**Jade POV**I had just broken the link with Elliott when I saw Emma passing through my bedroom door looking sleepy and defeated.Juliet rose from the table where we were eating and came bouncing up to Emma. “Hi! I’m Elliott’s sister! What’s your name?” She asked cheerily, not feeling the vibe of the room at all.“Uh, hi. I’m Emma. It’s nice to meet you, I’m sorry if I seem upset I just—”“Oh, honey I know! Please, come join us. We’ve been waiting to talk to you. Call me Juliet!” She said, linking arms with a bewildered-looking Emma and steering her toward the seat next to me before taking hers across from her.Emma slumped into her chair, looking dejected and beyond hope. “Where should I start?”“Oh! The beginning if you don’t mind! These two didn’t want to share the details with me unless you said it’s okay and I don’t want to influence you either way but I’m something of an expert at creating my own problems so I may be able to help.” Juliet said seriously and Emma started to laugh
**Elliott POV**“Care to explain what just happened?” I turned to our guest, knowing exactly what the turn of events pointed to but a bit weary of letting this stranger chase after Emma. I needed to distract him until Jade had the opportunity to speak with her friend and make sure she was actually okay with speaking to this man and in the right frame of mind to do so.“That’s Emma; she’s my mate,” Logan said with an oddly unsurprised look which didn’t make sense since the last time he would’ve seen her, both of them would’ve been far too young to know they were mates. “I always suspected. I’ve been drawn to her since we were kids.” He answered the question I hadn’t asked out loud.I had to think back to what my mother had said about Jade and I, that we’d always seemed drawn to each other since the first time we visited after she was born. I tried to sift through my own personal memories to see if I could remember how certain I was that she was my mate and realized that I had always th
**Jade POV**“Emma?” I called gently, tapping lightly on her door. No answer. “Come on, Em. It’s just Cleo and I. We know what’s wrong and we just want to talk.” I tried to turn the doorknob but it was locked. I put my ear up against the door and heard light snoring. She was asleep. Cleo held a finger up, running down the hall to my office and returning with pen and paper. She scribbled a quick note before showing it to me.“Come to Jade’s room when you wake up. We just want to talk.” I nodded in approval of the note, and Cleo slid it under the door. “Now what?’ She asked.“Brunch?” I asked, knowing we’d only be a few minutes late and could have the benefit of some quality time getting to know Elliott’s sister without the group. Butterflies swarmed in my stomach at the thought of meeting her acquaintance without Emma or Elliott as security blankets, but I had the next best thing: my brand-new sister.Cleo smiled and linked arms with me and we headed for the elevator.I was fidgeting w
**Emma POV**I had to get out of there. I didn’t know what else to do besides bolt. Taking a moment to silently thank Elliott for giving me my own space just down the hall, I crashed through the door and locked it. What had just happened? My heart was racing; I didn’t know how to make it slow or calm down. I’d looked into a pair of striking green eyes and now everything was somehow different.“He’s our mate, you dumb bitch!” Leona, my wolf who had even less qualms about telling it like it was than I did, purred in my mind.“I don’t think he’s out mate, he’s too hot,” I confessed out loud. It was just her and I, why have a silent conversation? Especially when I was getting the sense that I’d need to vent my frustration through yelling.“We’re hot!” Leona retorted, offended I didn’t agree.“Not as hot as him, or as Jade or Cleo!” I yelled back. “He met them first, he’s probably so disappointed he didn’t get one of them! He’s going to reject us.”“I think you’re wrong. You didn’t even gi
**Jade POV**Jasper nodded slowly; his eyes still illuminated in an eerie way. “We hid you and ran to help Mom and dad. We thought we’d be able to get back to you. We thought wrong. Jasper didn’t know what to do, he was so afraid. I was still dormant, but I managed to find the strength to take over and carry him through.” He was looking stoically only at me as if we were the only two people in the world. I could sense Cleo’s eyes on me, could hear her sobs, but somehow, I couldn’t break this eye contact.“We were on our way up to the alpha floor when we saw Laurel. We grabbed her and told her exactly where to find you. She tried to make us leave with her, but we ran away before she could catch us. We had to help mom and dad. We couldn’t just leave them to die.” He sounded robotic, devoid of emotion, but I knew Axel had come forward to protect Jasper from having to speak through this new memory. While Axel seemed calm and in control, I could only conclude that Jasper was everything but
**Jade POV**“What do you mean? She was the beta’s daughter?” I asked Logan as more of a question than a statement, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he was telling the truth. It was like it had all hit me at once.Chasing each other through the hallways of the packhouse, making flower crowns with our mothers in the forests, playing princesses, sleepovers, hide and go seek when Elliott and his family would visit, her having a silly crush on my older cousin when he moved to the—I looked to Elliott whose eyes looked almost the size of golf balls. What was he thinking? Was he remembering things too?“I think he’s telling the truth.” Elliott linked me and I nodded slowly, trying to refocus.“Well, let’s move past that part for now.” Elliott offered diplomatically. “We’ll circle back at the end of the story.”“Okay,” Logan sniffed, looking positively bereaved as if he were the one who’d done all of this and not his father. “Well, I looked for Emma and her parents, but all I saw was—wa