69 Chapter 69
69 Chapter 69
Damien’s POV 1
By the time we reached my estate, the night had settled into that deep, quiet darkness thates in the hours before dawn. The house loomed before us, all stone and shadow, its windows dark except for the security lights that automatically illuminated our path.
“Thank you for the hospitality,” Caleb said, extending his hand with genuine warmth. “And for the ride. That was… illuminating”
“More than you know,” I replied, shaking his hand briefly. The anger I’d felt earlier had transformed into something else entirelya€”a
mixture of hope and dread that sat in my chest like a living thing.
“Guest room is second door on the left upstairs,” I told him. “There should be everything you need.”
Caleb nodded and disappeared into the house, his footsteps echoing briefly in the marble foyer before fading as he climbed the stairs. I
stood in the entrance hall for a long moment, staring up at the chandelier that cast prismatic shadows across the walls.
Everything Caleb had said kept circling through my mind like a relentless tide. The description of the woman from that nighta€”emerald
eyes, dark hair, petite build, that underlying strength. It was Sera. Every detail matched perfectly.
I made my way to my study, knowing sleep would be impossible. The room felt hollow despite its rich furnishings, the leather-bound
books and expensive art doing nothing to quiet the storm in my head. I poured myself three fingers of whiskey and settled into my chair,
staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the city lights twinkling below.
*Sera.*
Her name echoed in my mind like a prayer, like a curse. How could I have been so blind? The mate bond I’d felt the moment I saw her in
my office, the way my wolf Alex had recognized her immediately it all made sense now. She wasn’t just my fated mate by some cosmic
coincidence. She was the woman from that night, the mother of my child, the missing piece of my soul that I’d been searching for across
five long, empty years.
And Adrian. God, Adrian with his silver-blue eyes that matched my own, his natural charisma that drew people to him like moths to
me.
I drained my ss and immediately poured another. The whiskey burned, but it was nothingpared to the fire in my chest.
How had the pendant ended up in Anna’s hands? The timeline made sense nowa€”Anna working as a cleaningdy at the hotel, finding
the pendant after I’d left in such a rush for that emergency pack meeting.
And Sera… Sera had probably never even seen it. She’d been asleep when I left it on her nightstand, unconscious from exhaustion and
the intensity of what we’d shared. 1
Five years. Five fucking years we’d been in the same city, breathing the same air, and I’d been too blind to recognize what was right in front of me. Worse, I’d hired the woman who’d stolen our chance at finding each other sooner, given her a position of trust based on a
lie.
The irony was bitter enough to choke on.
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69 Chapter 69
I pulled out my phone and scrolled to Sera’s contact information. My thumb hovered over the call button. What would I say? How could I
exin that I was the father of her child, that I’d been searching for her for years, that every moment we’d spent together had been building toward this revtion?
No. Not like this. Not over the phone in the middle of the night when she was probably sleeping peacefully in her small apartment, Adrian curled up in his bed down the hall. She deserved better than a rambling confession delivered through a device.
Instead, I opened myptop and began reviewing everything I knew about Sera Knight. Her employment file, her address, her schooling records. Looking for any trace of the woman I’d held in my arms that night, any hint of the connection I’d felt.
There wasn’t much. She’d appeared on official records about five years ago when she’d moved to Silver Moon Harbor, pregnant and
alone. Before that, there were scattered mentions of a Seraphina Knight from a small town called Whispering Valley, but the trail grew
cold quickly.
Dawn was painting the sky pink and gold by the time exhaustion finally imed me. I fell asleep in my chair, still fully dressed, with my
The sharp buzz of my phone dragged me from uneasy dreams. Lucas’s name shed on the screen, and I answered immediately despite
the crick in my neck from sleeping in the chair.
“Tell me you have something,” I said without preamble.
“Good morning to you too, sunshine.” Lucas’s voice carried that slightly manic edge he got when he’d been up all night working on
something important. “And yes, I have something, though I’m not sure how useful it’s going to be.”
I straightened in my chair, suddenly fully awake. “What did you find?”
“First, the bad news. The hotel’s digital storage system had a massive failure about three years ago. Most of the older footage was
corrupted orpletely lost. What we managed to recover is… patchy at best.”
My heart sank. “And the good news?”
“The good news is that I’ve got a guy who specializes in data recoverya€”the kind of guy who can pull deleted files off aputer that’s
been through a blender and struck by lightning. He managed to piece together a few minutes of footage from the hallway outside your
room that night.”
“Send it to me. Now”
I went to the office immediately. The video file was small, barely two minutes of grainy, ck-and-white footage. I hit y and leaned
forward, squinting at the screen.
The hallway was empty for the first thirty seconds, just the familiar perspective of a security camera mounted high on the wall. Then a figure appeared in the frame, moving slowly down the corridor with a cleaning cart.
The person was clearly wearing a hotel uniform, and even through the poor quality of the video, I could make out the distinctive blonde hair and the stocky build that screamed “Anna.” She stopped outside what I knew was my room, fumbling with her keycard for several seconds before the door opened,
The timestamp showed she’d entered at 6:23 AM, roughly two hours after I’d left for the emergency pack meeting,
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69 Chapter 69
I watched her emerge twenty minutester, the cleaning cart lighter than before but with something clutched in her hand that caught the hallway’s fluorescent lights. Even through the grainy footage, the golden glint was unmistakable.
My pendant.
She looked around quickly, as if checking to make sure no one was watching, then slipped whatever she was holding into her uniform pocket and continued down the hall with her cart.
The video ended there, cutting to static.
My wolf Alex was snarling in my mind, demanding blood, demanding justice. The rage that built in my chest was so intense it made my
vision blur around the edges.
I was still staring at the frozen final frame of the video when I heard the familiar click of high heels in the hallway outside my office. A momentter, my door opened without a knock, and Anna swept into the room like she owned it. 1
“Good morning, darling,” she purred, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. She was wearing a dress that was at least two sizes too small and a shade of pink that could be seen from space, her blonde hair teased into what could generously be called a style.
She perched herself on the edge of my desk, crossing her legs and leaning forward to give me what she probably thought was a seductive view of her cleavage.
“I missed youst night.” she continued, trailing one finger along the edge of my desk.
I stared at her, marveling at the sheer audacity of her performance.
“Anna,” I said quietly, my voice so level and controlled that Alex whimpered in my mind.
“Yes, sweetheart?” She batted her eyshes and tilted her head, probably thinking she looked coquettish rather than deranged.
“Get out of my office.”
The change in her expression was instantaneous. The fake sweetness evaporated, reced by confusion and the first hints of panic.
“What? Damien, honey, what’s wrong? Did I do something toa€””
“Get. Out.
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