Chapter 6: The Boy With the Crescent Mark

Leo Romano did not cry when he was born. That should have been my first clue.

Second clue: At six months old, he growled at Isabella's Beta guard for touching his bottle.

Third clue: His blood.

"AB negative," the pack pediatrician said, holding the lab sheet in Fisher Island clinic. "Same as Alpha King Thorne. It's rare. 1% of Lycans. Runs in the Northern royal line only."

Leo was on my hip, chewing on my pearl necklace — a real pearl necklace now, not thrift-store. He had Isabella's dark curls and my grey eyes, but when the sun hit his hair, it turned black. Just like his father's.

And behind his left ear, the crescent mark had grown. White, perfect, like a tiny moon stamped into his skin. It was warm to the touch.

"Does it hurt?" I asked him. He was four now.

"No," he said. He was sitting on the port office floor, surrounded by shipping manifests he was pretending to read. He could read already. At four. "It itches when I'm mad."

"When are you mad?"

"When Mr. Carlos says Mommy can't own the port because Mommy is a girl."

I froze.

Mr. Carlos was 58, ran crane operations for 30 years. He had laughed at me in Chapter 5.

"What did you do when you got mad?" I asked carefully.

Leo looked up, grey eyes too old for four.

"I made his crane stop."

Isabella and I exchanged a look over his head. She was on a video call with a Singapore investor, but muted it.

"Leo," she said slowly, in her Beta Queen voice. "How did you make it stop?"

He shrugged. "I looked at it and said stop. And it stopped."

The crane had stopped yesterday for 13 minutes. No mechanical failure. The crew called it a ghost.

Isabella muted her call completely.

"Sera," she said to me in rapid Spanish so Leo wouldn't understand, "He's manifesting Alpha command. At four. Alexander didn't manifest until eight."

My blood went cold.

Alpha command at four meant one thing — pure royal blood. No dormant dilution. My dormant wolf plus Alexander's King blood didn't make a half-human weak pup.

It made a stronger heir than either Stone Pack could produce.

"Does Daddy have a mark like mine?" Leo asked suddenly, in English. He had learned to understand Spanish months ago.

The office went silent. The Singapore investor on mute, the port noise outside, the waves.

Isabella looked at me. This was my moment. I had rehearsed it for four years.

"Your father —" I started.

"He lives in snow," Leo finished for me. He held up his crayon drawing. It was Thorne Tower — 87 floors, black, with a stick figure on top wearing a crown. "Scary nice man in my dreams has snow hair. He smells like you when you're sad."

My hand found my stomach again. Old habit. Flat now, but still.

Isabella crouched to Leo's level.

"Leo, do you remember what I told you about why we don't talk about your father outside the house?"

"Because bad people will try to take me away because my blood is special," he recited. "And because Mommy is still mad at him for calling her a stray."

I winced.

Isabella didn't.

"Correct," she said. "So we keep the crescent hidden with hair. And we don't stop cranes outside Fisher Island."

Leo nodded solemnly and pulled his curls over his ear.

That night, after I put him to sleep — AB negative blood humming in his small body, crescent moon hidden under dark curls — Isabella poured me wine on the balcony.

"He will shift early," she said. "Probably at five. Alexander shifted at seven and they called him a prodigy."

"Will the Council —"

"The Council thinks Seraphina Cole died in Manhattan with $43 in her bank," she said. "Seraphina Romano has a four-year-old son with an ear infection. They don't know about the mark. They don't know about AB negative. They don't know he stopped a crane."

She looked out at the port. My port. 400 acres that now cleared $12 million a year. All under Romano.

"But Manhattan will," she said. "Next week, you fly to Manhattan. Thorne's port contract is up for renewal. You will bid against him. And you will bring Leo. It's time his father chokes on that word."

I looked at the framed $43 bank statement in Leo's nursery, glowing in the nightlight.

Seraphina Cole had left with a Greyhound ticket.

Seraphina Romano was going back with a son who had a King's mark and a crane that stopped when he was angry.

I picked up my phone and booked two first-class tickets to New York.

One adult. One child. Window seats.

And texted Liam: We're coming home.