Novels by Gerda J Beelen

Julian's POVThe diner was nothing special, which was exactly why I liked it. No valet. No reservations. No host pretending not to recognize me while obviously recognizing me. Just cracked vinyl booths, laminated menus, and coffee that smelled strong enough to strip paint.Savannah relaxed as soon as we walked in. Her shoulders dropped. The careful look she had worn since the ranch finally loosened. For once there were no cameras, no whispers, no one waiting for us to fail in public.We were just two people getting dinner.I hadn't realized how badly I needed that until the waitress filled our mugs and called us both "honey." She didn't care who I was. She cared that I was blocking the sugar caddy with my elbow.Savannah peered over her menu. "You look confused.""There are pictures in the menu?"She laughed, and something tight in my chest eased."I've eaten in diners before," I said. "But I never paid attention to pictures in menus.""Well, they have always been there... you might h

Savannah's POVDad did not make the situation easier.When Julian and I walked back toward the house holding hands after our first honest conversation in days, Dad decided he had something to say.Mom stood by the back door with a basket of folded towels in her arms. The look she gave me when she noticed our joined hands was so subtle I almost missed it. Her eyes softened. That was all, but it was enough to know she approved.Dad, on the other hand, looked directly at Julian. “You.”Julian stopped. I sighed. “Dad.”

Julian's POV Standing in front of Savannah felt harder than walking into any boardroom I’d ever entered. There were no documents between us, no lawyers, no numbers to hide behind, just her and the uncomfortable truth that if I wanted her to understand why I had failed her, I would have to show parts of myself I had spent most of my life keeping locked away. She stood a few feet away with her arms folded, watching me the way someone watches a storm approach. I could still hear her father’s last words before he left us alone: Try. Maybe he’ll surprise you. I wasn’t sure who the surprise was meant for, her or me. “When my father came to my office about the leak, I was angry,” I began. I turned to face her. “You know what I did afterward, but you don’t know what was happening in my head.” “He came in already convinced the timing was suspicious. He saw us together at the gathering. He saw me bringing you into that world and acting like…” I stopped, searching for the right word. “Like

Savannah's POVThe garden felt like a room the world had forgotten to notice. Mom had taken care of it herself over the years. Flowers lining the stone path, vines climbing the wooden arch, a bench beneath an old tree where the shade stayed cool even on the hottest afternoons, and that was where Dad found me.I'd been sitting for nearly twenty minutes, turning a leaf between my fingers, staring at nothing.Dad rarely eased into conversations; he walked into them. He sat beside me with a quiet grunt and stretched his legs out. For a while we simply listened to the wind in the branches. I appreciated the silence.Finally he looked at me. "Your mother told me you came back yesterday.""I figured she would," I muttered. "She told me that you knew when I arrived.""She also told me not to ask questions until you were ready," he added. "And yes, I did know when you arrived, but she was the one who told me that you were coming."I glanced at him. "And you listened?""Barely," he said, and a

Savannah's POVThe ranch came into view just before sunset.For most of the drive I had sat quietly in the back seat with my forehead against the window, watching the city shrink into highways and the highways dissolve into open road. Buildings gave way to trees, trees to open fields, and the familiar shapes of home, barns, fencing, the farmhouse like a small promise on the horizon slowly filled the glass. Usually, seeing the ranch made something inside me loosen.Tonight it made my chest ache. I had told myself I would feel relief the moment I crossed the property line. Instead, the second I saw the fields and the farmhouse, everything I'd been holding together since leaving Julian began to crack.I pressed my lips together and looked down at my hands. Don't cry, I told myself. I had managed

Julian's POVThe apartment looked like a war zone, and for once I didn't care that it did. A glass lay shattered near the far end of the living room, one cushion had been flung across the floor, and the papers I'd brought home from the office were scattered across the table as if I'd tried to fight them instead of read them.What I cared most about was Savannah leaving, and I remembered every second of it.The sound of the elevator doors closing, the hollow echo of her footsteps down the hallway, and the way I'd stood in the doorway like an idiot with my hand on the frame, hoping she would change her mind and come back. But she didn't… she was long gone.I paced from one end of the living room to the other with my phone clenched in my hand. I had called her once, then again, and again, but after several voicemails I had stopped calling. Not because I didn't want to hear her voice, but because she had asked for space and I had no right to keep calling after she'd made that crystal clea

Jack’s POVAnn walked into my office without knocking. She usually paused outside long enough for me to hear her gathering courage, but this time the door opened hard and fast. She shut it behind her and faced me with her shoulders squared.“Were you investigating who fathered my babies?”I set the report in my hand on the desk. There were several ways to answer her question and I chose the worst. “How did you find out?”A humorless laugh escaped her. “So it’s true.”“Ann.”“Don’t say my name like I’m overreacting.”“I’m not.”

Ann’s POVTristan found me near the eastern garden just before dinner. I had been walking alone, moving slowly with one hand resting beneath the curve of my stomach while the evening air moved softly through the trees. The babies had been active all afternoon; every small movement distracted me, and every kick made me stop and smile as if it were the first time I had felt them. For a few minutes I actually managed to forget everything else.Then I saw Tristan standing ahead of me. He was not smiling, and something tightened inside me the moment I reached him.“Ann,” he said.I slowed my pace. “Tristan,” I answered.He waited until I stood beside him, then his eyes swept the garden to make sure no one was close enough to overhear. That careful look

Jack’s POVI sent for Tristan before I could change my mind.That small act annoyed me more than it should have. I wasn’t indecisive by nature. Give an order, expect it done. That was how I ran things. If new information required a new course, I changed it and moved on, but this felt different. The investigation had never sat right with me, and now I knew enough, more than enough.Tristan arrived with the folder he’d been filling on Silverstone. He took one look at my face and slowed. “That expression is never good,” he said.“Close the door,” I told him.He raised an eyebrow but obeyed. Then he crossed to the desk and set the folder down. “I was going to come find you anyway,” he said. “I have another contact who might confirm whether Logan moved patrols the night Ann disappeared.”“No.” The word came out sharper than I intended. Tristan stopped mid-sentence, the folder still in his hands. “Stop the investigation.”He stared at me for a long second, then looked down at the papers as

Mara’s POVI woke up angry, and the anger didn’t burn out after breakfast. It sat under my skin, too sharp to ignore.Ann’s words kept replaying in my head: “Find a better hobby.”The look she’d given me before she walked away stung more than it should have. I hated it. I hated the idea that Jack might be proud of her for it. That thought pushed me out of Blackwood before the sun had fully warmed the courtyard.I told myself I was doing my duty.Gamma’s work wasn’t supposed to be personal: investigate, protect the pack, keep trouble from the Alpha’s door. Ann had arrived from nowhere, refused to explain herself, and somehow ended up living in the Alpha residence.That deserved scrutiny. Jack had warned me not to dig into her past for personal reasons. Fine. This wasn’t personal, and I knew that he should have known better than to say that when he knew the reality of how personal this was.The neutral town between three territories was the kind of place where rumors gathered like dust

Ann’s POVJack stared at me for a long moment after I told him.Reginald.The name settled between us like something rotten, heavy and impossible to take back. I watched his face change in ways I could not fully read: shock first, then anger, then a darker thing that pushed his wolf so close to the surface I could feel it from where I stood.The warmth that had surrounded us in the garden, the easy laughter, the small miracle of the babies moving beneath his palm… everything shifted and narrowed to the single, terrible fact I had just given him.I immediately regretted telling him. Not because I feared he would hurt me, but because the truth altered the moment we had been sharing. He had placed his hand on my stomach, had laughed with me, and had been gentle. Now the laughter was gone and the garden felt too bright and too exposed.Jack rubbed a hand over his face.I called out to him but he turned away, and the movement hurt more than I expected.My heart sped up. “Jack?” I repeated

Jack’s POVThe moment I asked, Ann went still beneath my hand.Not startled. Not confused. Frozen. The warmth that had filled her face a heartbeat before drained away so fast I knew I had finally touched the part of her past she’d been guarding most carefully.My palm was still against her belly. I pulled it back slowly, before she could see how much I wanted to leave it there. “Ann,” I said.She stood up too quickly and I was on my feet before she’d taken a full step. “Careful,” I warned.“I’m fine,” she snapped, but the laugh that had been there a moment ago was completely gone. Her hand flattened over her stomach as she turned away. I hated the way she moved, like she was closing a door I had only just been allowed through.I shouldn’t have asked. I knew that, but I had spent weeks waiting for her to tell me in her own time, letting Tristan chase down fragments while I tried to be patient. And now that the pieces were closing in, Logan Fisher asking about a woman who’d vanished fro

Damien’s POVThe door locks behind me with a sound that goes straight through my ribs. I stand there for a full breath, one hand still raised like it hasn’t gotten the message that she doesn’t want me touching her, that she doesn’t want me there at all.The basement air clings to my skin, damp and heavy with the same rot that lived in her voice when she told me to go marry Lori.My boots move on their own, up the narrow stone stairs, and past the guards who flatten themselves against the wall so quickly it borders on ridiculous.I don’t look or speak to anyone. The bond in my chest has gone quiet in a way that feels worse than the silence from the past few days, worse than the constant pull. It feels like someone has cut the cord and left the bleeding end inside

Brie’s POVThe air down here doesn’t move. It just sits in the corners of the stone walls, thick with the smell of damp earth and old rot that makes my stomach roll over itself.Every single morning, the same heavy clank echoes down the hall. Dr. Lupin, the pack doctor, walks in carrying his metal case like an executioner holding his tools. He doesn’t look me in the eye. He just presses his cold, sterile fingers against my lower stomach, muttering numbers under his breath, checking for a pulse of life that isn’t there.‘Negative,’ he says every time, like it’s a failure on my part. It’s like my body is a broken machine refusing to cooperate with their grand design. And then he leaves. The heavy door swings shut, the lock turns with a loud, final click, and I’m left alone again with th

Damien’s POVI slam the door shut. The corridor is empty, good, I don’t need any more witnesses. The need to hit something is all-consuming. I slam my fist into the railing of the stairs leading down toward the lower levels. It does nothing but bruise my knuckles.I keep my hand on her arm the whole way, because if I let go I don’t trust what I’ll do. My jaw is locked, my veins burn with the heat of my fury, I hate myself for the performance we pulled off. My shame is bright like fireworks.My father’s humiliation of my mate weighs like hot iron on my chest, but it is no excuse for the pleasure she brought me.Brie doesn’t speak. She moves with me, her steps small and deliberate, eyes fixed on the floor ahead. Through the bond I feel her, the hollow ache th

Alpha Dexter’s POV!Abuse Warning!I see it the moment my son walks through the door, the cold and controlled mask he wears. But I know every seam of it, see the possessive panic underneath.“Brie. Come here.” He commands.The words are quiet enough to seem casual, but specific enough to be a wall between her and every other man in this room.He thinks he is subtle. He thinks he just bought her an exit.He hasn’t accounted for the fact that I built this room, this table, this evening, and every man at it is here to curry my favour.I lift my goblet, take a slow sip, and let the silence stretch. Long enough for the girl to fo

Brie’s POVThe dress feels wrong in every way that counts.It fits, technically. The maids made sure of that, tugging the laces tight at the back with quick, efficient fingers. The fabric is deep burgundy, soft enough to feel expensive, but the cut is low enough to make my skin crawl. The neckline drops far past what any self-conscious female would wear. The hem grazes my mid-thigh, exposing far too much skin and providing easy access for groping hands. It is the kind of dress that draws attention exactly where Alpha Dexter want it drawn.Omega colours. Breeder cut. I don’t need anyone to tell me what it means.‘Don’t,’ Jackling says from the back of my mind, her voice tight and low. ‘Just breathe, and count.’

Damien’s POVThe heavy timber of the northern border blurs past me like streaks of charcoal paint, but the brutal pace does nothing to bleed the poison from my blood.My paws slam into the damp earth with bone-rattling force, each impact sending a fresh jolt of pain up my spine. Good. I want it to hurt. I want the physical tearing of muscle to drown out the suffocating, claustrophobic pressure that has been crushing my chest ever since my mother walked out of my room.‘She’s down there, Damien,’ Voss snarls, his voice a low rumble that scrapes the walls of my skull. ‘In the damp stone. She is cold and alone. While we run like caged animals.’‘Shut up,’ I growl through the shared mind-link, my lungs burning as I suck in the freezing night air, tasting pine and wet earth. ‘Just run.’I push harder, my massive white frame clearing a fallen tree with inches to spare, before slamming back down into the underbrush. The branches of low-hanging pines whip against my flanks, leaving their raw t