LOGINOne More Day of Secrets"Mom, are you going to tell me who that lady was?" Kael asked as we drove out of the grocery store parking lot."Not right now, Ash." I was trying very hard to stay calm, and I definitely couldn't explain to him that he had just met his aunt for the very first time. Luckily, he stopped asking and became quiet, like many teenagers do. It let me sit with my own anger during the whole drive back. When I parked the car in the garage, he took a few bags and walked loudly into the house, leaving me to get the rest of the stuff."Great," I said quietly to myself while closing the back of the SUV. "Really fucking great." Now my son is angry. It was all because I was keeping secrets from him. We had been back in town for less than two hours, and I was already feeling bad about it.In the kitchen, the bags of groceries were sitting on the counter. Kael had already gone to his room. A part of me wanted to go in there and tell him to get out here to help me put the food
She sighed and dropped into the chair facing me. “I didn’t question it. Honestly, I was still shocked about his death. I wasn’t thinking about anyone else. I’ve been gone for a long time. Long enough not to see how bad things had gotten. Orion, Dad was only fifty-seven when he died. That’s not old at all. People said he was drinking a lot, and he even gained weight, which is strange for a shifter. I should have talked to you about Nikolai and the others earlier, but I forgot.” “Maybe he spent all the pack money on alcohol,” I said, half-joking. “Do you even know how much alcohol it takes to get a wolf drunk?” she said. “If he kept drinking the way he did after Mom died, you might actually be right.” I made a low sound, unsure. Even if that was true, it still didn’t explain how so much money was gone. Someone should have been here to manage things. That guilt I felt when I first heard about my father’s death came back. Maybe if I hadn’t left years ago, things would have been differ
Stacks of forms, spreadsheets, and bank papers were spread across the desk in front of me. All of them showed the same thing. The pack was in serious trouble. When they called and begged me to come back after my father died, part of me thought they just wanted an easy plan for a new alpha. No need to struggle with choosing someone when there was already one in the family line. But now I could see they didn’t just want an easy change, they were desperate for help.Somehow, my father had put the pack into huge debt. There was barely enough money left to keep things running. Some accounts were even below zero. Even the investments and stocks he had built over the years were gone. Everything had been taken out.I threw one of the papers aside, and it spun through the air before falling to the floor. None of this made sense. I had been back for almost two months, and still couldn’t figure out where the money went. There were no signs of big spending in the receipts. No expensive cars or va
We didn’t unpack and went straight to the store after taking everything out of the car. Kael spent the drive looking around the town. I was happy to see a new park had been built. It had a playground, a small baseball field, and, to Kael’s excitement, four basketball courts.“I can walk here,” Kael said. “It’s only about a mile from the house. Is that okay?”Pinecrest Valley was a small, safe town, at least it used to be. Nothing I saw made me think that had changed.“That should be fine. Do you want to go play basketball later?”He shrugged in a casual way, like most teenagers do. I understood it as, “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”The grocery store was near the center of town. It was small, but it had everything we needed. Once inside, Kael grabbed a cart and started filling it with chips, cookies, and other junk food.“You know we also need fruits and vegetables, right?”He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”We turned into the canned food aisle, and that’s when my day got even worse. A
I threw my engagement ring into the toilet, and then we left. Before getting into the car, I blocked Travis’s number. In less than a day, my life had completely changed.Now we were on the worst road trip ever, heading toward a future I never planned. Kael, however, was trying to stay positive.“Is Aunt Aria going to be there when we arrive?” he asked as we took the exit to Pinecrest Valley.She wasn’t really his aunt, but he had called her that since he was a baby, and Aria and I both loved it.“She’ll be at work, but she’ll come over as soon as she can,” I said.“Cool. I miss playing with Lila,” he said, resting his head against the window.Lila was Aria’s one-year-old daughter. My best friend had gone through a lot. Losing her husband in a car accident just six months after having a baby was one of the hardest things she had faced. Compared to that, my problem with Travis felt smaller. She had moved back home to be close to her mother, who wanted to help with the baby.I hadn’t bee
In just a few seconds, everything in my life flipped completely. It felt like my world had been turned upside down, shaken hard, and then thrown away. I had a son? Was this really happening?So many thoughts and emotions rushed through my head at once. How could I have walked away from Elara? I had left her to raise my child alone for fifteen years. And Farrah had lied to both of us, which made everything worse. Why would my own sister lie? Why?“Okay, Mom? I know you told me to go to my room, but—”“Oh my God, Kael, what did I say?” Elara snapped, placing her hands on her hips. She always did that whenever she was angry.The boy kept looking at both of us, thinking hard, his eyes moving between his mother and me. Every time he looked at me, it felt strange—like I was staring at myself from twenty years ago. There was no way to deny it, no way to hide it. The kid was mine.Then I noticed the black eye on his face, and the bruise on Elara’s cheek. Where did those come from? Who did tha







