Knox
Two days of waiting while my father and Noah hunted down Blade. Forty-eight hours of pacing my office until I’d probably worn a groove in the floor. I hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time, couldn’t eat, couldn’t think about anything except Alderic walking free while knowing he’d orchestrated Blake’s death.
My wolf wanted blood. Wanted to storm into Alderic’s house and tear him apart piece by piece. Make him suffer the way Blake had suffered. The way we’d all suffered for seven years thinking it was just bad luck, wrong place wrong time, when really it had been murder.
Lina was upstairs napping with the twins. She’d tried to stay up with me the first night, but I’d sent her to bed. Someone needed to be functional for our children, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be me. Not until this was over.
I stared at the papers spread across my desk for the hundredth time. Bank transfers. Coded messages. Proof that Alderic had paid for my brother’s death. Proof that he’d tried to kill my mate and children. How many other “random” rogue attacks over the years had actually been his doing?
A knock on my door interrupted my spiral into homicidal planning.
“Come in,” I called, not looking up from the evidence.
Cole entered, and immediately I knew something was wrong. He looked gray, older than I’d ever seen him. His usual easy confidence was gone, replaced by something that made my wolf’s hackles rise. Guilt rolled off him in waves so strong I could practically taste it.
“We need to talk,” he said, closing the door behind him.
I studied my best friend, the man who’d stood by me through everything. Cole who’d helped me search for Blake’s body. Cole who’d been there when I’d nearly drunk myself to death in the months after. Cole who’d covered for me when I’d come back from Pine Valley a broken mess five years ago.
His hands were shaking. Cole’s hands never shook.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, though dread was already pooling in my stomach.
He sat heavily in the chair across from my desk, staring at his hands instead of meeting my eyes. The silence stretched between us, and with each second that passed, my anxiety ratcheted higher.
“It’s about Mary’s baby,” he finally said, voice barely above a whisper.
My blood turned to ice. “What about it?”
“I know who the father is.”
The way he said it, the way he still wouldn’t look at me, the way shame poured off him in nauseating waves...
“Who?” I asked, but his expression told me everything. My mind rejected it even as the pieces clicked into place. “No. No, you didn’t-”
“It’s mine,” Cole confirmed miserably, finally meeting my eyes. “The baby is mine.”
The world tilted sideways. For a moment, I couldn’t process the words. Cole. My best friend. My beta. The one person I trusted above all others had...
My fist connected with his jaw before I realized I’d moved. The crack of impact echoed through the office, and Cole went down hard, his chair toppling backward. He didn’t try to block, didn’t defend himself, just took it.
“WHAT THE FUCK, COLE?” I roared, standing over him as he pushed himself up on his elbows, blood already dripping from his split lip.
He could have fought back. Should have fought back. We’d sparred a thousand times, and he knew how to handle my temper. But he just sat there on my office floor, looking up at me with those guilty eyes.
“My best friend? With HER?” The betrayal burned through me worse than any physical wound. “How long? HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN LYING TO ME?”
“It was months ago,” Cole said, not even wiping the blood from his face. “Before any of this started. Before the marriage proposals, before the pregnancy announcement. It was just... Christ, Knox, it was just one stupid night.”
I paced away from him before I could hit him again, my hands clenching and unclenching. “One night? You fucked Mary Thorne for one night?”
“We were both drunk at the summer festival. You were away on pack business. She was... different. Seemed vulnerable, lonely. We talked about books, if you can believe it.” He laughed bitterly. “I was an idiot. Thought maybe I saw something real in her.”
“So you fucked her.” My voice was deadly calm now, which was worse than yelling.
“So I fucked her,” he confirmed. “And regretted it immediately. When I woke up the next morning, she was already talking about how this could work to both our advantages. How she could use it to make you jealous, finally push you into claiming her. I told her to forget it happened. That it was a mistake.”
I spun to face him. “But it wasn’t just one night, was it?”
