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caring for someone. It’s what being an alpha is all about…” But her voice faded at the look on her mom’s face.
    “An alpha.” Her mom’s voice was dead.
    Oh no. Mia couldn’t believe she let that slip out.
    “I just meant—” She stopped because her mom was peering around the corner at Lucas.
    When she pulled back, her eyes had gone so wide the whites were huge around her brilliant blue irises. “He’s one of them, isn’t he?” Her mother’s pale cheeks pinked up in a haze of fury. “What is he doing to you, Mia? Is he forcing you to be with him? Are you involved in drugs now, too?”
    “What? Mom, no—”
    Her mom took her by the shoulders but dropped her voice low. “Mia, you should have told me. Whatever he’s forcing you into, we’ll get it taken care of—”
    “Mother!” Mia’s voice screeched.
    Lucas sailed around the corner. His wide-eyed gaze flipped between her mother’s thin fingers digging into Mia’s shoulders and Mia’s enraged face. She couldn’t imagine what he was thinking, but he stayed at the edge of the kitchen, watching. Waiting. Letting her take the lead in this… well, it was time for her to set some things straight.
    “Mother, Lucas is a shifter. But he’s good and kind and decent—he’s nothing like the gang shifters. He’s one of the finest men I’ve ever known. And he’s my… he’s my… mate.” She paused, breath frozen in her chest. Her mother’s hands dropped from Mia’s shoulders, her face increasingly horrified with every word.
    “I’m a shifter, too.” It came out a whisper, but it felt like a shout that echoed off the walls.
    Her mom blinked once, then twice. Then she seemed to collapse a little, falling back against the refrigerator in a kind of shock that kept her face slack and her eyes searching Mia’s face. Then a slow rolling fury climbed up from her chest, turning her neck and then her cheeks red. She whirled away from Mia and stalked toward Lucas, who stood stock-still and wide-eyed at the edge of the linoleum that marked the kitchen area.
    Her mother stopped right at the dividing line and glared up into Lucas’s face.
    “Get out of my house.” The words were low but clipped… and so full of hatred that her mother didn’t even sound like herself.
    Lucas searched her face for a long moment. Before Mia could decide what she wanted him to do, he dropped his gaze, turned, and marched out of the apartment. Only when the door closed behind Lucas did Mia realize she should have come to his defense. She should have told her mother that she had no right to treat him that way. But then her mother turned to Mia, her face full of leaden pain.
    “I always thought… I had my suspicions…” Her mom braced herself against the chipped Formica of the countertop. “Your father. I thought he might have been one of them. And now you’re… Mia, honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I would never have…”
    Mia’s stomach writhed like it was filled with snakes. “You would never have… what? Had me? If you’d known?”
    “No! No, Mia, honey, that’s not what I meant.”
    Mia stormed past her mother’s weak protests, tears jumping to her eyes. But before she could reach the door, before she could flee from the idea that her mother wished she had never been born, a hand caught her arm and stopped her. Mia wanted nothing more than to run from this hellhole and never return, but her mother’s grip on her arm was strong… and Mia’s anger wasn’t enough to wrench her free.
    “Mia, honey, please look at me.”
    Mia dragged her gaze from the scuffed floor and looked into her mother’s pained face. “I can’t help what I am, Mom.”
    “No, of course not!” She tried to pull Mia into a hug, but Mia just twisted her face away. “Mia, I love you. I’ve…. I’ve never regretted having you. I only meant that, if I’d known your father was a shifter, I would never have spent that night with him. I wouldn’t have wanted that life for