I’ll protect you always, Kira. Your wolf is something you share with your mom and I hope that she can hear me when I say that I’ll always keep you safe. I’ll give you the best life.” 

Jayden kisses her knuckles.

“I promise.”

It is a deep kind of trust, Kira thinks, that she didn’t even need him to say these words out loud to know that they’re true.