Lawe's Justice - Lora Leigh [49]
“They don’t mean anything—” Rachel began to protest.
“Geez, Rachel, I know they don’t mean anything by it.” Diane sighed as she rocked the baby gently. “It’s the changes in her scent that frightens them perhaps? They’re just babies too.”
She wanted to give her sister something to hold on to, something to ease the fears Diane knew tormented her.
“Not David,” Rachel whispered as she ran her fingers lovingly over Amber’s heavy curls. “Callen and Merinus’s son isn’t a baby, Diane. He growls at her if he doesn’t stop himself first. Just having her around seems to irritate him. Low, involuntary growls rumble in his chest before he becomes angry and simply leaves the room.”
Rachel’s voice trembled painfully. “He’s being groomed for his father’s position, trained to take over. He’s the children’s alpha, do you know the implications of his rejection of Amber?”
Diane smoothed her hand down the baby’s back as she made a tiny sound of distress once again. “What are the implications, Rachel?” she asked gently, though the look she shot her sister was berating. “David is in puberty, he’s going through maturation of not just human hormones but also the animal ones. He was Jonas’s favorite before Amber. Subconsciously, perhaps he resents her for the love Jonas has for her, and his animal DNA is simply reacting.”
Jonas loved children, but David had been his favorite before Amber’s arrival. Once Rachel had given birth, Diane heard Jonas had fallen head over heels for the infant. Nothing in this world mattered as much as Rachel and the child he claimed as his own. Though Diane knew David still received quite a bit of attention from the director.
“When it’s all said and done, he’s still human,” she reminded her sister. “Have you told Merinus?”
Rachel rolled over to stare at the ceiling, one arm across her stomach as she scowled heavily.
“Rachel?” Diane urged her.
“I’m not going to Callan or Merinus,” Rachel muttered, though this time, she kept the anger and any pain she felt out of her tone.
“Why not, Rachel?” Maybe her sister couldn’t, but she could.
“And you won’t either.” Rachel’s head snapped to the side, her expression fierce as she stared back at her.
Diane’s lips thinned. She hated it when Rachel could so easily guess her intentions.
“Why can’t you go to Merinus?” Diane asked rather than arguing. “She’s David’s mother, she can talk to him. If not Merinus, then Callan.”
Rachel sniffed as she rubbed her hands over her face before starting back at Diane heavily. “Because I refuse to play tattletale on a child.” She sighed wearily.
Diane had to laugh. “But, Rachel, it’s children you’re supposed to tattle on.”
Her sister’s lips almost twitched in amusement.
“Laugh, Diane.” She sat up and it was then Diane saw the tears glittering in her eyes. “I’m not going to play the bitch mother and beg Merinus Lyons to please make her son stop being so mean to my baby.”
Diane was confused now. She stared back at her sister, wondering what the real problem was here.
“I all but went to school with you for the first six years because the older kids liked to bully you,” Diane reminded her sister fondly. “I yelled at teachers and I argued with principals. Then Uncle Colt came in, glared at them all and even visited their parents and all but threatened them. But what happened to stop it, Rachel?”
“This isn’t school, Diane.” She sighed. “Kicking the bully in the balls isn’t going to fix this.”
And oh how her baby sister had kicked the bully and left him crying. Diane loved that memory.
“No, it won’t,” she agreed reasonably. “But if you don’t speak to Merinus, Callan or David, I don’t care which, then I will.”
Ignoring Rachel’s scowl she laid the now-sleeping Amber back in the bed beside her mother.
“Let it go,” her sister ordered.
“No. Find the cause and fix it, or I’ll do it for you.” Diane shrugged, unconcerned with her sister’s arguments. “And you know I will, Rachel. That’s my niece and she’s too young to have to endure a teenager’s temperamental attitude. I won’t have it.”
“It’s not that easy,