Prologue 2 - Edge

Stepping into an almost empty hallway, I focused on breathing through my mouth so I didn’t throw up. That was when I heard the chuckle.

“It really smells terrible in there.”

The soft voice behind me made Ranger surge to his feet. “MATE!”

Turning slowly, I took in the leggy blonde with dark eyes standing about four feet from me. Her eyes widened, and she whispered, “Mate.”

I felt her wolf stir and thanked the Moon Goddess that my mate wasn’t human.

I would like to say I took things slow, did the whole wine-and-dine and wooing thing with Louisa. But by the time we walked out to my Escalade, we were pretty much tearing each other’s clothes off. We marked each other right in the backseat of my vehicle in the middle of the parking lot.

Afterward, I panicked. Griffin was going to flip out when he found out what I did. Louisa looked equally shocked by what had happened.

“I need time, Edge. I’m not ready to move packs. But we live close enough; we can get to know each other and figure things out. My family is complicated, and I need to make sure they are taken care of when I move.”

I readily agreed and spent the next nine months trying to figure out what to do with my new mate. We met every week or so, usually in the neutral territory to the north. It would have been an ideal situation if Ranger wasn’t riding me hard to bring my mate home and introduce her to my family. But Louisa was reluctant to meet anyone. She kept asking for more time.

When Sonni helped Griffin restructure Blue Stone, where there was one pack alpha and four territory alphas, I asked to become the northern territory alpha. There was a huge hunting lodge in that area that wasn’t used much, and I knew it could be converted into a packhouse.

Once I became a territory alpha, I began making plans to move my mate into the pack. Griffin still didn’t know she existed. Hell, nobody in the pack knew she existed. Viper and Arrow, two other territory alphas, might have suspected something, but they never confronted me.

When Louisa finally moved to Blue Stone with me, I thought the hardest part was over. I would introduce her to Griffin and Sonni as my mate. My mother would cry and say how happy she was. Louisa would become a territory luna, and we would live happily ever after.

I learned the hard way that was not to be the case. I came home from work one day and hugged my mate. I smelled another male on her. She blew up when I asked what she had done that day. I didn’t accuse her of anything; I thought maybe she had hugged a friend or something.

“I don’t need you to interrogate me, Edge. You work all day. What am I supposed to do while you are gone? It’s not like we live in a booming pack or anything.” She snarled at me.

I blinked. We lived in the second largest pack in the region. There was plenty for her to do. As my mate, she should be helping our pack and pulling them together so they feel loved and taken care of.

“I wasn’t interrogating you, Louisa. I was curious what my mate had been up to today. Why are you so defensive?”

She slapped me and screamed that she needed a break. Shock rippled through me, and I barely moved when she grabbed her car keys and stormed out the door.

I have been around enough mated couples to know this wasn’t normal behavior. Walking into our bedroom, I stared at the open closet door. All of Louisa’s clothes were gone. She hadn’t stormed out in a rage. She had packed her things, picked a fight, and then stormed out.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I put my head in my hands. My fated mate just walked out without a backwards look. Sighing, I got up, made a bowl of cereal for dinner, and opened my banking app. I needed to transfer money to pay my truck payment.

I blinked at the balance showing in my pack account - the one Louisa had access to. She took twenty thousand dollars and left a total of forty-six dollars and fifteen cents. Rage slammed through me. I had just put her on that account three days ago because she complained about not being able to buy what she needed for our home.

Opening my other account - the one in Hudson Valley - I made sure she hadn’t been able to touch that money. I wasn’t sure she knew about that account; it was my actual savings and had over three hundred thousand dollars. The balance was correct, and I breathed out a sigh of relief.

Removing Louisa from the pack account, I knew I was going to have to track her down for a formal rejection. I was done with her drama. Stealing from me was the icing on the cake.

It took three months to find Louisa. She had moved to the Wild Wind Pack with her new boyfriend. Once we formally rejected each other, I felt pain rip through my chest. Since then, I felt like I was walking in a fog.

Two years after the rejection, the alpha of the Wild Wind Pack called me. He told me Louisa had a small pup who had been severely injured. Louisa signed her rights away and named me as the pup’s father.

When I walked into the Wild Wind hospital and met my daughter for the first time, I sobbed so hard. My little girl had been thrown down a flight of stairs. She had severe damage to her spine and hips.

I modified my apartment and brought Natalia home. I hired a nurse named Erica to help care for my pup. Erica understood that nobody was to know Natalia was my daughter until I was ready to tell Griffin and my mother. Keeping her hidden was actually easier than I thought it would be.

But when war threatened our pack, I knew I couldn’t keep hiding her. I needed to protect her. I needed to stop hiding her and ask for help. I just hoped Griffin didn’t lose his shit over it and would accept my daughter into the family.