Alpha Mate Slept With His Sister-in-Law, I Left Chapter 02
“Dad. I have a child. His name is Asher. He’s five.”
“Come back. Now. I’m sending people.” My father’s voice, coming back through a link that had been dead six years, was shaking. Not the cold Alpha King voice I knew.
I’d meant to leave the next morning. But Asher was half-asleep when he murmured, “Daddy, you promised…”
His fifth birthday was in two days. Last month Kael had promised that as soon as the Marking business was settled, he’d take Asher to watch the pack training match. Asher had pinned three drawings of that match to the wall by his bed.
I looked at his sleeping face and decided to wait three more days.
The next morning Helena sent her housekeeper. We were summoned to the main estate. Asher thought his father was finally keeping his promise. He pulled on his little suit and went out with Kael.
In the car Asher asked, “Mommy. Where do my grandfather and grandmother live?”
“Up north. Far from here.”
“Then why don’t we go see them?”
Kael’s eyes flicked to me in the rearview mirror. “Your mom’s used to being on her own. There’s probably no one waiting for her up north.”
He said it the way you state a fact.
I didn’t correct him.
He had always been like this. He thought I couldn’t leave. He thought I would always wait. He thought loving him meant I would put up with everything.
He wasn’t wrong about loving him. Six years, I had.
But I had my own pride.
What I couldn’t put up with was watching Asher grow up here and spend his whole life calling his own father “uncle.”
The Silverfang delegation was already inside the main estate when we arrived. Vivienne’s father had come in person. Kael stood beside Vivienne with his hand on her waist.
Helena announced it in front of everyone.
“Vivienne is pregnant. Her child with Kael will be the next heir of Ironridge. The bond between our two packs will be sealed permanently through this child. The Marking ceremony will be held very soon.”
The Silverfang side clapped. Kael turned to the elders of both packs. “This child is the future of Ironridge.”
His own son was standing right next to him. He didn’t even look this way.
Asher tugged at my sleeve. He tipped his face up and asked quietly, “Mommy. What about me?”
His voice was small but the whole room went quiet.
Vivienne’s father frowned. He turned to Helena. “Whose child is that?”
Helena cut in before anyone else could. “An orphan we took in. A Rogue child. Poor little thing. Sera here is the nanny we hired to look after him.”
Asher froze. He looked up at me.
“I’m not an orphan,” he said quietly. “I have Dad and Mom.”
Helena’s snort buried his sentence. The Silverfang table started looking us over. The way you look over staff. One of the older men next to Vivienne’s father said, half-laughing, “Does the Ironridge pack adopt just any rogue wolf?”
Kael’s face changed for a fraction of a second. He opened his mouth.
Vivienne picked that exact moment to slip her arm through his and lean up to his ear. “Not in front of my father. Please.”
Kael said nothing.
Asher didn’t cry. He didn’t ask again. He started, very quietly, undoing the third button of the small suit he’d refused to take off all morning.
His eyes flickered darker for a second. That was the wolf cub pushing up, and then pushing back down. On this pack’s ground, in front of this room, he could not let himself cry.
I crouched down and folded his cold little hand into mine.
“Sweetheart. Come with mommy. There’s no place for us here.”
I stood up. I looked at the room. My voice was even.
“My son is not an orphan. He has a mother. His father is dead.”
The hall went still for three seconds. Helena’s face was darker than my words.
I took Asher’s hand and started walking. Vivienne’s voice came from behind me. She moved around in front of me and slowly raised a finger, manicured nude, and tapped the silver chain at my collarbone.
“Sera. That pendant has been passed down to the Luna of the Thorne family for generations. The Marking ceremony is coming up. Time for it to go home.”
That pendant. Kael had put it on me himself, the winter Asher was born, and told me the Luna of the Thorne house was the woman who wore that chain.
So that was why we’d been summoned. To strip the son of his place and the mother of her chain. Both jobs in one afternoon.
I stopped and looked at Kael.
Kael dropped his eyes to his own shoes. He spoke in a voice I had never heard him use with me, small and almost coaxing.
“Vivienne’s right. The pendant should go to the Luna.”
The lipstick mark on his collar was much clearer in the chandelier light than it had been in our bedroom that morning.
I reached up, took the chain off, and set it down on the center of the long table. Right where Vivienne wouldn’t even need to stretch.
I led Asher out of the main estate. He held my hand the whole way. He didn’t let go once.