Chapter 32 AURORA

I blinked at Esther. “None of that is true.”

She gave me a pitying look. “If you say so, dear. I don’t want you to traumatize yourself digging too deeply in the past. Speaking of which…”

She leaned over and dug in the crate, then handed me a folded-up piece of paper. “We found this when we were scavenging the old house one night. It looks like that page from your mother’s nonsense journal you liked to play with as a child.”

Wonderingly, I took the paper from her hand and slowly unfolded it.

It was only one page, not all three, but as the symbols glimmered in front of my eyes, some of them shaping into the word “ceremony,” I realized it was exactly the page we’d been looking for.

“Thank you…mother,” I said.

Esther Reed smiled. “Like I said, darling. You’ve always been one of us. There’s no reason you can’t be again.”

The Reeds took me back to the mansion I’d bought. When I walked in the door, Trajan and Evander practically fainted with relief.

To my surprise, the Blue Ridge wolves, led by Piper, were still there. “Didn’t Dane call you back to the pack house?” I asked her.

“No,” she said.

I frowned at the dark-haired woman. I was so tired, and all I wanted to do was collapse into my bed. It took me long minutes to figure out why Dane wouldn’t have called them away.

Then I realized: he was protecting his asset, of course. He had literally said he never wanted to see me again. That didn’t mean he was willing to let our search for the relic go.

“Did he tell you what happened?” I asked.

Piper hesitated, then shook her head. “Only that you betrayed him…again.”

“Esther Reed made a very convincing fake recording of me,” I said. “I don’t know how she managed.”

I usually didn’t speak this bluntly to people, but I was so tired, and so tired of Dane never taking my side.

All these years, I was what he desired most. But what did that matter? Desire wasn’t love. It wasn’t trust. It wasn’t what I so badly wanted and had wanted for years: a real, true, lasting relationship where he listened to me and respected me, the way I used to respect him.

Piper’s brows drew together at my words. “That’s…interesting.”

“Yes,” I said flippantly as I moved past her toward the stairs. “That’s what Dane thought.”

When I made it up to my rooms, I was shocked to find Holden Coleridge waiting for me. The Alpha of the Fall Line pack looked exhausted. “Holden? What are you doing here?”

“Everyone has been searching for you,” he said. “Until Dane finally decided to announce you were safe through his own wolves.”

“You searched for me?” I asked, smiling.

“High and low.” Holden sat up and grinned. “But you look worse than I do. We could both use a shower and a bed.”

I hesitated, then tilted my head at him. He didn’t know about the journal, or my strange gift for reading it. He didn’t know about the relic that High Alpine and Blue Ridge both wanted so badly.

Holden had been my friend for long enough. I should be able to trust him with this. And I wanted to speak to someone about everything I was going through with Dane.

“Mommy!” The twins burst from their room and ran to me, both of them wrapping their arms around my waist.

“My babies!” I laughed and bent to kiss each one of them, and immediately put telling Holden out of my mind.

Yes, I wanted an ally. A partner. Someone I could trust. Someone I could love. Holden might be that person…one day. He was charming, handsome, and kind.

But for today, when I was bone-tired from no sleep and even more exhausted from dealing with Dane, all I needed were my children.

As I held them, I realized how badly I’d let Esther’s words turn my head. I’d found out so much in the last twelve hours. My birth mother had sold me. Dane…wanted me, if nothing else. I used to keep a journal that made it sound like what I wanted as a young woman was every terrible thing the Reeds wanted, too.

But as long as I had these two, I had light. They were good. That meant there had to be good in me, too.

The next days were so full it made my time in the cave with Dane feel like a dream. I couldn’t spend too long with the page, because deciphering more than a few symbols at a time sent pain spiking through my head.

But the meanings were clear enough–this was the ceremony.

The only problem was it required 100 wolves to perform it. Many, many more than my little collection of five, especially considering that two of those five were my children.

The petty part of me thought about cutting Dane out. Holden’s pack was as large as his—a few hundred wolves, at least.

But I couldn’t. The relic was on Dane’s land. Blue Ridge was High Alpine’s partner in this, and I wouldn’t go back on my pack’s word.

I hadn’t told Dane about the page yet. And I wasn’t going to leave our business to Trajan or Evander, no matter what he said.

So on the third day after our night in the cave, I picked up the phone and called him.

Except he didn’t answer.