Chapter 2

Blenda POV

I shoved the gate open so hard it cracked against the fence, and my hand stayed wrapped around the metal because I couldn’t make my fingers let go.

“Blenda,” Molly said brightly. “You’re here.”

The smile fell off Jeff’s face so fast.

He set the girl down with one hand on her back, and my knees shook until I clamped my teeth together to keep them from knocking.

“What is this?” My voice came out cracked. “What’s going on?”

Molly turned toward the house. “Ruth, would you take Jess inside, please?”

A maid hurried out of the door, and the little girl took her hand but twisted around to stare at me, and

She gave me a tiny wave I couldn’t return; the door shut behind her.

“Whose kid is that?” I asked.

Molly strolled over and slid her arm through Jeff’s.

 “You know what? You’re here, and I will not stand in my yard and lie to you.”

She heaved a sigh that turned into a grin she didn’t bother to hide. “Jess is mine. Mine and Jeff’s.”

The second I heard what she said, my head started buzzing.

I couldn’t really make sense of what she meant, and I even started stumbling over my words.

“Yours? But I never saw you get pregnant. How could it be? How... and why? Why is she yours and Jeff’s?”

I looked at Molly and then Jeff. “Tell me it’s a joke. Please.”

He looked right back at me, pressed his lips together, and then said, “It isn’t. Molly and I have been together a long time, and Jess is our daughter.”

“Fuck! Are you serious?” I stared at Molly with disbelief.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Molly said, wrinkling her nose.

“It really isn’t what you think, and honestly, hearing it a day later would have been kinder.”

 “How long?” I asked.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“How long, Molly?”

Her eyes flicked to Jeff and back, and she giggled, actually giggled.

“Before your wedding. Before you two even found out you were mates.”

“Here’s the thing, Blenda,” she went on, in the gentle voice that made it all so much worse.

“Marrying you was my idea. When the bond hit at eighteen, Jeff was going to reject you, and I stopped him. Do you know what this pack would have said about the Ashfords’ adopted girl getting thrown out by her mate? They would have torn you apart and my family along with you. So I told him to accept you, marry you, and give you the title.”

She spread her hands. “A wolfless Luna is embarrassing enough, but one the Alpha rejected? You should thank me.”

A sound rose in my throat that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Why didn’t you marry him yourself, then?”

“The bond picked you, not me.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “And you were in love with him, weren’t you, Blenda, and everybody knew it? I handed you the thing you wanted most, so tell me I’m wrong.”

Yeah, I was in love with him when I was eight.

I’d never forget the day he saved me from the kidnappers. I remembered him gripping my hand so tight, running for our lives through that pitch-black forest.

Those kidnappers were right behind us with guns and flashlights, an entire group of them chasing us.

We hid together in this freezing hollow in a tree, and he took off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders. He told me if we just held on until morning, we’d make it home.

And that night, I heard a very tiny voice from my wolf; just for a moment, I thought it was because I was so scared, but the sound never came back again.

From that night on, I was in love with him. He was my hero… my forever hero.

When the bond lit up between us at eighteen, I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe because it had been him all along, and when I asked him if he remembered that night, he said, “Does it matter?” And I took that for a yes.

For five years afterward, I learned how he took his coffee, waited up for him, and swallowed it when he forgot our anniversary because he was the Alpha and busy, and underneath it all, he was still that boy.

I thought that if I kept showing up, he would finally see me, and all of it had gone to a man who was sleeping in my sister’s bed before I ever wore his ring.

“That’s enough,” Jeff said in a flat voice.

He stepped toward me, and I stepped back.

“I know this hurts, Blenda, but we don’t need to blow it up into something bigger than it is. You were always going to find out, and it doesn’t have to change anything.”

I looked at the man I had loved my whole life and at the arm Molly still held, and I felt the last thing holding me together give way.

“You’re the other woman,” I told Molly, and my voice shook.

 “You’re my sister, and you’re the other woman.”

“Blenda—”

“And you.” I turned on Jeff while the tears ran down my face.

“I loved you both, and you’ve had a daughter this entire time while I walked around that house, thanking you for every crumb?”

I wiped my face with the back of my hand and made myself meet his eyes.

 “I will not be the fool in the middle of this. I want a divorce. Right now.”