All Chapters of Her Second Chance Alpha: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

ETHAN"Wren."I said it before I could stop myself. The name just fell out of my mouth, like it had been there waiting for the right moment to escape. Freya's eyes locked on mine, and I felt the weight of what I was about to say settle heavily in my chest."Her name is Wren," I said again, slower this time. "She runs a small clinic near the border of the White Wolf pack. The kind of place wolves go when they don't want questions asked."Freya's mouth opened, then closed again. She was waiting for me to explain, and I didn't blame her. I wasn't sure I could explain it properly even to myself."I've been there twice," I said. "Chasing leads on suppression herbs people were buying up on the black market. She's quiet. Has sharp eyes. Doesn't talk more than she has to." I shook my head, trying to line it all up in my mind. "I never thought twice about her. Not until right now, staring at these initials, matching them to a letter she once signed on a supply order.""Are you sure?" Freya ask

ETHANFreya was quiet the whole ride back. She sat with her head against the window, staring out at the dark trees blurring past, her jaw clenched, her mind working faster than she wanted to admit out loud. I recognized that silence. She was using it to protect herself. It meant she was already three steps ahead of me, planning something I wasn't going to like."We're not telling anyone about Wren," she finally said without turning her head. "I need to meet her myself first."I understood the instinct behind it. Every single person we'd trusted with a secret over the last year had either betrayed us or nearly gotten killed for knowing too much. Corin. Annie. Even Gemma had ended up hurt more than once just for knowing too much. I understood why Freya wanted to keep this one thing just between the two of us, at least for now.But something about leaving Gemma out of it felt wrong. Especially with Micah still missing.Gemma had spent the last few weeks bruised, poisoned, and lied to by

GEMMAI hadn’t said her name out loud in over twenty years. It had sat in my throat all that time like lead.Saying it now, on my own porch, in front of my son and the girl who felt more like a daughter to me than anyone born of my blood, was like ripping a bandage off a wound I’d told everybody had healed. It hadn’t healed. It had just waited.“Her name is Dahlia,” I said.Nobody moved. A moth kept bumping against the porch light, going tick, tick, tick, and I’d never hated a sound so much in my life.“She used to work in the clinic by the border,” I went on. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. “She was the best healer I ever knew. Sharp as a tack, funny, and stubborn as a mule. Before Gwyneth had her exiled for asking too many questions.”Freya’s face went white, like all the blood in her had been drained. “The clinic,” she said. “She was Wren’s mentor.”Ethan hadn’t said a word. He was looking at me the way he used to when he was ten years old and I’d promised to come to his g

ETHANThere was nothing but total darkness. Then a low hum in the walls that felt electronic.I knew what it was before my brain could even say the word. Suppression field.My wolf slammed itself hard against the inside of my ribs as if he’d smelled danger. And then he found nothing. We couldn’t shift. We had no strength or claws. All we had were two human hands, and they were scrambling around in the dark for Freya.“Freya!”“I’m here.” Her voice came from my left. Then her fingers found my sleeve and held on. She was breathing fast, but she wasn’t panicking yet.“Mom?”“I’m fine,” Gemma said from somewhere near the door. She sounded far from fine. “My cane’s gone. I dropped it.”“Stay where you are.”“Where else would I go, Ethan? I’m an old woman standing in the dark.”Even now she was cracking jokes. I almost laughed. I really did. It came up in my chest and died there.Freya’s hand slid off my sleeve. “The babies,” she said.“Freya, wait—”She was already moving. I heard her bare

FREYA Jonah was gone. I kept staring at his crib but my brain just wouldn’t accept it. The mattress was right there. The little yellow blanket with the stitched moons was right there, bunched up at one end where he always kicked it. But Jonah wasn’t. I put my hand on the sheet. It was warm. That was the part that broke me. It was still warm, like he’d been lying there a second ago, breathing, with his tiny fists next to his face the way he always slept. Like if I’d walked in one minute earlier, I could have caught him. “No,” I said. “No, no, no.” There was no sign of a fight. No window pried open with a crowbar, no dragging, no muddy footprints either. Nothing has been kicked over. Whoever took him had come and gone so fast and so quietly that even a mother’s instincts hadn’t caught it in time. I’d been downstairs, worrying about the wrong thing. I’d been in a car, arguing about who got to make the decisions while my baby was upstairs being stolen. I didn’t remember screa