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A file with everything about her likes and dislikes as a child and possible locations of where she…no, where I…stayed. Next to the profile is a series of maps with locations marked with X’s using a red marker. I almost feel sick when I recognize some of these places are places I’ve lived before over the years.

Then, to the final document, the one that sticks out like a sore thumb and beckons to me. It’s the documentation as well as the contract that binds Alaric to Irene through marriage if he manages to find her.

It states here that the Blackwood pack gains more resources and everything that belonged to the Moonlight pack if Alaric marries Irene…no, if he marries me.

Becoming Alpha is in the contract, too, if he goes ahead with the marriage, and it might as well be a bonus point for him.

I knew he was looking for Irene, but I didn't think it was for this reason.

Aisha’s words ring through my head like a howl of warning and an “I told you so”.

She said Alaric, just like Julian, is in it for the power, and I can’t help but wonder; did he know who I was? Did he lure me in because he knew I was his gateway to him being the Alpha and his pack receiving more assets?

The thought of it makes me sound insane. My mind keeps circling the same possibility like a vulture, and that possibility is that Alaric knew. He knew who I was. And yet…he said nothing.

I try to reason it away, to tell myself he’d never do that, that if he recognized me, he would’ve told me. He wouldn’t have kept that kind of secret from me. Would he?

But doubt seeps in and festers inside my mind. I remember him so clearly, my childhood friend, my first crush.

The boy who used to race me through the fields until we were breathless and laughing. Back then, his eyes held wonder and mirth. They’re the same eyes I’ve stared into as a woman and felt a pull I couldn’t name.

What if he felt it, too?

What if he recognized me the moment he laid eyes on me?

My chest tightens. The room tilts slightly as my thoughts take off on their own. If he knew…if all this time he knew I was Irene, and still chose to treat me like a stranger, a pawn, then everything between us was a lie. It had to be.

My knees weaken under the weight of that possibility, and my heart races. I can almost feel my pulse pounding in my ears.

I trusted him. I wanted to trust him. But now, all I can see is every moment that could have been him just manipulating me. Every dirty word, every lingering look that made me want to fall for him even harder somehow starts to feel like it’s tainted.

I don’t know what’s worse: that he knew and kept it from me… or that he didn’t.

The confusion marred with the gazillion questions is put to rest when the phone that’s still on the purse clung to my shoulders buzzes with a loud notification.

Needing the distraction, I take my phone out and my face pales when I see an email with ‘paternity results’ as the subject.

The nurse assured me they’d take my case as top priority but I didn’t think they’d be this fast. I thought they’d be here in a few days or a week. Goddess, I know I wanted this badly for Lina but rereading the word ‘paternity’ has my heart beating painfully in my chest.

I swallow the invisible pricks scratching my throat, my finger gingerly pressing on the email.

I read once. Twice. Thrice. And by the fourth time, I can almost hear every shattered piece of my heart drop to the floor.

“Negative” is written in bold.

Alaric and Lina are not related.

Alaric is not Lina’s biological father.

Which means…

I barely get to mourn, let alone re-read the results for the umpteenth time, when my phone flashes with a call from an unknown caller.

I have worked as Alaric’s assistant for weeks. I've saved his contacts in my phone, as well as memorized every number he talks to, and yet as I pick up this call, I pray to the Goddess that it’s him.

I need him. I need him to tell me that the results are not real. I need him to hold me and tell me none of what happened today is real.

“Peaches.” His voice is like hot piss on a sunny day. Vile, rotten, and sadistic.