I laughed again. “I don’t know about all that, but I know I’m not a vampire.” I shook my head at her. “What I mean is, I havealready lived until the age of twenty-four. I found my mate. I was a Luna, and I grew my pack.”
“Holy shit.”
“And then…” I took a breath and looked at my friend. “My mate betrayed me with my stepsister. He strapped me to a table. And had our pack doctor cut our pup from my belly. With silver.” Her gasp said it all. “At least I got to hold him on my chest for a moment.” I sniffled as my tears fell. “I can still smell him when I close my eyes. I hear his struggling breaths, and his stuttering heartbeat.” I wiped at my face, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop my sob.
“Amy…” I tried to smile as I cried harder. My hand fell onto my stomach and I had to shake myself back to now.
“He was perfect. And then he was ripped away from me and his father killed him while I was strapped to the gurney bleeding out. As Shannon, my stepsister, came to me and taunted me about lying to him.” I wiped my eyes. “But it was all a lie. She convinced my mate that she was pregnant with his pup, that ours was someone else’s, when in fact hers was the Betas. Because she was a whore. She slept with any ranked wolf she could.”
Toya wiped a stray tear. “Who?” It was the only question she could ask. The only one that mattered. Who was the male that ruined me? “Who?” Her question more forceful. “Who do I have to kill?”
I laughed as I clutched her hand as a lifeline. My mind kept dragging me back to that day. I had spent so much of my time focused on my next move that I had pushed my last life to the back of my mind. Or I tried to.
But whenever I was asleep, my mind would bring me back to that day. To my son’s softly staggered breathing, and his face pressed against my skin. I wake up with his scent in the air and I have to search my bed to remember that he is gone.
Never even existed in this life.
“Before I tell you, I need to explain this. In my last life, I knew nothing I do now. I didn’t even know about my second wolf. It had always just been Nix and me.”
“Nix?”
“My black wolf. My secret Lycan.” I snorted. “She is my Alpha. Megan, my grey wolf, is a Gamma. Still Luna rank, just not as strong.” I heard a snort in my mind. I sent back love, and she sent a wave back.
“Your power?” Toya asked, but I shook my head slowly.
“Because of who I am, I needed to balance my power and be able to control it before I could shift. In my last life, I was still as strong as I am now, but I had never shifted, and because of that, Shannon had a way of tormenting me. She convinced my pack that I was less of a wolf because I never shifted.” I rolled my eyes. “But that is a whole other thing. Anyway, because I never knew of Megan, I assumed my mate was Nix’s, but I was wrong. My mate was Megan’s. I never met Nix’s mate before I died.”
“So you have a second mate out there somewhere. Who, let’s fucking pray, is better than the last.” I nodded. “Now, who was your mate?”
I rolled my head on my shoulders. “Megan’s mate is Brandon…Vince’s son.”
Toya coughed. “Are you serious?”
“I really wish I wasn’t.”
“Is her mate…” Toya trailed off and then grabbed me by my shoulders. “IS! You haven’t rejected him? How does he not realize that you’re his mate?”
“When I died…I woke up on my eighteenth birthday. I asked my mom if I could reject him, and she could hear something was wrong. She knew my father could help save me.”
Toya flapped her arms. “Your dad has powers too.”
I cackled. “Yeah. When I went to his pack, I learned about it all. Met my second wolf, learned how to change my scent.”
“But won’t that stop you from finding your Lycan mate?” I nodded. “Then why don’t you reject him and then move the fuck on?”
“I wish it was that simple.”
“Then tell me. I will help you. Whatever it is, I’ll help.”
“My father and Rowan think Vince is involved. I need to get close to him, I can’t if I reject him.”
“How is getting close to him going to work?”
“I need to be able to figure out a way to get into their records. Their systems, to see if they are involved.” And lifted a shoulder. “I’ll need to get into the pack house to do it.”
Toya shook her head. “I don’t like it.” I leaned against her as she wrapped her arm over my shoulder. “I don’t like that you have to get so close to him after he hurt you.” I just stayed silent because there wasn’t much to say. “I don’t know why or how, but I feel so protective of you. I can feel it in my bones that we were meant to meet.”
I nodded. “I feel the same way. But I’m not sure why or how. Normally, we feel this protective of our inner circle. Our Betas and Gammas.”
