Her heart did a little dance at his admission. God, all the time they’d wasted. She leaned close and kissed him again, not even sure how to express all the feelings welling up in her. Before the kiss got too serious, Zoe stirred, flopping into a new position on the rug—a sure sign the nap was coming to an end.
Rose sighed and rested her forehead against his for a moment before pushing back. “I’d better get dinner started.”
She was pulling vegetables out of the refrigerator when Vlad joined her, leaning against the counter, frowning slightly.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as she started washing lettuce. That look didn’t bode well, and was a real mood shift from just a few moments ago.
“I need to tell you something, and I’ve been hesitating.”
“Oh no.” She paused to stare at him. “Now what haven’t you told me?”
He winced a little. “This is… Other tigers are likely to bring this up while we’re at the compound. I want you to hear the story from me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I told you my father killed my mother.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything. He looked too pensive and she didn’t want to interrupt what he had to say.
“My brothers believe it was a suicide because that’s what my father told all of us. He claimed when he found out she’d had a baby with a human, she’d been so ashamed she killed herself. My brothers bought that story because they share my father’s prejudices.”
“You don’t believe it, though?”
“He admitted to Nila he’d killed my mother. It’s common knowledge in the community now.” He swallowed visibly and looked down at the floor. “But even before that, I knew he’d murdered her. It’s my fault he found out about Nila in the first place.”
She wasn’t sure how to react. A part of her wanted to comfort him and ease the guilt she saw plainly in his body language. Another part wanted to throw questions at him. Instead, she kept working on dinner, giving him room to tell his story in his own time.
“I was visiting my parents in their home in Russia,” he said. “I was…out of sorts. My mother and I were always very close. I look a lot like her, which is unusual for tigers. Most of the time, sons resemble their fathers, daughters their mothers. There’s a little mixing but for the most part, tigers bear the strongest resemblance to the parent of the same sex. My father was very Russian looking, with blond hair and blue eyes.” He gestured at his face. “There’s very little of him in me.”
She couldn’t help but say, “I’m glad to hear it since he murdered your mother and tried to murder your sister.”
He tilted his head in acknowledgement of the point. “At any rate, the fact that his oldest son didn’t really look like him was always an issue between us. It tainted our relationship. He…didn’t like me as much as my brothers—all of whom look more like him than I do. Anyway, because my father and I had a cold and distant relationship, my mother tried to make up for it by loving me more. We were very close.”
“Oh, Vlad. Her murder must have really torn you up.” Rose couldn’t imagine losing her own beloved parents yet. She dreaded the day and was kind of hoping they’d live into their hundreds so she wouldn’t have to deal with it for a long time.
“Worse because it was my fault.”
“How?”
“On that particular trip to Russia, my mother pestered me until I admitted what was bothering me—that after four years, I still couldn’t get over you. I’d tried. I’d even done a few Mate Runs right after, thinking if I got a tiger shifter mate I’d be able to stop loving you.”
She kept her gaze on the vegetables she was chopping, trying not to feel hurt at that admission, but it still hit her in the chest like a punch. He’d left her and then gone looking for another woman, someone he could have children with. The thought actually brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them away so he wouldn’t see.
“I didn’t put much effort into the Runs. I never caught a female and really didn’t try. After a year of pretending, I stopped running. That pissed my father off. I’m his oldest and he expected me to get a mate and have children. He actually thought all his sons would get mates, which is ridiculous. That never happens. There just aren’t enough tigresses.”
He waved off the slight change in direction and went back to the topic. “When I told my mother I was still hung up on you, even though you’d cheated on me, and I was considering trying to get back together with you, she encouraged me. She said I should trust my instincts, and then she admitted that maybe it was possible for your baby to be mine.”