Seraphina’s POV 1


    The silence in Damien’s office stretched between us like a taut wire, heavy with unspoken secrets and questions that I wasn’t sure I


    wanted answered. He stood with his back to me, staring out at the harbor through the floor-to-ceiling windows, his shoulders rigid with


    tension.


    “Damien,” I said softly, my voice barely above a whisper, “you’re scaring me. What’s this about?”


    He turned slowly, and the expression on his face made my breath catch. There was pain there, and something that looked almost like


    hope, but also a terrible intensity that made my wolf A whimper in my mind.


    “I need you to think back, Sera,” he said, his voice rough and strained. “Five years ago. The night before your eighteenth birthday.”


    My heart stopped. Literally stopped beating for what felt like an eternity before it resumed with painful, erratic thuds against my ribs. “What… what did you say?”


    “The Moonlight Grand Hotel,” he continued, his silver-blue eyes never leaving my face. “There was a masquerade ball, and you were wearing a green dress that matched your eyes.”


    The blood drained from my face so quickly that I had to grip the back of the chair in front of me to keep from swaying. “How do you… how could you possibly know that?”


    Damien took a step closer, his movements careful and deliberate, like he was approaching a wounded animal that might bolt at any moment. “Because I was there, Sera. I was the man you spent that night with.”


    “No.” The word came out as barely a whisper, denial automatic and desperate. “No, that’s not possible. You don’t understand-I would


    have known. I would have recognized you when I first saw you in this office.”


    “Would you?” he asked gently, his voice filled with a kind of aching tenderness that made my chest tight. “We both wore masks that


    night. We never saw each other’s faces clearly. And five years is a long time.”


    My legs gave outpletely, and I sank into the chair behind me, my mind reeling as memories I’d tried so hard to suppress came flooding back. The mysterious man with the silver-blue eyes. The way he’d made me feel safe and desired and beautiful for the first time in my life. The gentle way he’d touched me, the passionate intensity of our connection.


    Something cracked in Damien’s expression, and he was suddenly kneeling in front of my chair, his hands hovering just inches from mine as if he wanted to touch me but wasn’t sure he had the right.


    “Adrian is my son,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Our son, Sera. He carries my bloodline. He’s not just some random child you’re raising-he’s a Nightshadow. He’s the heir to everything I’ve built.”


    Tears began streaming down my face, and I couldn’t seem to make them stop. “But how… I don’t understand. If you knew, if you suspected, why didn’t you say anything before now?”


    Damien’s face twisted with self-recrimination. “Because I’m an idiot,” he said bitterly. “Because I let desperation and hope cloud my


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    judgment. When Anna showed up with my pendant, iming to be the woman from that night, I wanted so badly for it to be true that I ignored all the signs that she was lying.”


    “Your pendant?” I looked at him in confusion, swiping at my tears with the back of my hand. “What pendant?”


    For a moment, Damien looked surprised. Then his expression shifted to something that was almost relief mixed with heartbreak.


    “Of course you don’t know about it,” he said softly. “You were asleep when I left. I had to go-there was an emergency with the pack


    territories that required my immediate attention. But I didn’t want to wake you, and I didn’t want you to think I was just abandoning you


    after what we’d shared.


    He reached into his pocket and pulled out something that caught the light from the windows-a golden pendant in the shape of a wolf,


    intricate and beautiful, hanging from a delicate chain.


    “I left this on your nightstand,” he continued, his thumb tracing over the pendant’s surface. “It was my way of telling you that what


    happened between us meant something to me. That you meant something to me. I hoped… I hoped you would keep it, and maybe


    someday you would try to find me.”


    My heart shattered into a million pieces as I stared at the pendant. “I never saw it,” I whispered, my voice breaking on the words.


    “Damien, I swear to you, I never saw it. I woke up alone, and you were gone, and there was nothing left behind. I looked everywhere,


    thinking maybe you’d left me a note or your number or something, but there was nothing”


    The pain in his eyes was unbearable. “Anna,” he said quietly, the name like a curse on his lips. “She was working as a cleaningdy at the


    hotel. She must have found it when she came to clean the room.”


    “All these years,” I said, the tearsing harder now, “I thought… I thought you just didn’t care. I thought it was just a meaningless


    hookup for you, and I was just some naive girl who’d read too much into it.”


    “Never,” Damien said fiercely, finally reaching out to cup my face in his hands, his thumbs gently wiping away my tears. “Sera, what we


    shared that night was the most meaningful experience of my life. I’ve been searching for you for five years. Five years of hoping and


    praying and driving myself crazy wondering if I’d ever see you again.”


    “I tried to find you too,” I confessed, leaning into his touch despite the emotional chaos in my chest. “Not at first-l was too hurt and


    confused. But after Adrian was born, when he started developing your eyes, I wondered… I hired private investigators, I went back to the


    hotel, I did everything I could think of. But there were no records of the guests from that night, and without your name…


    “We were both searching for each other this whole time,” Damien said wonderingly, his voice filled with a mixture of joy and devastating


    sadness. “If Anna hadn’t stolen that pendant, if you had found it that morning…”


    “We would have found each other years ago,” I finished, my voice barely audible.


    “We found each other,” he agreed, his voice rough with emotion.


    For a moment, we just stayed like that-forehead to forehead, breathing the same air, letting the reality of our connection sink in. Then Damien’s hands slipped from my face to tangle in my hair, and his lips found mine in a kiss that was desperate and tender and full of five years’ worth of longing.


    This kiss was different from the ones we’d shared before. There was no pretense now, no barriers, no uncertainty about what we meant


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    to each other. This was recognition-soul calling to soul, mate finding mate atst.


    When we finally broke apart, both of us were breathing hard, and there were fresh tears on my cheeks.


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