The Devil's Soulmark - Ch 3
“Mama!”
Claire was yanked from slumber by her child’s call with only the briefest warning before Brianna’s long limbs were cutting a path up the middle of the bed.
“What’s wrong?” Claire pushed herself up onto an elbow, heart hammering in her ribs. Some corner of her still-tired mind registered that it was early — much earlier than Brianna would usually be up. She brushed the wild spray of red curls away from her daughter’s distraught face. “Did you have a bad dream?”
Brianna’s face crumpled and she hauled herself forward into Claire’s chest as she began to cry.
“Oh, lovey…”
She cradled her daughter to her, faintly alarmed but yet oddly tender over Bree’s apparent need for her. At thirteen, Brianna so often felt she understood the world better than Claire, and any motherly advice was rarely heeded. But the salt in the wound was that this attitude did not extend to Brianna’s father; the two had always been thick as thieves and adolescence hadn’t seemed to disturb that for them.
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