“You’re a whore, just like your worthless mother and sister. You’ll find some cock to suck and then leave me, too. Just wait and see. You bitches are all the same.”

As he’d predicted in his drunken stupors, she’d moved in with the first man to invite her, during her first year in college. She’d have done anything to get away from her father’s insults.

Little had she known, it wouldn’t be long before she’d wish herself back to her father’s hell over that of her first boyfriend’s. And even that disaster hadn’t been nearly as bad as the one that would arrive with Avin.

Old enough to have known better, she’d somehow allowed that bastard to deceive her completely. And she still wasn’t sure how she’d missed the warning signs of his insanity before she’d allowed Avin to move in with her.

At least with her father, she’d been able to gauge what would send him off into a rage and avoid most. Avin’s triggers could be as simple as asking if it was raining outside. They were so arbitrary and capricious…

She’d make a stew and it would be too salty. Then she’d make it again and it wasn’t salty enough. Don’t wear heels and tower over me! Why aren’t you wearing heels? Huh? You’ve wasted money on a closet full of them, and yet you never wear them!

“Closet full” by his definition was three pair. But that was another argument.

Gods, he’d been such a bastard. How had she ever allowed herself to think for one minute that she loved him? Who could ever love such a selfish prick?

A tear slid down her cheek as the pain of her past sank its claws into her heart. Sumi wiped it away before Thia saw it. There was no need in thinking about the life she’d had before. She was an assassin now. Her marriage was to The League alone. And at least it wouldn’t be too many more years of torture. She was already over the average life expectancy of an assassin. Sooner more likely than later, someone, probably Hauk, would kill her before she got them.

That was her life. The best she could hope for was to save her daughter from the same fate.

Clearing her throat, she brought the topic back to Fain. “Where’s Hauk’s brother now?”

Thia stroked the lorina’s head as it napped on her leg. “He lives as an Outcast and nomad. Sometimes in human zones. Sometimes Andarion, even though it’s dangerous. He never stays in one place too long.”

“So he’s healthy?”

Pausing her hand midstroke, Thia pinned her with a gimlet stare. “You’re showing a lot of interest in Fain. Should I ask why?”

There was no missing the underlying threat in those words. She better assuage the girl’s suspicions or she’d be meeting with a bad accident soon. “Curious is all. Sorry. I ask questions when I’m nervous. I rather stumbled into all of your lives. I’m just trying to get my bearings.”