Chapter 46 DANE

Impossible. Everything about this was fucking impossible.

Her hand was on my cheek, slender and soft but strong.

What did I want from her?

What did I want?

I had made the engagement with Evelyn official because she was pregnant with my child. But Aurora was already the mother of my children. Two of them.

By that logic, I should be engaged to her.

Except Aurora and I couldn’t work. There had been too many lies, too much betrayal. She might not be a Reed by blood, but she was still one of them. The things she’d done, both on that night eight years ago and just barely, when she worked with Esther Reed to get Evelyn to catch me making love to her while I was drugged with Night’s Truth, proved that.

I was still waiting for the recording Esther gave me to be analyzed. But it was too far-fetched that it might be a fake. There was no way.

But until I truly knew…

I released my grip on Aurora’s wrist and broke away from her. My hand left an angry red mark, and she opened and closed her palm a few times. I clenched my teeth. I hadn’t meant to hurt her. I always forgot that not having a wolf made her more delicate.

“Well?” she said.

I had no answer, so I said, “I don’t want anything from you, Aurora. I only want my children.”

Then I turned and walked away.

Maybe she could bring down the Council on me. Maybe even the full might of the High Alpine Pack. With Holden Coleridge as a friend…or more…she might be able to bring Fall Line down on us, too. Those two packs combined might destroy us.

But like her, I couldn’t let my children go. Not now that I knew I had them.

When I had thrown that Plan B box at her years ago and refused to get her pregnant, I’d been a different man. Younger, angrier, more broken. She’d been different, as well.

If she wasn’t constantly trying to destroy me…might I give us another chance?

Fuck.

I went to the infirmary, where the pack healers had my grandfather and Piper under twenty-four hour surveillance.

I sat in the chair between their beds. For a long time, I just listened to the monitors beep with the beats of their hearts.

They were all the family I had in the world.

I was the Alpha. I had hundreds of wolves who answered to me. Who relied on me. But sometimes I felt so fucking alone.

I remembered my grandfather’s words from the night I walked in on him having a nightmare.

I won’t sacrifice him… not my grandson… he doesn’t need it… not that kind of power…

It felt more and more likely that his words were tangled up in everything Aurora and I were doing. The shadows, the book, the Reeds.

“Why would you have to sacrifice me?” I asked my grandfather’s unconscious form. “What do you know about this power, and why didn’t you tell me before?”

Of course, he didn’t answer. His heart just kept beating, slow but steady.

“Shh!”

My ears sharpened at the sound of the whisper. I didn’t look around. I knew who it was.

“Your mother and I told you to find Mrs. Jamison,” my voice was a scolding growl.

Tristan’s blond head poked out from behind the foot of my grandfather’s bed. A second later, his sister’s did, too.

“What are you two doing here?” I was so tired, and while there were children in the pack, I never dealt with them directly. When I told them to obey, they generally did.

These two were different. Challenging. Like their mother.

Tristan came all the way out from behind the bed, set his feet, and folded his arms across his chest. “You and Mommy were yelling at each other. I just came here to tell you not to yell at her again!”

Seraphina came out more slowly and put a hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Tristan, look. He’s sad, though.”

“I don’t care,” the boy said stubbornly. “I’ll fight him.”

His sister sighed heavily.

I had a brief vision of these two, far in the future. Nothing that felt as real and powerful as the time I’d seen their faces before I met them. Just something…parental. The two of them, as adults, still arguing like this.

I hadn’t known these two existed days ago, but now…what I wouldn’t give to see them grow up and become the leaders and fighters I suddenly knew they would.

“It’s a serious thing to challenge an Alpha,” I told the boy.

He glared at me. “I’m serious.”

I nodded gravely. “I can tell.”

“Why are you sad?” Seraphina said abruptly. She stood on her tiptoes to get a better look at who was in the beds. “Is it because Piper and this man are sick?”

“Yes,” I said. “Piper is my sister, and this man is my grandfather.”

“That means he’s our grandpa, too!” Seraphina whispered, her eyes going wide. “And Piper is our…um…”

“Aunt,” I said.

Tristan’s eyes went wide, and he relaxed his stance to stand on tiptoes and look at them, too. He seemed to have forgotten his anger. “Do we have more family?”

“No.” I cleared my throat. “Just these two.”

I could tell them about my parents. What Broken Forest…and their mother…had done. If I got the twins on my side, maybe they would choose me.