by J. L. Wilder
“Yes,” she said. She stared at the man, seeing her high cheekbones. From the woman, she’d gotten the shape of her eyes and her hair.
Kiedra flipped the photo to the back and stared at Sylvia’s handwriting until the hand holding the picture trembled. She gently laid the photograph on top of the open file cover. She sat in the chair next to Axe.
“Every time I asked Mamma what they looked like, she told me she didn’t know. The state hadn’t given her any photographs.”
“Is that the only picture in here?”
“I don’t know. I kind of freaked out when I saw it.”
Axe pushed the folder in front of Kiedra. “How about if we go through it together?”
She stared at the folder, unwilling to reach for the contents.
“She lied to me,” she whispered. She turned to face Axe. “Don’t you see? Mamma lied to me. She lied about me. For my entire life!”
Her hand shot out to push the folder away from her. “What other lies are in there?”
Axe pulled the folder back to the edge of the table.
“I don’t know. But I know you’ll make yourself crazy if you don’t find out. I be there’s an explanation in there. Mamma rarely did things without good reason.”
He grabbed Kiedra’s chair and pulled it closer so he could put his arm around her shoulders. She sighed and relaxed against him.
“You’re right. Of course, you are. But can you blame me for trying to delay one major emotional time bomb with the week I’ve had?”
Axe kissed her temple. “I don’t blame you a bit.”
Kiedra reached for the folder. She turned the pages she’d signed in the lawyer’s office face down over the photograph. The pressure in her chest eased once those names were no longer visible. The next page was Sylvia’s will.
Axe picked up the will, a sad smile coming to his lips.
“Mamma was a woman of very few words. Even her will is one line that isn’t legalese.” He lays the paper in front of Kiedra and points.
“Everything I got belongs to Kiedra Marianne Foster,” Axe read. “Can’t be any more straightforward than that.”
Kiedra shook her head. Leave it to Sylvia to make the lawyer write her will exactly as she wanted it to read. She put the will on top of the file cover and continued to turn over documents.
The next several pages were bank papers, including a statement from the previous month showing the balances in all the accounts. That one, she pushed over to Axe, who whistled low.
“Where did all of this come from?”
“I have no idea, but that’s why Hawk picked me.”
“Kiki, if he knew you had this much money, he would have made sure the Pack would accept you without question before choosing you.”
“He’s not that smart and he never thinks that far ahead.”
“For this kind of money, he’d do it. He may play stupid, but Hawk is smarter than he lets on.”
Kiedra shrugged. “I find that so hard to believe. He’s always been dumb as a box of rocks.”
“But he passed his classes in school without much struggle. He even went to the community college to get an associate’s degree in...” Axe trailed off. He sat in silence for a moment before slapping his open hand down on the table. The sharp retort of his flesh on the wood made Kiedra jump.
“What the hell?”
Axe held up a finger. “Hawk’s associate’s degree is in accounting. He’d know exactly what he needed to do. So why didn’t he?”
“Maybe he didn’t want to arouse suspicion that he knew he was going to win?” Kiedra said. Dread built slowly and bitterly in her chest.
“How would he know he was going to win?” Axe asked.
“There’s only one way he could be sure.”
Axe frowned, his brows drawing fiercely together. His face flushed before the blood drained suddenly away. He looked up to meet Kiedra’s eyes. His mirrored the mixture of disbelief and fury she felt. Together, they spoke their suspicions aloud.
“He cheated.”
AXE was up and out of his chair in less than a heartbeat. He paced the width of the kitchen in an ever-quickening pace while he ranted.
“The bastard cheated! I knew something was wrong. I was hitting him with everything I had, and he wasn’t even flinching. He should have been out cold after the third headshot. Hell, he barely even defended himself. I should have said something that night, but I didn’t want it to look like sour grapes. But now I’m sure he cheated.”
Kiedra let Axe finish his tirade. When he stopped pacing to look to her for feedback, she nodded.
“Okay, so he cheated. What does that change? What can we do? We can’t really prove it.”
He opened his mouth but then snapped it shut. He frowned. “I have no idea.”
Axe dropped into the chair he’d vacated so violently only minutes earlier.
“Maybe the council has an answer. I know they’re already reviewing something.”
“They are? What?”
Kiedra looked away, her shoulders rounding forward. “I may have mentioned to Olivia at the dress shop that Hawk used greed rather than Alpha mumbo jumbo to pick his Omega.”
“You did not!”
She peeked at him from the corner of her vision. “I was desperate. I’d just put on that dress and all I could think of was marrying him. I wanted to do something—anything—to stop the train before I got run over.”
Axe grabbed her face. His lips claimed hers with heat and strength.
“I love you!” He shouted. “God bless that snappy tongue of yours. Because you spoke up to a council member, they’re already going to be suspicious. When we tell them our concerns, they’re sure to....” He stopped there.
“They’re sure to what?”
He sat back and shook his head. “I have no earthly idea. There’s never been a situation like this that I know of.”
Something tickled at the back of Kiedra’s memory of the time she’d spent with Olivia. Something about there being another instance of something similar. Kiedra tried, but she couldn’t nail it down.
“Do you think we should call someone or just go to the Greensward ready to drop this bomb on the council?” Kiedra asked.
“Maybe we should call Roland in the morning. He’ll know what we should do.” Axe grinned and got up. “Why don’t you go through the rest of this and I’ll make us some food.”
“But I was going to cook for you!”
He kissed her again. “You finish the folder. I’m too amped up to sit still right now.”
Axe headed for the counter and started seasoning and mixing ingredients. Kiedra watched him for a few moments. She felt herself grinning in response to his enthusiasm, even if she wasn’t quite ready to share his optimism. She reached for the next pages in the folder, finding nothing too interesting. The deed to the house. The mortgage paperwork showing Sylvia had paid off the loan a few years earlier. A tax bill, which had been paid for in full for five years only a few months earlier.
Finally, there was nothing left in the folder except one more photograph—face down and blank on the back—and a sealed envelope. Kiedra turned the photo over. It was a hospital photograph of a newborn. The pink hat was the only indication of gender or identity.
Axe stepped up beside her, drying his hands on a dish towel.
“Who’s that?” he asked, his head cocked to the side to get a better look. “Is that you?”
Kiedra looked more closely at the baby in the photograph. She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I have a big freckle right here.” She pointed to the corner of her mouth. “This baby doesn’t have one. Or any freckles.”
She laid the picture, face up, on the folder and caught sight of her name, scrawled in Sylvia’s handwriting, on the sealed envelope. She picked it up. Her thumb worked over the writing. She felt the indentation left behind because Sylvia had pressed so hard with her pen. Kiedra turned the envelope over and traced a finger over the flap.
“You
gonna open that?” Axe asked.
“Yeah. It’s the last thing in here.”
Axe hands her a paring knife. Kiedra uses it to slit the end of the envelope open. She passes the knife back to Axe and then sits with the envelope in her hands, unwilling to pull the paper out of the envelope.
“Want me to leave you alone with it?” Axe asked.
Kiedra looked up at him, shaking her head. “No. Stay. I might need you.”
She took a deep breath before tapping the pages out of the envelope. They fell to the table where Kiedra smoothed them out. The letterhead on the paper was from the hospital. The date at the top of the page showed Sylvia had written this after Kiedra and Axe had left her the night before she died.
Axe returned to the stove to handle the food, leaving Kiedra alone with Sylvia’s words.
Kiki,
There is a lot I needed to tell you and I should have done it long ago, but I was selfish. I loved our life the way it was, and I didn’t want to ruin it.
You’re probably gonna be mad at me when you find that picture of your parents. I had my reasons, but now, none of them seem good enough to have kept that from you except that I was jealous. I wanted you to love me, not the angel mother and father who would never yell at you when you came home with bruises from fighting the boys. I didn’t know how to compete with the parents who could never make you go to bed early or eat your spinach because they died before you could do more than walk and feed yourself. I thought maybe you’d forget them if you didn’t have a reminder. That was wrong, and I’m sorry. Know that I did it out of love.
The money was theirs, left to you to be held in trust by your guardian. When I found out, I had Matt Reynolds make it so no one, not even me, could get to that money until I was gone. It was important to me, and I’m sure to Sarah and William as well, that once you were grown and could handle it, you shouldn’t have to struggle like we did when you were young.
This last part is the hardest for me and I hope you can forgive me. The second photograph in the lawyer’s file is your mother, Sarah. They gave me that photo after her new family picked her up from the hospital. It was all I had of my baby girl, until you came to me. Sarah’s adoptive family took good care of her and had they outlived Sarah, they would have taken you in too. They loved you. I know because they wrote to me when you were born.
Giving her up was the best life I could hope to give Sarah. I didn’t want to do it, but her father had just won the Alpha contest and chosen his high school sweetheart as his Omega. There was no way Sarah could stay. I knew I couldn’t raise her alone. Don’t blame Roland. He never knew, and better that he didn’t. Sarah proved I wasn’t the Omega. She was born of the Pack, but she wasn’t Pack. Just like you, my daughter.
I wish I could have had the courage to tell you all of this in person, but I’ve run out of time. I can feel the Reaper coming for me. Know that everything was done with love, Kiki. Everything.
Love,
Mamma
Kiedra laid the letter on the table. She forced herself to take slow, deep breaths, but her heart thundered in her chest no matter what she did. Axe turned the stove off and moved everything off the burners. He hunkered down beside Kiedra.
“Kiki? What do you need?”
She grabbed his shoulders and wrapped her arms around his neck. Axe held her. It was the only thing she could think of that might stop the trembling that ran up and down her body. She wanted to cry, to scream, to punch something. Most of all, though, she wanted that time Alice’s petty nature had stolen from her. The time to have said goodbye to Sylvia. To tell Mamma that she’d loved her. To thank her grandmother for loving her back.
Kiedra finally calmed the tremors in her body and in her heart. She let go of Axe’s neck, allowing him to stand up. She handed him Sylvia’s letter.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Read it. It’s really good news.”
Chapter Ten
The setting sun touched the edge of the horizon. The golden glow felt good to Kiedra. She closed her eyes and let the light bathe her face. Beside her, Axe drove the truck toward the Greensward. She heard him draw in a sharp breath and her eyes snapped open.
“What?” She sat up straight, scanning the road for an animal or vehicle. When she saw nothing, she looked at Axe who’s stunned expression made her look again, sure she missed something big.
“You’re...the way the light...damn. I can’t even talk. You’re so beautiful, Kiki.”
Kiedra looked at Axe, hoping he understood the “have you lost your damn mind” look she shot him. He grinned back at her.
“You’ve always been pretty, but just now you were more than pretty. Maybe it’s because I know we’re going to win this. We can’t lose. There’s no way the council would make you marry your brother.”
“Half-brother,” she said. “It’s bad enough I have to be related to that son of a bitch. Let me at least hold on to the illusion of separation.”
“Whatever you want, gorgeous.” Axe winked at her and Kiedra laughed.
Axe turned off onto the road leading to the Greensward. The lot where the Pack parked for events in the circle in the woods was full.
“Looks like we’re a little late,” Kiedra said as she got out of the truck. She wore jeans and a t-shirt, though some impulse had prompted her to bring the wedding dress with them. It hung from a hook in the backseat of the truck.
“Shall we get this over with?” Axe asked. He held out his hand. Kiedra took it and let him lead them up the path through the woods.
Firelight flickered between the trees as they approached the clearing. They could hear Hawk’s raised voice echo through the forest.
“I don’t have to answer to anyone about why I chose Kiedra as my Omega. The Alpha has no obligation to answer to anyone.”
“You’ll answer to this council,” Charlie bellowed. “Whenever and wherever we demand you do so.”
“And for the last time, boy, you’re not Alpha.” Olivia’s sharp voice brought a smile to Kiedra’s lips. “Kiedra isn’t here. You haven’t married her. The ceremony isn’t complete.”
“Perhaps what she told Olivia is right and she chose to run rather than marry a gold-digging, good-for-nothing,” Heather said.
“Or maybe I’m just late,” Kiedra said. She and Axe stepped into the clearing to the whisper of voices throughout the gathered Pack members.
Kiedra squeezed Axe’s hand and left him at the edge of the clearing. She walked straight to where the council sat together. Roland smiled up at her.
“My apologies. The day ran away faster than I thought it would.” Kiedra looked down at Hawk who was sprawled in a camp chair. He scowled up at her.
“You said you were going through with this,” he hissed. “Where’s the dress?”
“I won’t need it.”
“You changed your mind?” Hawk stood so fast that his chair went tumbling toward the fire burning in the center of the clearing. Decker moved in and snatched the chair before it fell into the fire.
Kiedra smiled her thanks. Decker winked and took the chair to the edge of the clearing where his twin and their mother waited with the Pack.
“I haven’t changed my mind, but I did come across some critical information that will make our marriage impossible.”
Hawk, standing with arms akimbo, leaned in and growled low. “There’s nothing that could make our marriage impossible except your refusal of it. Are you refusing?”
She pulled the envelope containing the letter from her back pocket and held it up. Roland saw what she was holding and sat up a little straighter.
“I’m refusing this marriage on the grounds of consanguinity.” Kiedra held up the envelope. “This is a letter from Mamma. In it, she declares that she gave birth to a child who later gave birth to me.”
Hawk snatched the envelope from Kiedra and pulled the letter out. “Consanguinity is ridiculous. I’m the only child my mother had or that my father sired. Hell, it took them twenty years to get pregnant. We�
��d all know if they had another child before me.”
“It wasn’t your mother and father, Hawk. It was only your father and Mamma.”
“No way! Dad, you didn’t cheat on mom!”
Roland stood up. He crossed to where Hawk held the letter out as though it were something filthy he didn’t want to touch. Roland took the letter from his son.
“I didn’t cheat on your mother, but...,” Roland looked at the gathered Pack. “Before the contest, Sylvia and I...we did share an evening.”
Roland handed the letter back to Kiedra. His expression was both sad and hopeful. “Please believe that I never knew, Kiki. If I had, I would have done anything I had to for your mother to be raised with the Pack.”
“Mamma wrote that she never told you.”
Hawk snatched the letter from Kiedra again. He looked at it, shaking his head as he read. “Well, I don’t believe it. I mean, this is hand-written on hospital letter head. Anyone could have written this.” He brandished the letter at the council. “Are you just going to accept that she didn’t write this herself?”
Brian took the letter from Hawk and read it, and then passed it to Charlie.
“He’s right,” Brian says. “Without proof, we can’t just take this at face value. We all know she didn’t want to marry Hawk. This could be an elaborate scheme on her part to get out of it without the Pack having to abjure either Hawk or Axe.”
Kiedra opens her mouth to defend herself, but Roland steps up.
“I was in the room when Sylvia wrote that letter. I was the one to take it to the lawyer’s office the next day.”
Heather holds the letter she just finished reading out to Roland. “You were there when she wrote this, but you didn’t speak up when Hawk chose Kiedra as his Omega?”
“I was there,” Roland said. “But I didn’t know what she wrote. She sealed it in that envelope before she handed it to me and made me swear I wouldn’t open it before I gave it to the lawyer. Had I known, of course I would have spoken up immediately.”
Hawk stood to the side, forgotten by everyone. Kiedra watched as his face contorted, twisted by the knowledge he had lost what he’d gambled everything to gain.