Raine
The room felt like it lost all its air.
I sat completely frozen on the low coffee table, my hands hovering just inches from my sons’ knees.
Leo’s wide, serious eyes stared back at me, totally innocent, waiting for an answer.
My mind raced.
How could he even ask that?
I had never spoken about Miguel.
I had never shown them pictures.
But they were four now.
They went to the playground, they watched cartoons, and they saw other kids with fathers.
Of course they were going to ask.
“Mommy?” Liam asked, his bouncing slowing down as he sensed the heavy mood.
“Is Papa coming?”
I swallowed the hard lump in my throat and forced my face to stay completely calm.
Inside, my heart was hammering against my ribs.
How do you tell a four-year-old that his father thinks you are a monster?
How do you explain that their father doesn’t even know they exist, and if he did, he might try to take them away from me?
“No, sweetie,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
I reached out and gently rubbed Leo’s shoulder.
“Papa isn’t coming to dinner.
He doesn’t live with us, remember?
But we have Auntie Lena, and we have each other.
We are our own little team.”
Leo looked down at his small hands, a tiny frown on his face.
He didn’t argue, but he looked disappointed.
He was always the observant one, always looking for pieces to a puzzle he didn’t understand.
“Okay,” Leo muttered softly.
“But hey,” I said, quickly changing my tone to something bright and happy to break the tension.
“Do you know what the surprise is?”
”The blue ice cream truck!” Liam shouted, his sadness completely forgotten in a split second.
He jumped off the sofa and started doing a little dance on the rug.
“Yes, the blue ice cream truck,” I laughed, standing up and grabbing their light jackets from the hook by the door.
“Go get your shoes on.
Both of you.”
As the boys ran down the hallway to find their sneakers, Lena stepped out of the kitchen.
Her face was full of worry, her eyes fixed on me.
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly, crossing her arms.
“I didn’t tell them anything, Raine.
I swear.
Leo just asked out of nowhere while we were making lunch.”
”I know,” I sighed, rubbing my temples.
Their instincts are starting to kick in.
They can feel that something, or someone, is missing.
I just…
I didn’t think it would happen this fast.”
”You handled it well,” she said, giving my arm a supportive squeeze.
“Go to the park.
Get some fresh air.
You’ve had a long day.”
The park was packed with people enjoying the warm afternoon sun.
The sound of children laughing, dogs barking, and the distant hum of city traffic filled the air.
True to my word, I bought the boys two large cones of blue raspberry ice cream from the truck parked near the entrance.
Within minutes, Liam had blue syrup dripping down his chin and onto his hands, laughing as he chased a pigeon across the grass.
Leo walked beside me, licking his ice cream precisely, still carrying that quiet, thoughtful look.
We sat down on a green wooden bench near the playground.
I watched them closely, my eyes scanning the crowd out of pure habit.
Living in the human world meant we had to be careful, but living in a city with roaming rogue wolves meant we had to be terrified.
“Mommy, look at me!” Liam cheered, running toward the monkey bars.
He climbed up the metal ladder with incredible speed, far too fast for a normal four-year-old.
His natural werewolf strength was starting to show, and he didn’t even realize it.
He swung from the first bar, but his sticky, ice-cream-covered hand slipped.
He fell, landing hard on his hands and knees in the woodchips.
“Liam!” I gasped, instantly springing off the bench.
Before I could even reach him, Liam let out a loud, frustrated cry.
It wasn’t just a toddler’s cry.
Because he was angry and startled, a tiny, subconscious wave of pressure rolled out from his small body.
It was the faint, raw spark of a dominant Alpha aura.
At the exact same time, the sweat from his sudden exertion mixed with the woodchips, rubbing a patch of the scent-masking ointment right off his neck.
A thick, heavy scent of dark forest and winter rain, Miguel’s exact scent lineage, burst into the air.
My breath caught in my throat.
I dropped to my knees next to him, quickly pulling a pack of wet wipes and the small tube of masking lotion from my purse.
“Are you okay, baby?
Let Mommy see.”
”My knee hurts,” he pouted, big tears pooling in his eyes.
“You’re okay, you’re a brave boy,” I whispered frantically, wiping the dirt off his neck and quickly slathering a fresh, thick layer of the herbal ointment over his skin.
I rubbed it in until the scent vanished, replacing it with the sharp, bitter smell of the lotion.
But it was too late.
He had been walking a dog, but now he was staring directly at my sons.
His nostrils flared, his eyes shifting slightly as he tried to catch the scent that had just vanished into thin air.
He looked confused, his gaze locking onto Liam’s dark hair and piercing eyes.
He was a wolf.
A pack scout passing through the city.
Panic, cold and sharp, flooded my veins.
My own wolf inside me growled fiercely, telling me to protect my pups.
“Leo, Liam, we are leaving right now,” I said, my voice sharp and commanding.
“But Mommy, my ice cream…” Liam started to complain.
“Now,” I repeated, grabbing Liam in one arm and pulling Leo tight against my side with the other.
I didn’t run, because running would look suspicious.
I walked as fast as my legs could carry me, weaving through the crowd toward the street.
I could feel the stranger’s eyes burning into the back of my neck the entire time.
He didn’t follow us, but the damage was done.
He had felt the power of an Alpha child in the middle of New York.
We hailed a cab and rode back to the apartment in total silence.
My hands didn’t stop shaking until we were safely past the front doors of the building.
By eight o’clock that evening, the boys were fast asleep in their bedroom, exhausted from the park and the excitement.
Lena had gone home to her own apartment, leaving me alone in the quiet penthouse.
The incident at the park had shaken me to my core.
I sat at the kitchen island, staring at the small tube of masking lotion in my hand.
It was a ticking time bomb.
The boys were getting too strong for a simple cream to hide them forever.
Trying to distract myself, I opened my laptop to check the final details of the Vance account we had secured today.
This contract was supposed to be my crowning achievement, the deal that would secure my boys’ financial future forever.
I opened the digital folder containing the corporate merger and acquisition documents.
My eyes scanned the legal text quickly, reading through the standard business jargon.
Then, I reached the final page, where the signatures of the parent company were listed.
The Vance Group hadn’t just signed a deal with us.
They had recently been bought out by a massive, international logistics conglomerate looking to expand into the shipping industry.
A conglomerate based out of the northern territories.
When did this happen?
I made sure to check everything about them before signing this deal.
My eyes popped as they locked onto the bold, black letters at the bottom of the screen.
Lead Investor & Majority Shareholder: Miguel Harrison.