Chapter 122

Dane

Her eyes were huge. She took my hands, then took a breath. “Aurora’s twins. They’re yours.”

I couldn’t help the sardonic smile that curved one corner of my mouth. “I know. I’ve known. There’s been so much…” I let out a sigh, then sent someone to the kitchen to bring my sister food while I told her some of what had happened while she was unconscious.

When I told her about the twins, she growled. That was my sister. Growling instead of gasping. Our family tended to reach for anger anytime it meant we didn’t have to feel fear.

“How could this have happened? They were taken right out of our territory,” she said. “Where were the guards they had at the other house? Where was Evander?”

I shook my head. “The guards were reassigned once they were here.”

“Evander?” she insisted again.

“He was the only guard they had. The nanny took them for a walk before he woke one morning.”

“Then how did that happen to him?” she asked, peeking around me.

I scowled and pushed her back onto her pillow. “Since they left, he’s been searching for him. He was on Broken Forest land. The Reeds, or someone who works for them, must have done it.”

She sat up. “But you don’t know? Why haven’t you found out?”

“Because he just arrived, and I’ve spent the entire time talking to you.”

Piper made an impatient noise. “Aurora wants to talk to you about him.”

“Things with her are…complicated.” I’d told her the bare bones of my growing relationship with Aurora, but I hadn’t gotten to the picture of her and Holden that Evelyn had sent me yet. That damn picture had been haunting my thoughts for days. I needed to confront Aurora instead of brooding on it. But brooding was so much fucking easier than finally letting her in, only to find out she’d been playing me the entire time.

Yes, there was a chance she wasn’t. That there was a perfectly innocent explanation for the picture. Or there was a chance she was about to prove I was a fucking fool for ever deciding to trust her in the first place.

Besides, she had put more distance between us since I’d brought her back from the place Holden had taken her. I could feel it. If he hurt her, I understood why. But she wasn’t talking to me about it. I’d trusted her with everything. All my secrets. She wasn’t trusting me with hers.

I shook myself. Piper was leaning again, trying to peer around me at Evander. “The twins. I feel like…” Her eyes were distant. Then she shook her head and massaged her temples with her fingers. “No. That’s insane.”

“What’s insane?” I asked.

Instead of answering, she said, “How did I wake up?”

Now it was my turn to glance over my shoulder. Aurora was still there with her cousin, cleaning him up. Celia helped. They’d cut away his shredded clothing, revealing his bare chest. His body was covered in scars, crisscrossed with them like stripes. I grimaced at the sight.

Evander was young—close to the same age as Piper. Someone had done a number on him, and they’d done it with silver. Even his face wasn’t untouched—parallel lines slashed across his left eye, down his cheek, and over his lips. From the thoughts of a large portion of my pack members, Evander had been very, very pretty. He wasn’t pretty, now. No matter how many times he transformed, those silver scars would never entirely go away. Even Aurora hadn’t come to me that badly poisoned. It would be a miracle if he still had his wolf.

“I don’t know,” I finally said to Piper. My unsettled feeling over her and Evander only grew the longer she was awake and the more she looked at him. I slid my hands underneath her, and she squeaked. “What are you doing?”

“Taking you to your room. You’ll heal better there.”

“Dane!”

I ignored her. I’d been Alpha almost a decade. If that had taught me anything, it was that I had to trust my gut. If Evander DeVere woke, he would be required to stay away from my little sister, or I would send him right back to the place he came from.

After I’d deposited my sister in her room, directed her food there, and made sure half a dozen wolves were waiting on her hand and foot, I finally stepped into the hall and leaned against a wall.

Awake. Piper was awake because of what Aurora had done. How had the same woman who killed my grandfather brought my comatose sister back to life?

The scent of Evelyn’s perfume hit me before I heard her footsteps. I didn’t look up, even when she leaned next to me.

“I heard about Piper. I’m glad she’s awake,” Evelyn said.

“So am I.”

Evelyn sighed. “Dane… about everything that’s happened lately…” There was something in her tone. Something wary, almost afraid. I finally glanced up and saw something I’d never seen before.