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Chapter Four

L ina

The afternoon sunshine painted patterns across the living room of my Philadelphia villa, chasing away the morning chill.

My daughter, Betty, a whirlwind of pink tulle pirouetted across the sheepskin rug.

“Look Mommy! Look. I’m a bird!” she shouted, arms outstretched.

The memory of Swan Lake, the ballet we’d seen last month, still held her captive. I had bought her the cutest little ballet shoes, and she kept trying to point her toes, sending her stumbling onto the soft sheepskin rug. But every day, she got steadier.

I clapped, smiling. “Beautiful, Sweetie. As graceful as a swan, nearly.” The “nearly” might have been overly generous, given the wobbles, but her face, alight with fierce determination, stole my heart.

The memory of my own mother surfaced, her voice, soft as a summer breeze, using the story of Swan Lake to help me understand my shifter heritage.

“Just like the princess, one day you’ll change too.

You see, we’re wolves, Lina, who can change whenever we want to.

” A pang broke through me. It had been five years since the day I’d lost her and my father, and although I’d built a new life, her loss was most apparent in these beautiful, seemingly everyday moments when it hurt to think she’d never see her granddaughter.

“Mommy, I’s flying,” Betty called out as she threw her arms out wide and twirled.

“Magnificent!” I enthused, my own thoughts drifting. Betty’s joy, her embracing the story and magic, was a gift from my mother, a legacy. I imagined explaining her own shifter abilities using the story of Swan Lake, just as my mother had. The thought both soothed and stung.

I turned my gaze out the picture window. The world outside, with its twenty acres and quiet luxury, felt a million miles removed from the concrete heart of New York. Yet, I’d never taken my hand off the city’s pulse.

From here in Citrus Hill, I monitored Magnus Blackthorn and his company’s dealings.

I’d built a network of wellness products, a company called Luna Remedies.

We were dedicated to the ethical practice of using herbal and natural remedies.

To the major pharma players, including Blackthorn Corp, we weren’t a company worth looking at.

But I had built a secret empire underneath.

Blackthorn didn’t know the wealth and information I was acquiring.

My business was built on grey-market dealings.

Each day, I reminded myself that my journey with Blackthorn wasn’t over.

From the rumors my team and I had collected, the consensus was that Magnus had organized the attack of the rogue wolves at our mate ceremony, meaning to do away with the Silvermoon Pack alpha, luna, and its heir in one fell swoop.

We hadn’t found proof, but Magnus had snatched control of the Silvermoon Pack after my parents had been killed and believed I was gone.

But I was like a vengeful ghost, gathering my strength and biding my time.

The past remained alive, and the flames of vengeance still burned within me.

“I’s tired,” Betty said, collapsing on the rug.

“Nap time, Swanling,” I said gently, smoothing her hair.

“No!” she protested.

“But don’t you want to snuggle up and read Swan Lake?”

The magic word!

Betty danced toward the child gate at the bottom of the stairs. I lifted her into my arms, carrying her upstairs. Within minutes of starting the story, she was asleep in her bed.

Ballet really is a godsend.

I secured the safety gate at the top of the stairs, hoping to get a couple of hours of work done before she woke.

I had fled to Philadelphia after the attack, seeking refuge with a close-knit group of university friends.

They were both shifters but came from a small, unassuming pack here in Philly.

They had little knowledge of the ruthless shifter world I belonged to, and for a time, I’d disappeared from the shifter community, attempting to rebuild my shattered life amidst the ordinary.

Accessing my bank accounts had proved impossible, with Magnus Blackthorn exerting his grip over what was left of my parents’ business and resources, and I had to start anew.

Through sheer determination, I’d built my company from the ground up. We had offices in the city of Philadelphia, but I moved my core team here to Citrus Hill a couple of years ago, which gave me much more time with Betty.

Back in the living room, my hand went to the book that opened my team’s secret office. Emily, my employee and friend, had insisted on the bookcase entrance when we’d renovated my villa to house our office. She, along with my trusted assistant, Matthew, were the only two who knew all of my secrets.

I walked into our office, my gaze instantly drawn to the back wall where six huge screens were taken up by Emily’s hacker operations.

The monitors displayed a constant stream of data, Em’s code the sole artwork in our otherwise white-walled space.

She had an array of cacti on her desk, along with a sea of coffee cups that told me she’d either been hard at work since early morning or had pulled an all-nighter.

Mine and Matthew’s desks were minimalist, with clean surfaces hosting laptops and organized piles of paperwork. The whole space was brightened by the concealed skylight, the only window so as to help keep our space secret.

“Lina, we’ve found something,” Matthew said in way of greeting. He was wearing slacks and a pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal strong, ink-stained forearms. Matt was tall, with kind sky-blue eyes, but his usually comforting tone was a little strained.

“Is this about the Ashford Pack?” I asked.

Magnus’s Blackthorn Corporation was finalizing a deal with Evervine Industry, a human company, replacing the distribution network they had with the Ashford Pack.

My team and I had debated leaking this information to the Ashford Pack to sabotage Magnus but had held back. We weren’t ready to take Magnus down.

Matthew frowned, shaking his head. “Emily.”

My stomach clenched. Ordinarily, Matthew was the talker. The fact that he was turning to Em for help set off alarm bells—a fact further reinforced when Em left her keyboard.

“Have a seat,” she said, coming over. She had on her usual work attire—a band T-shirt paired with black jeans, a suit jacket, and dark hair swept back into a long braid.

“Okay,” I took a seat. My eyebrows shot up as she passed me the mug she held. Clearly, they’d been waiting for me. She’d made me my favorite almond milk chai. I set it down on my desk, narrowing my eyes. “Just spit it out,” I demanded.

“Your mother’s alive,” Matthew blurted out.

“Christ, Matthew!” Emily exclaimed. “I thought we were going to lead into that or—”

“What?” I demanded, the word sounding torn from my throat.

Shock crashed over me, an electric wave of disbelief that sent my heart skyrocketing.

I gripped the arms of my desk chair, my knuckles whitening.

Hope fought with grief. “How do you know? Are you sure?” The questions spilled out in a frantic rush, desperate for clarity as my pulse thudded in my ears, thrumming with the urgency of unresolved pain.

Matthew’s eyes were wide as he said, “We’ve seen her on Blackthorn security footage. “She’s alive, Lina.” His words were steady and sure, cutting through the fog of shock that enveloped me.

With his assurance, the world around me shifted, tilting off its axis. My mother, who’d always been my rock, whose absence made me ache every single day—was alive. The astounding realization filled me until I felt lit up—my mom—was still with me .

Now it started. The avalanche of words flew from Matthew in a way that was far more natural. “Remember the USB drives we planted in Blackthorn Corporation through Rufus at Hardwire?”

Hardwire was one of the tech companies Matthew oversaw to manage our tech infrastructure.

Rufus was the head of the team and was a good mate with Matt.

He’d had a contract setting up tech infrastructure across a number of Blackthorn Corporate offices and planted a bunch of malware in their network to monitor their communications there.

I nodded, expectation tightening my chest.

Emily slumped into her huge swivel chair in front of the wall of monitors.

With a few quick jabs of the keyboard, she said, “Here. With our bugs planted, we were able to download the surveillance footage, too. We’re not sure which building she’s in yet because of the way the footage is stored centrally, but with time, I’ll figure it out. ”

It was a fuzzy image, but sure enough, my mother, Miriam Silvermoon, was framed on the screen.

I blinked at the grainy video of her pacing across a small, spartan room.

A few seconds later, she sat down on the single bed.

I expected to feel like I’d break, but instead, a blaze of fury roared through me.

I wanted to destroy something—preferably someone he loved.

At the thought, Stephen came into my thoughts.

And with him, a dozen feelings fluttered through me.

When I’d escaped that day of the attack, I’d kept picturing the way Stephen had shielded me from the rogue wolves.

Then, six weeks later, when I’d still been reeling from my parents’ deaths, I’d been rocked to my very core when I discovered I was pregnant with Stephen’s child.

She’s not his. She’s mine.

For a long time now, I’d seen Betty as only mine. I was the one raising her. I was all she needed. Stephen knew nothing of her existence, and I was damn well going to keep it that way.

Yet still, I couldn’t deny that Stephen had always been with me. It was impossible for him not to be when every time Betty’s earthy scent washed over me, it seemed like a whisper of Stephen’s own. The thought of seeing him again had my stomach clenching and my heart fluttering .

But I quashed the thought.