He, too, cannot fathom rejecting family. In many ways, he’d always had it better than his sisters – for the most part Leander’s childhood had been a simple and happy one, free of the tension that Kora and Rhy had brought with them from womb to world – and he’d had his parents with him through it all, longer than had either of the twins combined.
Since coming to Beqanna, he’d gotten the impression that Kora considered him to be a weight; and in his brief encounter with Rhy he’d sensed that she’d had more than enough strength to hold her own from the start. Yet while Rae had never dreamed that family could be an option, Leander had always dreamed that it would be.
So it was that the breath Lee had been holding came out in a rush of elation at her sparkling eyes and mischievous tone – but he still couldn’t understand why she was saying what she was saying. Once again, denial parted his lips. “But I –” His voice came to an abrupt halt as he recalled Rhy’s cryptic final words. ‘She can teach you what you can do.’
His head tilted and his brow furrowed somewhat comically as the pieces of the puzzle finally began to fall into place. He imagined Rhy was grinning down on the pair of them then, no doubt taking great satisfaction in her brother’s moment of dumbfounded realization. At that thought, Lee’s wry laughter suddenly rang through the air between them.
“Honestly? I have no idea.” The overo couldn’t fight the broad smile that shone from his expression as he met Rae’s gaze. “This is all new to me.” His tone remained baffled as he thought it over. “The only thing I can think of is that it must run in the family – the electric, I mean.” Again, his voice faded as he considered the thunderstorms that had seemed to follow in his wake all these weeks, evoking the flash and crash of lightning that had never failed to streak those blackened skies.
“I don’t know if it’s the same as what your mother had, though.” Hurriedly he glanced down at himself, checking that his two-toned skin hadn’t suddenly started to spark as hers did. It hadn’t. His brown eyes lift once more to the blue of her own. Experimentally, he lifted a black-tipped wing and stretched it out towards Rae with a lopsided grin. “Should we test this theory?”
