Emma didn’t respond. Instead, she stared at me with an almost bewildered expression. My smile faltered as I tried but failed to read her expression.
“Emma?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“You would really do all of that for Grace?” she asked, her voice small, still mildly confused.
I tilted my head, taken aback. “Of course. I happen to like Grace a lot. She’s a smart, brave kid. And she deserves all the help she can get. I think learning to hunt in a pack with kids your own age is useful. But I also wouldn’t mind training her myself at the same time.” At the stunned look she was still giving me, I raised an eyebrow. “Something wrong? Is there something else you’d prefer?”
Emma bit her lip, looking even more nervous than normal. Her eyes darted as she seemed to come to some conclusion. She took a generous swig of wine before placing the glass on the end table. “Elias, there’s something I need to tell you,” she said.
Unease rippled through me at the words and the hesitant expression on her face as she bit her lip, barely able to look at me.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to keep the unease off my face, not sure how well I succeeded.
“It’s about Grace.” She paused again. “Specifically, about her father.”
I frowned, my jaw tightening. Was she about to say her father was a shifter in another pack who would want to train her himself? Or a human who didn’t know about our world? She had said he was out of the picture, but that had been before we were truly open with one another.
“What about him?” I asked, trying to keep my tone level.
Emma took another deep breath.
“There is no other guy,” she said. “Grace is your daughter.”
The words didn’t register at first, then they sounded so absurd that I almost thought she was joking. It was only when I saw the genuine earnestness, the anxiety radiating off her, that I realized she was telling the truth.
Grace was my daughter.
I stared like an idiot, my mouth going slack.
“She is?” I finally managed to croak. When she nodded, I swallowed, trying to get over the blow that had just rammed into me long enough to speak as she watched me, terrified.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“Because I was afraid,” she said. “I didn’t want Grace to be disappointed. I didn’t want to be disappointed. I didn’t know what type of person you were when you walked back into my life.”
“She was my daughter,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I had the right to know.”
She sucked in a breath as she stared at me. “You didn’t. Not after you kicked me out of your house and more or less told me not to ever speak to you again.”
The words, a slap in the face, seemed to take most of her strength, because she crumpled. But they hit home. She had a point. That at least cut through some of the anger. I kept quiet, still trying to let the knowledge that I had a daughter sink in.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she stammered when I still hadn’t said anything. “I know I probably should have, but at first, I wasn’t sure what kind of father you would be, and I didn’t want to let Grace down. And I was afraid of what would happen if you knew, especially with everything else going on. And then, once I started getting to know you again, and seeing the type of person you really are, it had already been so long, and I didn’tknow how to bring it up, and the longer it went, the harder it became to say anything, until I just…”
I pushed myself to my feet, running my fingers through my hair as my head continued to spin.
At first, frustration and anger rippled through me. I had missed the first five years of my daughter’s life because Emma hadn’t bothered to tell me. I had never even had a say in any of it. She had taken that decision away from me. I had always wanted kids. And for the last nearly six years, I had had one just a short drive away in the town over.
And I hadaskedher. Or, at the very least, I had given her a chance to tell me. That first day after the mating bond, when I had asked her about Grace’s father. If she had told me then…If I’d known…
What? Would I have accepted Emma as a mate if I’d known? Demanded I have a say in Grace’s life after I’d rejected her mother?
If I hadn’t treated Emma the way the morning after that party, then maybe she would have stayed in town. Maybe she would have told me, instead of hiding it. And then I had barged back into her life after years of not contacting her, not going after her. Of course she wouldn’t want to tell me.
Five years. I had missed the first five years of my daughter’s life.
I stared at Emma, and I didn’t have to see her worried expression to know how terrified she was. I could sense her anxiety radiating through the mating bond. That cut through my anger, and I remembered again how I had treated her when we were younger. She probably found out she was pregnant right before she left, less than a month after we’d had sex, when I hadrejected her. Of course she wouldn’t have told me. She hadn’t wanted anything to do with Silver Falls or me.
“Well?” she finally asked.
