She clears her throat and addresses Henry instead of me. “Let me go get another pot for you. I’ll be right back.”
Irritation flares up my spine at the way she speaks with reverence to an Alpha that isn’t me. I choke it back down. I’m a grown man, and the Whiteroses are our allies. I don’t need to be barking at an old man over her.
Henry, who is wise and powerful enough to sense the rejected bond between us from this close proximity, knows better than to reach out and touch her in front of me. Still, he waves a hand in her general direction, and it makes my skin crawl with primal possessiveness.
“Don’t worry about it,” Henry assures her. “You really do look unwell. Zahra is right. Perhaps you should sit down?”
The curly-haired girl with dark brown skin steps toward Alina.
As she moves, the air in the restaurant shifts. A draft from a crack in a nearby window wafts through the space, stirring up the Whiterose scent and strengthening the aroma of my Mate’s telltale scent.
Yet, still, it’s easy enough to tell that she and I are not the only Greenbriars in here.
Alina’s breath catches, as if she knows what I’ve picked up on.
My eyes flash to hers. “Who else is here?”
When she left the pack, she was alone. Nobody went with her. No one knew that she intended to leave in the first place. One minute, she was there. The next minute, she wasn’t. She had no accomplices, and she was also very good at covering her own scent, which made her impossible to track.
Not that I didn’t try. In spite of Kseniya’s prophecy, and against my father’s advice to simply let her go, I spent years trying to find her. Whenever I could get away from the pack, I’d run far and wide, going deeper into the Appalachians in one direction and all the way to the Atlantic in the other. I had to be careful not to infringe on established shifter territory, though, and I never imagined that Alina would hide among another pack. That was my mistake. One of many.
I knew I couldn’t have her. I knew that she was destined to ruin me. But I couldn’t just let her disappear. In recent years, however, I’d started to give up hope that I’d ever see her again.
Fate has interesting timing.
“Ah,” says Henry, soft and thoughtful. He nods to himself, gaze flicking from me to Alina, and then to a spot just past her. “I see.”
Alina straightens her spine, shrugging off her curly-haired friend’s touch.
I glance at the Alpha, but he’s frowning at something in the far corner of the restaurant.
No, not something. Someone.
I rise to my feet, pushing the chair back roughly as I gaze past the curious onlookers and see a young boy slumped down lazily in a chair at a table mostly concealed by shadows and the bulk of the curving bar.
“No,” I think I hear Alina say.
The boy is maybe eight or nine years old. Scrawny, but with the awkwardly long limbs of a kid who will be much taller in a couple of years. He has dark hair and pale skin, and Alina’s pert little nose. He’s completely unaware of my stare, absorbed in what looks like a vintage comic book.
My shifter sight kicks in as I drink in the details from a distance.
Blue eyes the exact same color as mine. The slight indent of a dimple on his left cheek as he mindlessly chews his bottom lip. I had a dimple there, too, before my face fully matured.
And more than that, there is an undeniable familiarity in his scent, in his very aura.
The boy is my son.
Alina was pregnant when she ran from me.
And that child over there, still too small to have experienced his first shift, is the second heir to the Greenbriar bloodline.
Alina
I see it the moment the knowledge clicks into place.
Rowan is on his feet, looking like he’s ready to pounce, but I steel my spine and place myself directly in his path.
“Don’t you dare get anywhere near him,” I snarl.
“He’s my-“
“He’s mine,” I cut him off. “Not yours.”
Rowan looks like he doesn’t know if he wants to shove past me, growl in my face, or turn and put a fist through the nearest wall. Instead of doing any of those things, he rolls his shoulders and looks down at me with barely contained rage.
“You were pregnant.” It’s not a question.
There’s no point in lying. “Yes.”
I don’t bother mentioning that I think it had less to do with fertility and more to do with the so-called magic of a Mated pair’s first coupling. It’s easier to imagine that it was a twist of fate rather than the result of two idiot teenagers who forgot to use a condom.
“He-you didn’t…” Rowan pauses, unable to tear his gaze away from Noah in the back corner.
Thank God that kid has a one-track mind and cares more about his comics than anything else half the time. I’m not ready to tell him who his father is, let alone that he’s right here, right now.
“Didn’t what?” I snap. “Didn’t tell you? Why would I?”
Rowan’s icy eyes flash with frustration. Even now, when he looks furious and wild and dangerous, it’s hard to ignore how handsome he is. I remember how sweet and angelic he used to look when we were younger. The Alpha’s son is such a pretty boy, the older kids used to tease him. And it was true that, prior to puberty, Rowan was a little bit daintier and lovelier than a shifter prince tends to be.
But then he had his first shift. He started maturing. Soft cheeks hollowed to reveal chiseled cheekbones. A delicate jaw strengthened into a sharp line. Starry eyes became chips of ice. His lashes were still thick and long, though. His lips were still visibly soft and always curving into a playful smirk.
When I saw him again after the years I had spent away, grieving my parents, he was nineteen and the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. I was so mesmerized by him, and by the fact that he clearly felt the same way about me, that I didn’t even notice the Mating bond howling between us until it was too late.
I hate him, though, so it doesn’t matter how pretty the bastard is.
When Rowan doesn’t say anything, I announce to nobody specific, “My shift is over. I’m leaving.”
I whirl away from my Mate and stalk across the room. Zahra, bless her, immediately has my back. Never mind that I didn’t tell her the truth about who Noah’s father is. Never mind that I lied to her all these years about not having a Mate. She’s still on my side, and I watch over my shoulder as she cleanly steps in Rowan’s path as he attempts to follow me.
Then Henry and his Beta are there, too, politely getting in the way so that Rowan can’t plow Zahra over and race after me.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.