Chapter 343
Chapter 343
before she even fully rolled the window down. (1)
The sharp green eyes. The sleek dark hair that was always pulled back into a neat bun with a claw clip. The way she smiled at me as if she’d been expecting to find me stranded in a ditch on a back road at night, like it was all part of a plan she’d made earlier in the week.
Knowing her, she probably had.
“Fiona,” I said flatly by way of greeting.
“Alpha Gideon.” She looked past me at the car and tilted her head. “Looks like you’re in a bit of a predicament p>
“I’m aware p>
She put the car in park and got out even though I never asked her to. As usual, she was wearing stilettos and a tight-fitting black dress under a designer trench coat. I had never seen Fiona in anything casual.
That was her father’s doing, of course. She was only seventeen, going on eighteen, but she hadn’t been allowed to act her age as long as I had known her. She always had to look a decade older, a decade wiser, all in her pursuit of me. 1
I watched her crouch down and look at the wheels with a small flashlight. Tegan glanced at me from the other side of the car. I shot him a look, and he remained quiet.
“You’ve got traction on the front left,” she said, straightening. “If we hook a line to the rear and pull at the right angle, it’ll come out.” She smiled. “I’ve got a tow strap p>
“Of course you do,” I muttered. She didn’t hear me over the rain.
Two years. Two years of this.
It had started in the eighth year after Avery disappeared.
I remembered the day Alpha Matthew showed up at Nightwolf like it happened yesterday. Eight years of searching and I’d found nothing. My pack was growing impatient. Word was spreading. Other packs were looking at me like I was a potential candidate for absorbing into their territories, stripping me of my title and power as if I were an old wolf with no dignity left.
Alpha Matthew arrived with a small escort and no prior notice. He was large, well-dressed, with silver in his hair and a lot of authority for a male his age. He walked right into my study like he owned the place and sat down across from me.
“Alpha Gideon,” he said, tenting his fingers, “I have a proposal for you p>
He told me he had been watching Nightwolf for some time. He knew I was on the rocks, that my pack was losing faith and respect in me, that my alliances were starting to crumble because other Alphas feared that I was no longer reliable.
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Chapter 343
+25 Bonus
Then, he made his offer.
He proposed an alliance. Resources. Money.
I didn’t care about that, but when he said he could help me find Avery, my interest had been piqued.
But there were strings attached.
He had a daughter. At the time, she was sixteen years old. Her name was Fiona, and he wanted her to be my Luna.
I remembered feeling a little sick to my stomach while he explained the terms. She was too young now, so the official engagement would have to wait for another two years. But her father intended to arrange it regardless, so that when she turned eighteen, the agreement would already be in place.
The title of Luna, and all future heirs, would belong to Fiona.
I’d told him I already had a mate. And if he was offering to help me find Avery, then why would he expect me to marry his daughter?
What Matthew said next both surprised and infuriated me. He said that if Avery was somehow still alive and I managed to find her, he and Fiona would not stand in the way of the mate bond. But the arrangement still stood. Avery would not get the title of Luna. Fiona would. If Avery and I ever had a child, they would not be an heir. All of that was reserved for Fiona.
Essentially, Avery, the woman I loved, the woman I’d been pining after for eight years, would become a mistress while a fucking teenage girl became my Luna.
The whole thing made my skin crawl. The girl was sixteen. I was in my thirties. I refused right away, but Matthew just smiled and told me that he would return in two years for my final verdict. I told him that my final verdict was no.
He, of course, said that that might change.
And then he left.
I hoped to avoid him, but in the two years that passed, I saw that girl more often than I would have liked. She just kept… showing up.
Every pack event I attended, she was there. Every trade summit, every gathering, fucking everything.
She inserted herself into every scenario I was in. She was always watching me with those sharp eyes that were far too much like her father’s, always trying to strike up a conversation, always trying to be seductive despite the fact that she hadn’t even developed a woman’s body yet.
I tried not to blame Fiona. She was just a teenager; her father was the creep to blame. I knew he was putting her up to all of it, pulling the strings, making her act beyond her years for an older man who would never agree to marry her.
Now, she was about to turn eighteen, which meant that she was coming around even more often. Like
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right now. Fucking following me like the plague.
Tegan attached the other end of the strap to the hitch on Fiona’s car while I got back into the driver’s seat. It took two tries, but on the second pull the wheels caught and the car lurched up out of the ditch and back onto the asphalt. I sat there for a moment and let out a long breath.
Unfortunately, Avery would be long gone by now. I’d have to try to track her down in the human lands. But at least she was alive. That was all I could have hoped for.
When I climbed out of the car again, Fiona was already unclipping the strap from my car. She looked up
and beamed at me.
“So,” she said, strutting over to me, “since we’re both out, and it’s raining, I was thinking… There’s this restaurant close to here. We could get out of the rain, rest a little, maybe even p>
“Fiona.” I turned to her. “I found her p>
Her face fell. I didn’t have to say Avery’s name for Fiona to know exactly who I was talking about. Everyone and their mother knew exactly who I had been looking for these past ten years.
“O-Oh,” she said, forcing her smile back into place.” And is she p>
“She’s alive p>
I watched as her face fell again. It hurt a little because I still couldn’t blame Fiona for anything. She was just a kid who had been manipulated by her father. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I had to be honest.
“Fiona,” I said slowly, gently, “I’m not going to marry you. I have to get my mate back p>
She stared at the asphalt for a long time. I could see her smile quivering, like she was battling with a frown. The smile eventually won, but when she looked up at me, her eyes were wet, and it wasn’t from
the rain.
“Well,” she said, “I hope I get a chance to meet her soon p>
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