INICIAR SESIÓNAnn’s POV
Logan’s words followed me into the narrow storage room.
“You have no idea what locked looks like yet.”
I pressed my back against the shelf and let that settle.
He was right. And I hated him for it.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I sai
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







