“Izzy! Please wait!”
The plea cut off Keita’s words, and she could only stare as Keita’s young cousin Branwen shot past them while desperately pulling clothes over her human form.
“By all reason—” Dagmar began.
“— that was Izzy?” Keita finished.
“It’s been two years since we’ve last seen her,” Morfyd said, “but…” The trio gazed at each other a moment longer before Keita and Morfyd dropped each other’s hair and charged up the stairs, Dagmar Reinholdt pushing past them both and beating them inside.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Talaith had heard all the yelling and screeching, but she’d learned not to get into the middle of a Morfyd–Keita fight long ago. Even Gwenvael—surprisingly annoyed since he didn’t seem to get annoyed by much, but especially not by anything Keita did, or who she f**ked for that matter—had walked out the back door of the hall.
“Aren’t you going to help?” she’d asked him as he passed her.
“They’ll wear themselves out eventually,” he’d replied and was gone.
Perhaps they would, too. Yet unlike Dagmar, Talaith wasn’t about to abandon her breakfast to find out the truth of that. She would stop the brothers from fighting when necessary, but she wasn’t about to get between sisters. She’d grown up with women, and she above all knew exactly how mean they could be.
Talaith heard someone coming down the steps and smiled when she saw her mate. He might be able to get his sisters to stop fighting without her getting a black eye in the process. Yet he stopped midway down, his gaze locked on the entrance to the Great Hall. His mouth dropped open, his eyes widened, and a look of shock crossed that perpetually bored dragon’s face.
Concerned his sisters had finally really harmed themselves, Talaith followed his gaze. But those angry light brown eyes glaring at her from across the hall belonged to no dragon.
“By the gods…” Talaith breathed out, slowly pushing herself to her feet. “Izzy?”
Her daughter. Iseabail. Back, alive and well, among her own after two very long years, and with all her important parts still attached. But Talaith’s Izzy had…matured. She’d developed curvy hips, and br**sts that had nearly doubled in size, proving Izzy was a late bloomer like her mother. But that was only part of what had happened to Izzy since Talaith had last seen her.
There also wasn’t an ounce of fat on Talaith’s daughter, but she was far from skinny. Instead Izzy was layered in hard-edged muscles rippling powerfully under a short-sleeve tunic and brown leggings. She was also taller—even taller than Annwyl—and her shoulders were strong, wide, and powerful, making Talaith feel puny and weak. It seemed that Izzy had taken after her birth father’s people more than Talaith would have ever thought.
Now Izzy was built like the warrior women of Alsandair. Tall and broad and oh-so-very strong.
Even more dangerous, Izzy had become quite beautiful. Beautiful and, if Talaith was a gambling woman, she’d say completely oblivious to it. Izzy got that from her father, too. He’d been stunningly handsome but had no idea about it and to the day of his death always seemed shocked Talaith could love him as much as she did. He had never believed himself worthy.
“Forgot me already then?” Izzy slammed her hands flat on the table, leaned in, and with a bellow that rocked the castle walls, accused, “Because you’ve replaced me with another? ”
That bellow snapped Talaith out of her shock. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You didn’t even bother telling me! Do I mean so little to this family?”
Talaith cringed when she realized why her daughter was so angry, and looked to her mate. But he’d turned around and was heading back up the stairs.
Deserting bastard!
“You never said a word,” Izzy went on, ranting and pacing, her cousin Branwen standing behind her, looking unusually distraught. “You all conspired to lie to me!”
“Izzy, you don’t understand—”
“Don’t interrupt me!”
Insulted—she was still this ungrateful brat’s mother—Talaith stormed around the table and over to her daughter. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that! I’m still your mother!”
“Barely!” Izzy crossed her arms over her chest. “Were you hoping I wouldn’t come back?” Izzy asked, haughty. “So you could pretend you never had me? Was I such a burden?”
Enraged the brat would even suggest such a thing, Talaith exploded.
“How dare you say such a thing to me!”
“How dare you not tell me the truth!”
“I see being away hasn’t made you any less impossible! ” Talaith screamed.
“Like mother, like daughter, it seems! ” Izzy screamed back.
“Izzy?” Briec said from the bottom of the stairs, Rhianwen in his arms. “Don’t you want to say hello to your sister before you say good-bye to us all?”
Izzy faced her father, cleared her throat. “No. I don’t.”
“You’re being impossible,” Talaith snapped.
“I’m being impossible?”
Briec had walked around until he stood beside Izzy and Talaith.
And for the first time that Talaith could ever remember, their younger daughter didn’t seem to be content in her father’s arms. Instead she reached for Izzy with both hands, fighting to be held by her.