Reclaiming Angelica by Zena Wynn Read Free Book Online

as he noted his uncle repeatedly
shaking his head from side to side.
    “Your mother left your father because he didn’t trust her
with who he was,” Uncle Joey said flatly.
    “No! She left because Poppa wasn’t human.”
    Joey pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered a few soft
curses. His action made Raul feel four again, trying to understand as his
father explained Momma wasn’t ever coming back. “What are you saying, Uncle
Joey?”
    “I’m saying that after your dad died, I tracked your mother
down and had a long talk with her.”
    Raul felt like he’d been poleaxed. His jaw gaped, but he
couldn’t close it. Words tumbled around in his mind, disjointed, but he
couldn’t pull enough of them together to speak with any type of coherency.
    Uncle Joey took pity on him and kept talking. “You were
almost six at the time. She wasn’t hard to trace. She hadn’t gone far, just the
next town over to where her best friend lived. I told her Paul was dead and
asked what she wanted to do about you.”
    The dull ache in his heart lingering from his mother’s
abandonment grew teeth and rent at his flesh. “Momma knew Poppa was dead, and
she still didn’t want me?”
    Raul vaulted to his feet to pace the room, no longer able to
be still. His gaze bounced around the walls, taking in the various photos
showing his stages of development. None of them showed a proud, glowing mother.
    It shouldn’t matter that he now had confirmation his momma
didn’t want him. Over the years he’d managed to convince himself that maybe his
mother really hadn’t intended to leave him behind. That she’d given him to his
father because she knew Poppa wouldn’t have let him go.
    Joey sighed. “It’s not that cut-and-dried.”
    Raul paced to the window and stood looking at the dark
glass. “It’s okay. I knew that just like with Poppa, Momma couldn’t stand the
thought of what I am. If she’d really loved me, loved us, she wouldn’t have
left.” After all, she’d said so herself. “Mommas
always love their sons, Raul, and their sons’ daddies. No matter what.” She’d left because she no longer loved them.
    The admission hit his heart like a blow as he thought of
Angel. If she really loved him, would she have left him? Depression settled on
him like a cloud. His one hope had been that in spite of Angel’s
incomprehensible actions, she really loved him. Now he no longer knew what to
believe.
      “Mate a human, and she’ll break your heart.” His father’s words echoed in his mind.
    “Raul, sit down and listen to me, boy!”
    Raul flinched at the rarely heard sharpness in his uncle’s
tone and found himself scurrying over to the couch to sit as commanded.
Inwardly he sighed. Some alpha he was proving to be.
    “Now, as I stated, it wasn’t that cut-and-dried. Your momma
wanted you. She did,” he added when he saw the skepticism Raul knew was visible
on his face. “Your parents managed to do a number on each other. Laura
confessed that she’d received a letter from Paul, apologizing for his lies and
asking her to return to him. It wasn’t the first that she’d received from him.
In this one he stated that he couldn’t live without her, the implication being
that if she didn’t return to him, he’d end his life. She didn’t believe him.
She said she thought it was another one of his lies. Being angry, hurt, and not
a little prideful—both your parents had more than their fair share of that
particular fault—she disregarded it and him, preferring instead to continue to
nurse her wounds.
    “When I told her Paul was dead from suicide…” Uncle Joey
took a long, deep breath, his gaze faraway as though locked on to the past.
“She lost it. The shock, the guilt…it did a number on her. She had to be
hospitalized.”
    Raul sat stunned, his thoughts chaotic, listening to his
uncle’s recitation of past events.
    “Paul said once that Laura was sweet and loving, but she had
a fiery temper and once hurt, she was