Chapter 44 DANE

“I…might?” I said. The words sounded choked.

She nodded. Then she took my hand and tugged me toward the table.

Something gripped my heart when she put her hand in mine and led me to the table. Something fierce and proud, and stronger than I’d ever felt in my life.

I had held them earlier, when I pulled them from the house. But there hadn’t been time. It was life or death, and I was worried about Piper.

Now, there was nothing to distract me from these two except Margie putting a donut and milk in front of me, too. As if I was also four, and not the billionaire Alpha of a massive pack.

“Margie,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was saying her name in warning, or in helplessness. I didn’t know what to do with two four-year-old children.

“She’s right,” the old cook said. “Have a donut.”

I sat across from them, really taking them in for the first time.

There was no way to stop seeing it now that I looked. Aurora’s wide eyes in the girl’s face. My frown on the boy’s.

She wouldn’t say it, and I was still waiting for the results to come back on the samples Piper brought me, but they were mine. I knew it more deeply than I’d ever known anything in my life.

“You’re…Seraphina,” I said to the girl. Then I turned to her brother. “And you’re Tristan.”

Seraphina nodded. Tristan whispered loudly, “We aren’t supposed to tell him.”

Then he turned narrowed eyes on me again.

“What aren’t you supposed to tell?” I asked. I couldn’t help the slight smile that crept over my face.

Instead of answering, he glowered. “You said mean words to our mommy.”

At the mention of Aurora, my smile faded.

They were mine.

She’d kept them from me.

I should be enraged.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said to me: I would never subject a child to the treatment you gave me for the three years we were married.

So many people thought I was…what had Aurora said?

Honorable. Except her. With her, I’d given into the darkness. Allowed myself to be a monster to her, because I thought she was a monster, too.

I shouldn’t be surprised that she had kept them from me.

If I thought someone might treat my children the way I treated her for those years, I’d keep them away, too.

Still, looking at them, at how old they were, thinking of what I’d missed, I couldn’t stop the rage.

She was afraid I’d take her children, was she? Maybe she should be.

After all, her pack had taken my parents.

“Does your mother know where you are?” I asked the sugar-covered twins.

“She thinks we’re napping,” Tristan said. “She needs to rest.”

A wry smile curved one corner of my mouth. “Come on,” I said to the kids. “We’re going on a walk. I think we have some things to talk about.”

AURORA

Once Dane’s beta, Archer, showed us to our rooms, and the children were asleep, I paced.

I was back in Blue Ridge. Granted, I wasn’t stuck in the city penthouse like I had been before, but I was back nonetheless. Except this time, I was a guest, and Dane was engaged to Evelyn.

I couldn’t tell how that made me feel.

Aside from that, I couldn’t stop thinking about the shadows. As the mansion had crumbled around us, they’d gone right for Piper, just like I watched them go for Connall.

I thought I was going to have to fight them as the house crumbled around us. But when I got near them, the amulet at my throat glowed, and they’d turned transparent, like normal shadows, and just…fallen away.

Why? I wasn’t the chosen one. The ceremony made that clear.

It had to be that the amulet had power all on its own.

There was no way I was giving it up now.

Because one thing was clear: Dane’s family was being targeted. First his grandfather, now his sister.

Was Dane next? Were the twins?

I grabbed the journal off the shelf and carefully turned through its pages. The new one was carefully glued back in. Two were still missing. What did they say? What came next?

Because now that we knew who the key was—Evelyn, apparently—we needed to push forward on our search for the relic.

I needed to, especially.

Because the ceremony hadn’t brought my wolf back, but…might it?

From what we’d read, the thing we were searching for was a pure source of magic. Enough that unlocking it would bring magic back to the world. Wolves, witches, and the like wouldn’t have to hide in fear of being hunted by humans anymore.

We could just exist.

Surely, something like that would be strong enough to bring back my wolf. Then I could have everything. Stay Luna-heir.

If I was a leader of a pack in my own right, Dane couldn’t take my children, because they’d be my heirs, and he already had another one on the way.

I moved to put the journal back on my bedside table. I’d pulled it from the rubble, and it was battered and torn in several places.

As I did, the back cover shifted. I opened it to see if it was damaged. The paper pasted to it had peeled free.

Beneath it, several symbols glowed.

The top ones caught my eye.

Chosen, one of the symbols said. And then a line down, from the prison gates, the shadows will rise…

Then there were others I couldn’t read, and then, …Her chosen Three.

I sat down hard on my bed as more symbols became clear, my heart beating in my throat.

We’d been wrong. We’d been wrong about everything.

I stumbled out of the house to find Dane. I didn’t care how angry he was, we had to talk. We had to figure this out.

I found him outside.

He was playing with the twins.

“Tristan. Seraphina,” I gasped. “I thought you were asleep!”

“We’re playing,” Seraphina said. She handed me a crown of woven clover flowers. “For you, mommy! Look, he has a bracelet!”

Sure enough, there was a bracelet of clover flowers on Dane’s wrist.

I met his eyes, saw his set jaw, and everything else was driven from my mind.

“Dane…”

“No. You’ve had five years to speak, Aurora. To tell me who they were.”

“I couldn’t-”

His face twisted into a snarl. “No more excuses! Those children are mine. Mine, no matter what you say. You took them from me, and now I’m taking them back. They aren’t going anywhere. Ever. You, though? You can stay or go. It’s your choice.”