A pause. The calculation behind his eyes was almost visible, gears turning as he assessed whether his broken daughter was genuine or performing.
I gave him nothing to doubt. Every line of my body screamed surrender.
“I’m scared they’ll take me,” I added, quieter. Smaller. “Before I’m ready.”
His jaw set. The protective father, activated on cue. “I’ll handle it. You won’t have to face them alone.”
“I don’t want to face them with guards.” I shook my head. “I want to do it myself. I hate them and I am a legacy. I want to live up to my blood.” A pause. “Please, Dad.”
The word tasted rotten too. But it landed.
“I’ll arrange it,” Thiago said.
I opened my eyes in the bathroom mirror. The performance was over, and the cost was still hitting me in waves that came faster every time I blinked.
Lucian’s voice against my ear.I have ached for you every single day.
I turned the faucet on and scrubbed their blood off my hands. My fingers still trembled.
I wasn’t doing this for them.
That was the part I needed to be clear about, even to myself. I wasn’t some loyal spy reporting back to three men who’d shattered me.
I was inside this compound because I did remember what they told me about Veyndral’s history while my father insisted on the Order’s mission, about what happened to my mother.
And every version of every story had seams. Contradictions that didn’t add up. Details that shifted between tellings. I wasn’t sure which side was more true.
Lycans killed my mother. That was the story. The foundational truth my father had built his entire relationship with me on. And I’d nodded along and decided that if I was going to be trapped inside a hunter compound carrying lycan children, I was damn well going to find out if any of it was true.
Not for Lucian, not for Solomon, not for Percival.
ForSienna.
For the mother I never knew, who died when I was an infant and left me with nothing except a horrible father.
And for myself. Because I was tired of being the person who didn’t get to know the truth.
The mirror stared back at me. I pressed my hand against my lower belly, then pulled it away. Not yet. Not here, where the walls had eyes.
During the fight, they froze.
All three of them, mid-combat, locked in place with identical expressions of shock that no amount of training should have caused. Solomon’s mask had shattered completely. Percival had gone white. Lucian’s legs had buckled before I even touched him.
They heard it. I didn’t know what lycan hearing could pick up at this stage, but I knew what had stopped them.
The babies. My babies.
And now they knew.
Which meant they would come back. I’d like to believe they care about my pregnancy despite their reasons. Rejection, muted bond, an entire hunter compound between us.
None of it would matter now.
I’d seen the look in Lucian’s eyes when he’d pulled me against him with a dagger in his chest. That wasn’t a man who would stay away. Solomon and Percival wouldn’t stay back too.
My timeline just got a lot shorter.
A knock on my door. I wiped my face, checked the mirror one last time, and arranged the mask back into place.
