The woman held out her hand, palm up, and smiled at him. “Is this your mate?” she asked. “He’s magnificent.”
Then her eyes rose to mine, brimming with concern. She stepped forward and tilted her head. “Hey, are you okay?”
I covered my mouth and she turned to the man behind the counter. “Charlie, can you get me a glass of water?”
Charlie was a middle-aged man who looked like a schoolteacher. When he returned, she reached over the counter and took the glass.
She handed me the glass and I drank, my hand shaking so much that she had to steady my arm by holding my wrist.
“Should I call a Relic?”
I quickly shook my head and set down the glass next to my empty one.
Could this be? I’d come all this way, but during my walk, I’d begun to have doubts that I’d made the right decision in coming to Cognito. I’d considered going home, and of all places, I walk into the same shop that Lakota’s mother is in? My own mother believed in fate—what humans liked to call coincidence. She believed greater powers were at work.
My voice cracked as I assembled my thoughts. “No Relic. It’s just… I know you.”
“I don’t recognize you. Have we met?” She stood up straight and studied me closely with her bright green eyes. “Do you mind if I sit here? I have to wait on my order.”
I shook my head and steadied my hands, moving some of my dirty wrappers and napkins out of the way. “We’ve never met. I came all the way from Texas to find you, but it seems you have found me. I don’t even know how to begin this conversation. I’m just so afraid of what you might say—what you might do.”
Her eyes lowered to Thunder, who sat beside her, blockading her in. Then she examined me closely. She was studying my hair, my eyes, my mouth, and then all the tension vanished as the muscles in her face relaxed and her eyes widened.
She knew. She had to have known. I knew it when I first saw a picture of Lakota. We shared the same features, skin coloring, and hair. It seemed the only thing he took from Fox was his beautiful blue eyes.
She hugged her body and leaned back, her lower lip trembling. “I guess I don’t need to introduce myself then. Are you here to take him away?”
I tipped my head to the side and touched my braid. “You kept his name.”
She nodded. “My mate spoke with the Relic and she said that’s the name his mother had given him. I wanted to keep the name because… she was forced to give him up. At least, that’s what the Relic told us. Is that true?”
I nodded. “I was young.”
She leaned in close and bit her lip. “My mate said the only reason a Shifter woman would give up her child is if—well, is if someone hurt her. He said that’s why we needed to love him a little bit more, because he was a special gift.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I always knew if she loved him that one day she’d come for him. Who names a child they don’t want?”
Tears slipped down my cheeks and I grimaced, turning my eyes away. I covered them, overcome with emotion. “I gave him up because my father forced me to, not because I had no love for him. I’ve always loved Lakota, and I always will.”
When I looked up, she was crying.
“Please don’t take my baby away.” She reached across the table to grab my hand. “I know it looks awful that we bought him, but his name came up on the black-market list and if we’d ignored it, he could have wound up in the wrong hands. It was personal to me because my brother was once kept as a slave. That made the guilt of buying him go away. Then I held Lakota in my arms and it was magic. We can’t have children and he was our miracle. It would devastate us if you took him away.”
I couldn’t sit across from her anymore. I stood up and set my cane on the table, dragging my chair around to sit beside her. We held hands and a moment passed between us—two mothers with a different claim on the same child. She sobbed uncontrollably, gasping for breath.