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Deep down, though, I know that there’s nothing I can say that will deter Julian. He’s like a fucking dog with a bone and if he decides to get that test, it might come up as positive.

He might be Lina’s father, and he might take her away from me using his family’s power.

I’m too caught up by the what-ifs to see the man standing in front of me, cornering Julian.

My chest caves in on itself when Alaric’s hand holds mine, but his eyes remain laser-focused on Julian.

“You are not fighting for anyone because Lina is not your daughter.”

“Right, and you know that how?” Julian scoffs.

Alaric doesn’t back down, not even an inch.

“Because she’s my daughter.”

My heart almost falls to the floor, my lungs seizing.

“I get that the thought of you playing hero and daddy excites you, uncle, but you are the guy she screwed a few years later after I’d dumped her. That makes me the girl’s father.”

Alaric squeezes my hand tighter, not enough to hurt, but enough to say, I’ve got you, enough to say, don’t move. His body angles forward, chest to chest with Julian, and then he smirks.

It’s that smirk that gets him everything he wants.

That smirk tells me he’s gunning to be the winner in this war.

I know what he’ll say before he says it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not surprised by the way he phrases it.

“That’s where you are wrong, kid. Six years ago, when you let the most wonderful woman to ever exist walk out of your life, I had her. Lila and I spent the night together. I made a mistake, and she was gone the next morning, but we found each other again. Lila introduced Lina as my daughter and the product of what happened between us that night.”

Julian’s face pales like he’s seen a ghost. He looks at Alaric, then at me in betrayal.

He’s about to speak too but Alaric cuts him off with a growl, “So for your own fucking sake, you better get out of here while I’m being nice. Otherwise, I'll be forced to protect my girls again, and I can’t guarantee this time that you’ll walk out of here alive.”

My girls?

Julian opens his mouth to argue, but the steel in Alaric’s eyes, the promise of violence that simmers under his control, makes even a bastard like Julian pause.

“I’ll see you both in court,” he mutters and turns away, stomping down the hallway like a dog with its tail between its legs.

I don’t breathe until he’s gone.

Then I whirl on Alaric. “What the hell was that?”

“You needed protection,” he says simply. “So, I gave it to you.”

“You lied—”

“I did what I had to. To keep him away from you. From Lina.”

My hands are shaking. My heart’s a fucking mess. “You don’t get to just decide that. She’s not—”

He cuts me off, gentler now. “Maybe she is.”

That shuts me up.

Because the truth is? I don’t know.

The truth is that there has always been a fifty-fifty chance that Alaric might be Lina’s father, too.