5.

ARREN.

Kade came in and dropped into the chair across from my desk with the energy of a man who'd aged five years in the last two hours.

"Katerina's taken the boy in," he said. "He's down for the night."

"Good."

He looked like he had more to say about the evening's events. After something like the display some of my pack members just witnessed outside, most people did.

I leaned back, folding my arms across my chest, and let the quiet settle while I turned the whole mess over in my head.

Ellaria finding out about Katerina and her son had not been part of the plan.

In fairness, most things Ellaria did weren't part of any plan I'd made. Including what happened at the hospital. She wasn’t the type to lash out like that. If anything, she avoided conflict whenever she could. It was more likely the strain she’d been under.

Suspending her had been the most efficient solution. She needed time to rest. And more importantly, she needed to be kept away from Katerina.

I had thought that would be enough. That distance would keep her out of things she wasn’t meant to see. Things about that boy.

But Ellaria had a way of appearing exactly where I needed her not to be,with those curious fucking eyes of hers taking in everything.

Half a year ago, Katerina had shown up at my door with a four year old boy on her hip and a story I hadn't seen coming.

She claimed we had a one-night stand. She'd kept it from me, she said, because the timing was bad and she hadn't known how to tell me.

I couldn't remember that night if I was being honest.

But I took one look at her son and decided a paternity test was going to be a problem I dealt with later.

Because Dalor was sick.

And his sickness intrigued me.

The patterns and symptoms and notable side effects it was having on him and his wolf... those exact same things happened to my father months before he died.

Every healer in the Eastern Sector had looked at my father and written natural causes on the report and moved on, and I had known from the day I read it that they were wrong. Years of looking and this child was the first thing I had found that felt like a real thread.

I wasn't letting go of it and I wasn't letting anyone near it who didn't need to be.

So I had brought them in, settled them at the pack house, and kept it quiet.

I wasn't taking in a woman I had history with and a child I had no memory of fathering out of sentimentality.

I was following the only solid lead I'd had in two years of looking.

What I had not accounted for was Ellaria walking out of that corner tonight and straight into the middle of all of it.

I knew Ellaria's faces well enough after almost five years of living with her.

That one was new.

And to protect everything was dire, I had told her to stop making a fuss and walked away with Katerina and the boy.

I couldn't afford the investigation unraveling, and those things were more important than whatever she wanted to say right then.

It was the right call.

I knew it was the right call.

So why in goddess name had it been bothering me since then?

I frowned at the table and made a decision. I'd go home tonight.

Whatever she'd wanted to say, she could say it then.

“How’s the search for Ellaria’s mom going?” I asked Cade.

"There's been some movement," he said. "But I can’t say we can do much with our new leads. It sucks that she barely remembers much from back then, it would be a big help in at least letting us know if were on the right path, because right now... nothing’s verified.”

"Send more people." I supplied.

"We already have a fair number on it."

"Send more anyway."

He wrote it down without argument, "If this lead doesn't hold, it'll be the third time we've had to walk it back," he said.

Another false start will hit her hard.

I'd watched it happen twice already. I hated seeing her hurt like that.

Telling her we’d lost another lead wasn't something I was interested in sitting across from again.

"Nothing reaches her until it's confirmed," I said. “I don’t want to get my wife’s hopes up.”

Kade nodded, made the note, and then sat there with his pen held loosely and that particular expression he wore when he was deciding whether it was worth it to say the thing he had lingering on his mind.

I raised an eyebrow. "Come out with it."

He set the pen down. "You know your contract expires in three months. I’ve been thinking you should give the Luna some kind of severance package. To keep her afloat you know... forever maybe? You can allocate the main guest house her and give her a monthly salary."

I looked at him.

I hadn’t realized there were only three months left.

For some reason I'd been operating as though that number was still comfortably theoretical. Apparently time had other ideas.

There was suddenly this faint, persistent pressure sitting somewhere in my chest that I couldn't quite account for.

"Find her a few houses," I said. And then I frowned. "Make sure they’re in close proximity to the main pack house."

Kade's pen stopped moving. He looked up at me. "Will... Katerina accept that?"

My brows pulled in, "What does Katerina have to do with where Ellaria lives?"

He held my gaze for a moment, and something in his expression shifted. "I assumed," he said, choosing his words, "that you were ending the contract because you intended to marry Katerina. She's your fated mate. You have a... son together by her account."

I said nothing.

Kade continued, delivering information I for some reason wasn't liking, “By every reasonable measure, she’s really your best option."

He wasn't wrong.

“Handle it as instructed.” I ordered anyway.

He wrote more things down.

He really wasn't wrong.

The fated mate bond existed between Katerina and me even if it had never settled the way it was supposed to.

The child complicated things in ways I was still working through carefully.

Katerina was the logical answer to every practical question, and I had always been a practical man.

The problem was that the logical answer kept arriving at Ellaria and stopping there.

She had filled the role of Luna without being asked twice and handled problems before they became anyone else's concern. The children in that hospital followed her around like she was the warmest thing in every room she walked into.

I noticed her more and more as the years went on.

Fucking hell.

I'd gotten used to her being there.

I didn't want this marriage to end. And I was going to ask Ellaria if she felt the same way. If she did, then we’d continue as man and wife.

Only this time... it’ll be real.