They didn’t lie.
Lucian, Solomon, and Percival had told me my father is part of a hunter organization. I tried to dismiss their words becausebelieving them meant the last person on earth who wanted me tried to hurt me too.
“We have to talk,” Thiago said.
He led me to what seemed to be his study on the second floor.
Large desk, leather chair, bookshelves on three walls. The fourth wall held a working map covered in pins and notations and strings connecting locations I didn’t recognize. Some pins were red. Some silver. One cluster, deep in a mountain range, was circled three times.
“I don’t know what they told you. But I’m sure they already made me the villain.”
“Did they need to?” My voice was hollow from the rejection but steady. “You told me you were in consulting. This doesn’t look like consulting.”
“It’s more complicated than what they would have shared.”
“Are you part of the Order of the Silver Dawn?”
Thiago went still. Not the guilty flinch of a man caught in a lie. The measured pause of a man recalculating which version of the truth to offer.
“What did they tell you?”
“Enough. The tattoo on your wrist. The symbol. I know what it means.”
He looked down at his wrist. Then, slowly, deliberately, he pushed the sleeve back. The crescent moon bisected by a silver blade sat on his skin, unhidden for the first time.
“I don’t just belong to the Order, Mira.” His voice was calm. Almost gentle. “I lead it.”
The floor tilted. Hearing it confirmed, out loud from his own mouth, made it real.
My father. The leader of the organization that had hunted my mates to near extinction.
Thiago studied me for a long moment. Assessing how much truth I could handle, or how much truth served his purposes.
“We’ve existed, in various forms, for over a thousand years. Our purpose is the protection of humanity from supernatural threats.”
“Supernatural threats. You mean the lycans.”
“Among others. But yes. Primarily the lycans.”
“The lycans who are also my mates.”
“Former mates,” Thiago corrected gently. “They abandoned you. Which I assume is because they found out about me and that also means that they rejected you, Mira. Whatever bond existed, they severed it to protect themselves.”
The precision of that wound was impressive. He’d found the exact spot where the knife already lived and twisted it another quarter turn.
Former mates.As if the claiming marks on my throat had an expiration date. As if the three heartbeats muted in my chest were a subscription I’d failed to renew.
“The fire,” I said. “My bookshop.”
His expression didn’t change. “Yes.”
“You burned my bookshop.”
He leaned against his desk. The posture of a man settling into a briefing, not a confession.
“We’d been tracking lycan activity. Anomalies in emergency response reports. Healing rates that don’t match human biology. The trail led to Ashvale.” He paused.
“We observed the most suspicious people in town and narrowed it to the three firefighters. I didn’t know you were there, Mira. Not at first. But as I monitored them, I watched them circle your bookshop. Day after day. Lycans courting a human woman who had no idea what they were.”
