Chapter 5

Freya

Alpha Adrian walked Lily and me out of the ballroom, and Lily held both our hands at the same time like she had decided this was exactly how things were supposed to be.

I let her hold mine because I did not have the heart to pull away. But my mind was somewhere else entirely , circling, looping, coming back again and again to that small crescent-shaped mark at the back of her neck.

It was the same. I was sure of it. The same shape, the same soft color, in the same exact place.

My daughter had been born with a mark just like it.

The possibility sat in my chest like something I was afraid to breathe on too hard, in case it fell apart. She could be mine. She was the right age. She had brown curls. She was clever and warm and she had walked straight up to me in a garden and let me in like I belonged there.

But she was also the Alpha’s daughter.

And that meant either this was a coincidence , or something far worse was true.

I could not think about that right now. I needed to stay in this moment, stay present, until I knew something real.

Lily skipped along between us, talking fast and happy about the ball and her dress and how she had told Daddy weeks ago that the luna should be someone who actually liked roses.

“I decided the minute I saw you in the garden,” she announced proudly, giving both our arms a swing. “Agnes liked my drawing and she sat in the grass with me and she wasn’t fake-nice, she was just nice. That’s the kind of luna I want.”

Adrian looked straight ahead. “You are too quick to trust a stranger,” he said. His voice was even, but his jaw was tight.

“She’s not a stranger anymore,” Lily said simply. “She’s my friend.”

He glanced at me over her head, and there was nothing warm in that look. It was careful. Watchful. The look of someone who had already started asking questions they had not yet said out loud.

At the end of the corridor, he stopped and spoke quietly to a waiting maid. She nodded and bent down toward Lily.

“Come on, little one. Time for bed.”

“But Daddy!” Lily’s face went wide with protest.

“You have had enough excitement,” he said, and though his voice was firm there was something underneath it , something gentler that only came out when he spoke to her.

She sighed in the long-suffering way of children who know they have lost and have decided to lose with style. She turned and hugged me tight around the middle, her small arms pressing in hard.

“Goodnight, Freya,” she whispered.

I hugged her back carefully, like something in me was afraid to hold on too long. “Goodnight, Lily.”

She pulled back and looked up at me with those big brown eyes. “Will you meet me in the garden tomorrow? I want to show you the willow tree hiding spot.”

“I would love that,” I said.

She beamed. Then she looked up at her father with a mischievous expression. “You can be the scary wolf who tries to catch us, Daddy. You’re too serious to be anything fun.”

He gave her a look that on another face might have been a smile. “Bed.”

“Going, going.” She let the maid take her hand and walked off down the hall, turning back once to wave at me with her whole arm before disappearing around the corner.

The hallway went quiet.

Adrian looked at me for a moment without speaking. Then he turned and walked in the other direction. I understood I was meant to follow.

He brought me to his study.

It was a large, serious room , three walls lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves full of well-read books, a stone fireplace with a soft couch in front of it, and a wide dark desk at the center. He sat behind the desk in a tall, cushioned chair. In front of the desk sat a single hard wooden chair. Small and plain and very clearly designed to make whoever sat in it feel like they were in trouble.

I sat in it anyway.

He said nothing for a moment. Just watched me with those gray eyes, calm and still and seeing too much.

Then he reached across the desk and pushed a document toward me.

“I don’t trust you,” he said. His voice was cool. Not angry , which somehow felt worse. “I believe you approached Lily with a purpose beyond friendship. I am prepared to be generous, and I am prepared to overlook a great deal. But I will not extend that same consideration to someone I cannot read.”

I opened my mouth fast. “I never had bad intentions toward her. I promise you that. She sat down beside me in the garden and she was , she was just a child who wanted help with her drawing, and I ,”

He pushed a second set of papers toward me. I stopped talking.

I expected something sharp. A formal notice removing me from the Trial. A warning. A payoff to disappear quietly and not come back.

I thought I would have taken any of those options, a week ago.

But that was before the garden. Before Lily. Before a crescent moon birthmark at the back of a little girl’s neck had turned everything I thought I knew upside down and inside out.

I could not walk away now. I needed to stay close enough to find out the truth , whatever the truth turned out to be.

I looked down at the papers.

The words at the top of the first page were printed in bold, dark letters.

MATE CONTRACT , BINDING AGREEMENT

I stared at the words until they blurred slightly at the edges.

“A mate contract?” I whispered.

Adrian leaned back in his chair, watching me read. His voice when he spoke again was flat and precise, like a man laying down terms he had already thought through very carefully.

“You will remain in this estate as a Trial participant , for now. You will have access to Lily in supervised settings only. And at the end of this process, if things proceed as I intend them to, you will sign this contract before any formal arrangement is announced.”

I looked up from the page. “You’re serious.”

“I am always serious.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t.” He held my gaze without blinking. “Which is exactly why I have conditions.”

My hands were still on the paper. My heart was beating too fast and too loud, and I was almost certain he could hear it.

Because somewhere down the hall, a little girl with brown curls and a crescent moon birthmark was going to sleep.

And I had just realized that signing this contract might be the only way to stay close enough to find out if she was the daughter I had been searching for all these years.

I lifted my eyes to Adrian Wolfe’s.

“Tell me the conditions,” I said.