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“No one will come between us again,” I promised her. “Not Blakely. Not anyone else. If anyone speaks to you the way Blakely did—hell, if anyone even makes you uncomfortable—you come to me. Promise me.”

She swallowed. “Stephan…”

“You don’t have to do this alone anymore.”

She blinked hard, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “Okay. I’ll come to you. I promise.”

Her skin was warm and soft beneath my fingers. Again my dragon rumbled his insistence, his desire. He urged me to pull her close and kiss her until the worries melted away. But not now when Dylan was so keyed up and attuned to everything. One sound from his mom and he’d come storming down the stairs.

I ran my fingers down the side of her neck, then squeezed her nape in gentle reassurance. “What can I help with for dinner? You’ve been doing all the cooking.”

“It’s the least I can do,” she said. “But you can chop up the peppers for a salad if you want.”

I pulled out the bell peppers from the fridge and began to dice them. “How’s my kitchen compare to yours in Atlanta?”

She laughed. “It’s bigger, that’s for sure. But I got used to cooking in small spaces over the years. My dad’s kitchen was tiny.”

“You stayed with your dad?”

“Mm-hmm.” She turned her attention to the mashed potatoes on the stove. “He helped me raise Dylan while I was finishing up college. I don’t know what I would’ve done without him. But even then, I liked to do a lot of the cooking for the threeof us. Dad always did the cleanup, so I could get a jump on my studying.”

It didn’t surprise me to hear that Liz Founty hadn’t played much of a role in Dylan’s life. Harley had probably wanted to get as far away from Lakeview and her mom as she possibly could.

“Staying with Dad helped me save up the money I needed to get my own place in Atlanta. I didn’t want to have to move Dylan around, bouncing from apartment to apartment… We have a little house. Dad helped with that, too. He left us some money. So, the kitchen is really small, but it’s all the space we need.”

“Your father passed away?”

Her smile faltered a little. “Yeah, a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m glad that Dylan got to spend a lot of time with him as he was growing up.”

“I know what it’s like to lose a parent,” I said. “I lost my dad a few years ago, too. It’s never easy.”

She looked up. “I’m sorry for you, too.”

“I was lucky enough to have him for a long time,” I said. “And it wasn’t a surprise, which made it easier. We were prepared. He lived a good, long life, and his heart flame went out when it was ready.”

“He was a good man,” she said. “I never really knew him, but I remember how much everyone respected him.”

Dad had been at the end of his life when Harley first came to Lakeview. He’d spent his time seeing clan members in private. I was preparing to step into the role of alpha. I sometimes wondered if he had lived a little longer, if he’d been around to keep me from getting cocky about the money in the drug trade… I couldn’t allow myself to walk that looping path of regret. I scooped the diced bell peppers into the salad bowl. “He was. I wish Dylan could’ve met him.”

She reached over and touched my forearm. “He has you, now. You’ll have to tell him the stories.”

I stared into the bowl at the scattered bits of bell pepper and swallowed down a sudden surge of anger and grief. If Blakely hadn’t interfered, maybe Dylan could’ve had a chance to meet my father, even though I’d been in prison. It was yet another thing she’d taken from my son and from me.

“Your dad was the alpha before you, wasn’t he?” Harley asked. “The same way Dylan could one day be clan alpha?”

I cleared my throat. “Yes. An alpha child traditionally takes over the role. Usually, the firstborn is an alpha, so it should have been Hawk, but the alpha gene skipped over him. Sean and I are somewhat of a unique circumstance. Twins, both alphas.”

Her eyebrows knit together slightly. “I seem to remember you telling me that Sean was older than you, right?”

“Right. By a few minutes.”

“But you’re the alpha.” I saw the pieces click together in her mind. “Oh, I bet he doesn’t like that.”

“That’s an understatement,” I said. “It’s the reason he abandoned the clan. My father chose me as the next alpha, because he saw I was stronger and more responsible than Sean. At the end of my father’s life, he entrusted me with the clan, because he didn’t trust Sean to lead us well.