Page 5

WINTER

SEVEN YEARS LATER

A smirk folds on my lips, and in no time, it stretches to a smile as I watch the two tiny three-foot-tall monsters wipe their cheeks with the back of their hands.

Normally, on a late morning like this, I would be scolding them for their behavior, but how do I scold two boys who have brown chocolate smeared on their cheeks and are currently looking at me with the most innocent looks they can muster?

I place a hand on my hip, lifting a brow, “I’m going to ask again, boys. Who ate the last remaining piece of chocolate cake that was meant for mommy?”

Adrian’s blue-green eyes land on me, and he nods his head, saying, “Not me, Mommy.”

I fight back a chuckle.

Adrian has pieces of said cake on his right cheek and on his nose.

Turning to Asher, I toss him the same question, “Do you have any clue who ate Mommy’s cake, Asher?”

Asher whispers back a “no” just as fast as his brother did. I’m about to reprimand them for their behavior when the buzzing sound of my doorbell spears the air.

I don’t have to guess to know it’s Isabel, my twins’ nanny, at the door. She comes in right before I go to work, prepares the kids’ lunches, and drops them off at school. She also picks them up from school for me when work runs late at the office. Safe to say, she’s been the only nanny to my boys since I arrived in Bracken City. The bonus point was that my boys loved her as soon as they met her.

“Isabel!” Asher shouts in excitement.

Putting on my other pair of heels and straightening my skirt, I walk to the door, opening it. Isabel walks right in, greeting me with a jolly “Good morning.”

“Running late?” She asks.

I tuck my blouse in my skirt, looking for my coat and bag that are somewhere resting on the couch if the boys didn’t move them. I’m hoping they didn’t. Otherwise, I’ll be running ten minutes late to work.

“Almost late. Someone stole my chocolate cake from the fridge, and we’ve been trying to figure out who did it.”

My eyes flick to the boys standing guiltily near the kitchen island. Isabel gives me a knowing look, stifling back a chuckle.

I move to the living room, taking approximately five minutes to find my coat and bag and fix everything else. Isabel’s laughter and my boys’ voices come from the kitchen, and the sound of it all makes my heart ache a little.

I would give everything to spend every second of my time with Adrian and Asher, but unfortunately, I can’t afford the privilege. Life in Bracken city is expensive, and working as an assistant barely pays enough for me to retire or take off-days.

But I’m content with my family as it is. Life is good, and I have my boys to thank for that. I wouldn’t be alive without them.

Wiping the memories from my mind, I move to the kitchen, and it takes less than a second before my boys come hugging each of my feet. I almost fall down from the weight.

“I’m sorry, Mommy!” Asher shouts, his onyx-dark eyes landing on me with a pool of unshed tears. “I ate the cake. I’m sorry.”

“I ate the cake, too. Sorry, Mommy.” Adrian follows.

I ruffle their hair before kneeling on the tiled floor to be at a level with them.

Goddess, I never thought seven years later, I’d be having the sweetest boys to ever walk the earth, but here we are. Adrian and Asher both look like him. From the unruly dark hair, to his dark consuming eyes, to his face, and to that mole on the back of Adrian’s neck. Goddess, they do look like him, and I should hate it, but Asher and Adrian are mine. My babies. My children.

“What did we say about eating desserts before breakfast?” I ask.

“That we shouldn’t eat cake without Mommy’s permission,” Asher responds.

“That we shouldn’t lie to Mommy when we eat cake without her permission,” Adrian adds.

Isabel chuckles behind them, shaking her head.

“That’s right. Give Mommy a kiss, then?”

They both give me a kiss on the cheek. The same kisses that have always started my day.

“We love you, Mommy.”

And I love you more than anything in this world.

“I love you too, baby. Have a good day in school and no giving Isabel a hard time, yeah?”

“Yes, Mommy.”

I shower them with kisses five minutes later, knowing that walking out that door to go to work always kills me every time.

The upside of Bracken City, the one that drew me here more than anything, is the lack of bullshit rules and expectations from the society. The same rules and expectations that were enforced in the pack I grew up in. Here, betas and omegas coexist without there being an Alpha to dictate what ought to be done or a pack you have to belong to. Everyone minds their own business, and no one cares about you or your past. An added bonus is that Alphas are rare to find here. The downside of living in Bracken City, however, even more than the heat that beats down my car and seeps all the way down to my blouse, is the traffic. Two missed calls from my manager and one from my best friend and coworker, Julie, tell me I’m on the verge of being fired for running late.

I tap my steering wheel furiously, my eyes lingering outside the window at the miles and miles of cars that don’t seem like they’ll be moving soon.

“Relax. We’ll be there on time.” My wolf assures me. So, I try to breathe, gazing at the clear blue skies and the palm trees that are as tall as the buildings, breathing in the smell of gas from the cars and the distant scent of ground coffee beans.

Bracken City and Moonstone City are two worlds apart. The place I was born in didn’t have such buildings or cars or such noise. I’m pretty sure Jake would have loved this city, and the thought of him brings the same pain I’ve been feeling for years. The one that impales my heart when I think of home and my family.

Fortunately, like the universe can feel me teetering to the abyss, the traffic starts moving, and in less than ten minutes, my car pulls up at Bracken Holdings, the shipping company I’ve been working for close to five years.

Taking the usual elevator with my fellow coworkers today feels off. Again, I could blame it on the heat inside the elevator that has all of us sweating like pigs and sharing the same muggy air, but something is off.

It starts the very minute Ashley from the Human Resources Department whispers something to her friend.

“I heard he’s coming in today, and apparently, it’s mandatory for everyone to be present when he comes in.”

I’m not eavesdropping if everyone in the elevator can hear her, too. Julie and Luka like work gossip more than they like doing actual work. I’ve never cared about gossip, but something about what Ashley says makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Who’s coming? The boss? And if he wants everyone to be present when he comes in, it can only mean two things. Either some of us are getting promoted, or some of us are getting fired. I’m praying to the Goddess that it’s the former.

“Mr. Wilfred has never shown his face in the office. Okay, maybe once, and that was last year because of an emergency. So why now?” Ashley’s friend asks.

The numbers on the elevator increase by the second, and my heart pulses by the minute as I await Ashley’s answer.

“Oh no. Rumor around the office is that Mr. Wilfred is no longer the boss. We have a new boss. Apparently, he’s an Alpha.”

The way Ashley purrs the word “Alpha” almost makes me sicker than the news of having a new boss, but there’s no denying that everyone inside the elevator has a gasp lodged in their throats.

Alphas in Bracken City are as rare as finding diamonds in the sand, so to hear that the new boss is an Alpha takes everyone by surprise. I can almost hear their thoughts. An Alpha being the boss would mean everyone has no choice but to obey and submit because Alphas are generally intimidating beings.

The elevator doors part, and I move out quickly, heading to the finance department where I work as an assistant to the head of the department.

I barely make it to my manager’s office when Luka steps in my way, and Julie shows up out of nowhere, pulling me to her workstation.

“As much as I love running into you guys, my manager will kill me if I don’t make it to—”

“Your manager got fired,” Luka cuts me off with a smile.

Blood drains from my face, and my lungs almost collapse.

“What do you mean he got fired? His being fired means… I no longer have a job?

Julie, the calm one, the omega who befriended me on my first day here, puts her hand on my shoulder, giving me a placating smile. ” What Luka is trying to say is that every head of every department got fired.”

“Does this have to do with the new boss? Ashley was talking about it in the elevator, but I thought she was bluffing.”

Fuck. Ashley wasn’t lying at all.

Luka pushes back his hair, that brown-gelled hair he treats like his child, before he rolls his eyes, “Of course, Ashley knows about the new boss. That leech knows about every single guy, especially if said guy comes with dollar bills dripping from his pockets.”

My lungs only deflate further. What does a new boss mean for us assistants?

“You know him?” It seems I’m the only one who doesn’t.

“Nope. Heard of him today. And what I’ve heard tells me it’s either we are losing our jobs or getting a new ruthless boss. They are saying he has money practically leaking from his pockets. He’s a billionaire who’s investing in companies like ours for fun, and when he gets tired, he’ll toss all of us aside. I heard he acquired casinos as well as two of the largest shipping industries in Bracken City in a span of two years, and before you ask, he accomplished this by making sure his employees worked to the bone.”

I know how ruthless Alphas can be, and yet I still try to fight the rumor mill that is starting to make me weak in the knees, “I’m sure he’s not that bad, Luka.”

Luka’s mocking laughter follows, telling me he’s not yet finished.

“If that isn’t surprising enough, the new boss is apparently so handsome he has women like Ashley falling at his feet every day. The irony is that he rejects every single woman who approaches him. I’m calling it now. We should be prepared to say goodbye to our jobs.”

I can feel Julie’s smile and hear her statement before she even states it. “Maybe he’s a good Alpha. Come on, give the new guy the benefit of the doubt.”

I’m the one to crush her little statement, “No Alphas are good, Julie. Especially ones with power.”

I learned that the hard way, but I don’t tell my friends that. I’m almost recovering from the shock of how my work will be affected by all this when the only remaining manager in the building calls all of us so we can gather around and meet the new boss.

Julie, Luka, and everyone who works in Bracken Holdings stands at least ten feet away from the elevator. Rumors fly around about how cold the new billionaire is. Some whisper about how this new boss had won battles for his pack before he decided to venture into the clean world of business and money.

I’m shaking inwardly from what awaits me and my job.

I can feel my wolf stir inside me with the same fear.

And maybe that should have been my first clue that everything was about to change.

Maybe I should have relied on that instinct inside me that buzzed the minute I stood there with my friends, like sheep huddled together, waiting for the big bad wolf.

Because the minute the elevator doors open, revealing an expensive Brioni suit, a glinting Rolex on his wrist, and a six-foot-three man in said suit, the ground beneath my heels shakes.

“Oh Goddess, he looks like he fell from the heavens,” a woman I recognize from the printing room shrieks in a high-pitched voice.

“He’s so hot!” Ashley’s sickeningly sweet voice joins the bandwagon. Murmurs fly around within seconds like fireworks exploding after getting a whiff of fire.

My feet remain rooted to the ground as almost everyone moves to get closer to the new boss.

An almost too familiar scent, the one that appears in my nightmares and haunts me to no end, hangs so thickly in the air that I can almost feel my entire body getting covered in hives.

Dark hair, the same as my sons’, comes into sight. The same hair I ran my fingers in on that unforgettable night. The memory of that forbidden night churns my soul more than the scent that has rendered me immobile.

Sharp-muscled jaw, hardened by years of being apart, taunts me from a distance.

My wolf and I are taken back to the days when he and his calming presence were everything that mattered to us as our world came crumbling down.

Muscles not from a boy, but from a man who’s grown to be the Alpha he was always destined to be mock every female in the room. Every female but me.

I can taste the rush of the severed bond between us slowly flickering to a dulling pain in my chest, and I refuse to let it cripple me. I refuse to let the burn behind my eyes win, too.

When cold, dark eyes search the room, finding a throng of people, my throat closes in on itself. My heart, the one that this man left bleeding in chains, pounds against my chest cavity.

My first instinct urges me to escape and get out of here, take everything and run, because I have everything to lose.

My second instinct tells me that he’s not real, that he’s not here, but I know those eyes.

Seven years later, and I know the man looking at me like I wronged him is none other than Deacon freaking Cross, my new boss.