N. Walters - Finding Chrissten

“We didn’t mean to make you sad.” She could hear the worry, the sorrow in Craig’s voice and forced herself to raise her head. She dropped the sweater back on top of the box and scrubbed her hands over her cheeks.

She felt like an ungrateful wretch. “No. No. I appreciate you bringing me my clothes. I was just saying to Meredith earlier how I was sick of wearing nightgowns and I wanted to wear real clothing. I just never expected it to be my own.”

“We’ve both moved around a lot this past year and a half.” Craig glanced at Quinn, who looked away. “I packed up our old apartment and put everything I didn’t sell into storage.”

Her hands shook. Indeed, her entire body was trembling. They’d kept her things—her books, her clothes, her small treasures.

Craig got up and went over to the door. He lifted the other box and brought it back to the bed. He opened the flaps and dug inside. A second later he withdrew a slightly bedraggled panda bear. A child’s toy. Hers.

“Manda,” she cried. “I can’t believe you kept her.” She took the small bear that had been her favorite toy as a child and held it to her heart.

“You were missing. Not dead.” Quinn’s voice had a hard edge. “Why wouldn’t we have kept your things?”

She’d hurt him again without meaning to. “I’m sorry.” She put her hand on his arm and felt the hard, bunched muscles beneath. “I wouldn’t have blamed you for giving up, for assuming I was dead, for losing hope.” She sat the small stuffed toy in her lap. It was a reminder of much happier, more innocent times. “I lost hope.”

The sound that was pulled from deep within Quinn was one of pain. She hadn’t meant to hurt him like that. She started to pull her hand away, but he clamped his own over it.

“Don’t you dare apologize. Not ever.” His blue eyes were blazing with anger, with determination. “You stayed alive. That’s more than many would have done.”

He stood abruptly and she felt the loss. “I let you down. I should have protected you better.” He looked so alone standing there with his shoulders squared and his arms crossed over his chest.

“No.” She stood, and the small bear fell to the floor, forgotten in the face of her brother’s pain. “No, you did everything you could. There was nothing you could have done to prevent this. Nothing any of us could have done.” As she said the words she actually started to believe them. “If anyone is to blame for what happened it’s me. I’m the one who didn’t pay enough attention to my surroundings. I knew better than to let my guard down in our neighborhood.”

Quinn took too much on himself. Always had. No way was she letting her brother feel guilty. “You did everything you could to keep me safe, to keep us safe.” She glanced at Craig who was silently watching them both. “You gave up your life to find me. Both of you did.”

“You’re our sister.” Craig’s simple words almost broke her heart. For them it was as simple as that. They thought nothing of their sacrifice. To her it was everything.

“I know.” She gave them the truth, what they all needed to hear. “I knew you’d look for me. It was the only thing that gave me any kind of hope, a reason to keep on living.”

Quinn rubbed his hand over his head and let it fall to the back of his neck. He released a tired sigh. “We’ll get past this.”

She wished she shared his optimism, but couldn’t manage to scrape any together. Not now. She forced a smile. “We will.” One way or the other they would get past this. Chrissten only hoped she’d still be alive when the dust finally settled. Only when Brian was dead would she truly be free.

“Now—” she kept her tone brisk, “—I’ve got some clothing to unpack.”

Craig picked up Manda from the floor and put the stuffed bear on the bed before he came to Chrissten and kissed her cheek. “Do you need any help? I’ve got a few things I need to check on.” What went unsaid was that those things were related to the search for her remaining abductors.

She shook her head. “No, you go on. I can handle this.” She hugged him hard. “Thank you.”

He kissed her temple. “It’s good to have you back.” He left without a backward glance leaving her alone with her twin.

“It’s not your fault,” she told him again.

“Maybe.”

He could be infuriating at times, but she understood where he was coming from. She’d have felt the same way if their positions were reversed.

“Listen, I’ve got some more news to share. I was hoping to wait until you’d had more time to recover, but it can’t wait any longer.”

Sweat beaded on her forehead and she slowly sat down on the bed. From the grim expression on Quinn’s face this wasn’t going to be good. “What? What is it?”

“I found our father.”

Of all the things he could have said, this would have been the last thing she would have expected. She knew her mouth was hanging open but couldn’t seem to close it.

He shoved aside one of the boxes and crouched in front of her, taking her cold hands in his much warmer ones.

“How?” One word was as much as she could manage.

“It was when I was with one of the bounty hunter groups. They went to attack a pack, Isaiah’s original pack. I shot the leader of the bounty hunters in order to save one of the wolves. Frankly, I was surprised as hell they didn’t just kill me on the spot. But the alpha let me speak. That’s when I saw him. Jesus, Chris, he looks just like me except for the hair color.”

Chrissten was shocked to her core. Quinn’s talk about killing was a sharp reminder of everything he’d done in order to find her. He’d lived with paranormal bounty hunters, men who wouldn’t have hesitated to kill him if they’d discovered his secret.

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “He admitted he knew our mother but insisted he didn’t know she was pregnant.”

“Wow.” Chrissten was finding it hard to string a complete sentence together. She’d never expected they’d ever meet their biological father. “What’s his name? What’s he like?”

Her brother released her hands and sat on the floor at her feet. “His name is Donovan Brody, and I honestly don’t know what he’s like. I didn’t spend much time with him. All I wanted to do was get to Chicago and start looking for you. When they found out you were missing they offered to help.”

“Because I’m an unmated female?” Chrissten had learned a lot these past months. And one of those lessons was that there were a lot of unmated males who wouldn’t care if she was a half-breed or not. All they wanted was a mate.

“No. Maybe. I’m not sure.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Mostly because you were a female who was abducted from her family. Isaiah’s former alpha is a good guy. His daughter is a half-breed. Maybe that’s why they were all so keen to help.”

It was a lot for her to take in on top of everything else.

“He’s coming here, to Chicago.”

“When?” Chrissten wasn’t sure she was ready to meet her long-lost father.

“A day, maybe two. I’m not exactly sure. When Isaiah called them to let them know we’d found you, he said he was coming as soon as he could.”

“How do you feel about this?”

“Fuck, Chrissten, I don’t need a daddy at this point in my life.” Bitterness coated his words. Their childhood had been rough in many ways. They’d always known they were different. It had isolated them from others, made them feel alone. They’d had to keep on the move to stay safe. Their mother had worked hard to help them. She’d been mother and father to all her children.

Chrissten didn’t know how she felt about meeting him.

He took her hands in his again. “Don’t worry. You’re not alone. You’re not expected to feel anything for him. He’s a sperm donor, nothing more at this point.”