Novel & Cerita The Unseen Daughter

Summer got nervous as she saw Sarah's eyes reddening. She suddenly realized something. "You've found Sienna? Why won't she donate her bone marrow to me? Why?! How dare she? We're sisters! She must save me." She added, "You two as well! I'm your daughter. How could you not save me?" Summer wanted to live, so I could understand her maniacal reaction at that moment. After all, I was like that before I died. Yes, I finally remembered how I died. I remembered it all when I saw the photo of my killer at the police station.

​ I lean against the railing, watching a car pass below, headlights splashing golden arcs across the wet street. My jaw flexes unconsciously. Something deep inside me is picking at the edges of memory, trying to connect dots that refuse to sit still. Chloe Quinn, Her eyes, Her tears, Her absence. I sink onto the couch and pick up her daughter’s file again. It’s pointless, but I do it anyway. Sophie Wells. Age six. Chest tightness. Mild arrhythmia. No father listed on the file. My chest tightens, the kind of pressure that shouldn’t be there.

My head was spinning. My father didn't just pay off a blackmailer. He found the person he thought was the blackmailer—his own best friend—and erased his entire existence. He didn't just kill Joe; he stole his life, his name, and his freedom, and dumped him in a country where he’d be a ghost forever. All to protect a secret that I—his "precious daughter"—was actually the one holding. "Get out," I told Tank. We shoved him out of the van and sped off.

A name that tasted like bitter ash on my tongue, a reminder of failure, disgrace, and betrayal. She had done the unthinkable. Ventured into the Hidden Valley. That cursed place, swallowed by dense, creeping fog and poisonous Violet Flowers—its very air thick with magic and menace. Even the bravest lost their way there, their souls slipping away into darkness. Rumors and whispers surrounded the valley, tales of ancient secrets and power that no one alive should touch. Only those who dared to defy fate went there. And my reckless daughter—blind and foolish—had stepped into its deadly embrace.

They are shaking. I am Cella Ardentis. I am twenty-two. I am the Alpha's daughter, the child of a concubine, and a clairvoyant, and the last of them. I know that. I know the nursery with the window that did not open and the long corridor with the lock on the outside. I know my father's kind voice saying that it was for my own good. I know, with the clean cold certainty of a body that has been taught it, that I must never, under any circumstances, let him find me alone. And somewhere under my breastbone there is a hollow.

And then my daughter, who had never in her life had a father, took one small step toward the man who had spent five years not knowing he was one. That was when I saw the others. Movement at the treeline, up where Zev had come through — figures, wolves and shifted humans, drawn by his howl, the pack pouring silently down through the trees to see what had brought their Alpha to his knees in the snow. Dozens of them, gathering at the edge of the clearing, and I felt every eye land on us, on me, on the impossible returned Luna and the gray-eyed child taking her first step toward the Alpha. And somewhere in that crowd of faces I couldn't yet make out, I knew — I knew — one of them was watching th

I had ironed my best dress for the evening, a plain navy thing that had been washed so many times the colour had started apologizing for itself. I picked up the tray and made my way to the kitchen when I heard them. Two women, standing near the alcove just off the main hallway, champagne flutes in hand, speaking the way people speak when they assume nobody important is listening. “---apparently, there's another daughter. Some illegitimate thing the father keeps private.” I slowed down. "Hidden for good reason, I'm sure," the second woman said, and laughed softly. "I heard she's hard to look at. Nothing like Isabella at all.”

A reporter in a red coat, talking too fast. I stood up. I don't remember doing it. "Leave," I said. She went. The door clicked. "...Alpha Sinclair has confirmed that the young woman seen here is his only daughter, Odette Sinclair, who vanished five years ago and has been in hiding ever since..." Sinclair. I knew the name. Everyone did. The oldest pack in the state, with more land than the Thornes and more money than anyone. I had sat across a table from the man himself at two separate summits and thought him a cold, careful fool.

I opened my eyes and looked back at the screen. Ariana Carter. Age: 21. Enrolled: School of Medicine. My stomach tightened. It wasn't a coincidence. A strange, dark weight settled into my chest. The girl I'd spent the last two weeks trying ...and failing....to get out of my head wasn't just my sister's innocent best friend. She was the daughter of the woman at the center of my father's deepest secret. Did she know? Was that why she looked at me with that guarded caution? Was she playing a game of her own?

Nobody has an answer. Later in the day, Darius called me. His team finds something. A hidden file. A letter written by Adrian. A letter that was never delivered. The recipient? My father. My hands shake as I read it. Because the first sentence changes everything. “Harlan, if anyone discovers the truth about your second daughter, everything you built will collapse.” My breathing stops. Second daughter. Me. The letter continues. It talks about my father’s fear. His guilt. His decision to hide my existence.