The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2) by Marina Finlayson Read Free Book Online

eating sugar-coated crap for breakfast, he should be able to as well. The big werewolf sat beside him, a chocolate-smeared bowl the only sign of his crimes against breakfast.
    I smiled at Lachie and decided to overlook the sugar explosion in his bowl. Parental discipline had kind of gone out the window lately. It was so good to have him back I was turning into one of those pushover mothers who let their child do anything they wanted. Soon I’d have to bring us both back to reality—but not yet.
    Ben sat on his other side, reading the newspaper. This back part of the house was a modern extension, open-plan and full of light. It looked out on the Japanese-inspired garden where Leandra and I had had our fateful meeting. It was only a small garden, though big by the standards of The Rocks. From here I could see the spreading jacaranda tree where she’d waited for me, and the patch of grass where she’d died. I shuddered and turned my attention to pleasanter things.
    Sunlight streamed in the big windows behind Ben and Lachie and gleamed in the reflections on the polished table. It lit their curly heads, one big, one small. They could have been father and son having breakfast together. There was a superficial resemblance—they were both tall and lean with curly hair, though Ben’s was black where Lachie’s was a mid-brown. I paused in the doorway, my heart caught for a moment by might-have-beens. What would our lives have been like if I’d married Ben instead of Jason?
    But then Lachie wouldn’t have been Lachie, and I couldn’t regret the choices that had brought him into my world. As for Ben … we were together now. Better to look to the future than dwell on the past. Assuming we survived long enough to have a future, of course.
    He looked better this morning. He’d shaved, and in clothes instead of pyjamas he no longer looked like he might collapse any minute. The arm in its sling and a little bruising on the right side of his face were the only signs left of his injuries.
    Ben smiled at me, but Lachie’s expression was troubled. He hunched over his bowl as if he carried the cares of the world on his slight shoulders.
    “Did you sleep well?” I dropped a kiss on his hair as I headed for the coffee machine.
    “All right.” He slurped up the last of the chocolate-coloured milk in his bowl and pushed it away. “How long are we going to stay here?”
    Uh-oh. I’d been expecting a conversation like this. “In this house, you mean?”
    He nodded. “I want to go home.”
    “Don’t you like it here?”
    “It’s okay. But it’s not home. I miss my Lego, and my old room.”
    His eyes flicked to the side, to Garth, and Dave, who was unstacking the big dishwasher. And there are all these strangers living with us . The poor kid had been living in a boarding school for the last seven months, for God’s sake. He’d probably had it with sharing his living space with crowds of people.
    I met Ben’s eyes over Lachie’s head, and saw sympathy there. Just the three of us—a little family together—sounded pretty good to me too. But we both knew there was no going back to that little green house in the suburbs, at least not any time soon, and maybe never. I took my time making the coffee, then sat down opposite at the long wooden table. Its gleaming surface was the colour of honey, warm and golden. The matching chairs were a touch too modern for comfort, and I shifted on the hard surface, trying to get comfortable.
    “We could get you new Lego, you know. All the Lego you wanted.”
    His frown deepened. God, he looked like his father when he did that. “It wouldn’t be the same. They don’t sell some of the old stuff any more. All my old Ninjago, and the Star Wars sets. Why can’t we just go home?”
    His voice wobbled a little on the last word. An overwhelming desire to punch Jason right in his smug face seized me. If he hadn’t started this with his scheming, Lachie and I could still be living our quiet little