Reclaimed (Shadow Beast Shifters, #2)(86)

I nodded, lifting my face toward him, the moisture I hadn’t bothered to wipe away still on my cheeks. “They’re happy tears.”

This finally seemed to penetrate his worry, and I had a feeling we’d been minutes from seeing him all Anubis-a-fied again. Sweeping me closer to him, he positioned himself in front of me as he finally turned to acknowledge Dannie.

She was walking toward us, her long, red robes trailing behind her. He tensed further, and I was confused. “It’s Dannie,” I said, pressing my hand to his back.

I felt a spark of his power, but it didn’t hurt me, so that was not a warning. Shadow was reacting to something else. Dannie’s face softened as she stared at him, and I hated not knowing what the fuck was going on here.

“Your energy did not feel like this on Earth,” Shadow rasped, and I had never heard him sound so… sad. “I felt flashes of the realm and the royals. I figured you were from one of the kingdoms. I didn’t know it was you.”

She reached up toward him, and just as I was about to warn her of the dangers of touching him without his permission, he met her hand with his own, wrapping that huge palm around her much smaller one.

“I have missed you,” she said.

Just as I was about to freak the fuck out and start demanding answers, Shadow replied. “I missed you too, Mother. So fucking much.”

Mother?

The world spun and for a brief moment, I wondered if I was about to embarrass myself and faint. Dannie was Shadow’s mother?

Who and how and why and what the fuck was happening here?





42





Angel must have seen my confusion, reaching my side in an instant. Her support was given freely, an arm wrapped around me, which I was a touch ashamed to admit, I needed. The truth of what I’d just heard had knocked me over, and I wasn’t sure which part was the hardest to handle.

Shadow’s focus was on his mother—the fuck?—but I sensed that he was aware of me as well. Dude was very good at multi-tasking.

“We should sit down,” Dannie said, sweeping her arm wide like she wanted to take in the beautiful land of the Nexus. Unlike the rest of The Grey Lands, here there was a plethora of energy and life. A taste of what used to span out across all of this land when it had been Paldeena.

No one said a word, not even Ixana, as we followed Dannie. She moved through what I would compare to a field, but there was no grass. The golden matter beneath our feet was soft, cushioning my boots, and as I leaned over to run my hands across the velvety, cloud-like substance, I wondered what it was.

It wasn’t sticky or weird to touch… It felt nice. Like I could comfortably curl up in a ball and sleep on this field that morphed from gold to red and back again with careless abandon. It was so much like Shadow’s eyes that I felt an odd pang in my chest.

Pushing that aside, I fell into the back of the group. Shadow and Dannie were up front, talking to each other, but I couldn’t hear what was being said.

As she led us deeper into the Nexus, I started to wonder why she’d wanted to see me first, before her own son. Had she known how destroyed I’d been over her “death?” Or was there another reason? Either way, I really hoped she had some answers to my many, many questions.

Deep down, I wasn’t actually handling the truth of who she was very well. She no longer felt like my Dannie; instead, she was the being who quite possibly knew all along what I was, and had kept it from me.

I felt betrayed. Was nothing the way I believed it to be? Was my father’s death connected to this as well? Did I truly know anything about myself?

“This spot will work,” Dannie called back for all of us to hear.

The “spot” was beside what looked like a creek, but the water was red and thick. Dannie pulled her brown leather sandals off and dropped her feet into it, sighing as she did.

“It’s a lot like a river back on Earth,” Angel whispered in my ear. “One made from gelatin.”

As I crouched and ran my hand through it, I was surprised by the cool liquid suctioning onto my skin. The deeper I went, the more icy and intense it was. After a few seconds, I enjoyed the sensation of it swirling against me.

“This is mist born, and the purest form of the original energy,” Dannie explained. “You should all partake in some, restore your energy. I believe you’re going to need it.”

Shadow and Ixana both scooped up a handful and drank it down. I hadn’t seen Shadow ever truly eat anything until this point, but he clearly was all over this.

“It’s safe for you, Mera,” Dannie told me.

As I pulled my hand free, it made a small popping sound emerging completely clean. Crossing my arms, I glared at her. “And why should I believe a word out of your mouth?”

I was gonna yell at Shadow’s mom, and honestly, I didn’t even care if it pissed him off.

Dannie got to her feet again, two pops as she pulled them from the Jell-O creek.

She approached me slowly. “I owe you an apology and explanation, and I promise both are coming your way. Energy first, though, since you’re carrying the burden of all the creatures. You feel a little… worn down.”

Shadow’s gaze snapped to mine, and he was looking me over like he was checking for broken bones. The exhaustion had been coming and going in waves, but I’d felt like I had been doing a fairly good job keeping it hidden from the world. All of the world except Dannie, apparently. Never could hide anything from that woman.