Chapter 195

Agnes

My knees buckled. The hallway seemed to sway around me, and for a moment, I thought I might collapse right there on the hotel carpet.

“What?” The word came out as a choked whisper.

Elijah reached out, steadying me with his hands on my shoulders. “Let’s sit down,” he murmured, guiding me to the floor. We slid down the wall until we were sitting side by side, my shoulder pressed against his, our backs against the tacky floral wallpaper of the hotel hallway.

“Thea is...” I couldn’t even finish the sentence. It was too enormous, too overwhelming to put into words.

“Our daughter,” Elijah finished, taking my hands in his. “At least, that’s what Olivia claims.”

“But how? How is that possible?” My head was spinning. “I don’t understand.”

Elijah took a deep breath. “It’s a long story. And it’s complicated.”

“Tell me everything,” I insisted. “Every detail.”

He nodded. “According to Olivia, it started about eight years ago. She was approached by a man in a suit, someone representing what she called ‘Elemental Enterprises.’”

“Elemental Enterprises?” I repeated. The name sent a chill down my spine, although I’d never heard it before.

“According to Olivia, it’s some kind of underground research facility,” Elijah explained. “The man told Olivia she had latent elemental abilities. Not active ones like yours, but the genetic potential for them. Because of this, they wanted her to breed with an Alpha. They believed that combining her latent elemental genes with an Alpha’s strength would produce a child with active elemental abilities.”

“Why?” The disgust in my voice was palpable.

Elijah shrugged. “Science, I guess? I don’t know, but they offered her an enormous sum, apparently. So she set her sights on me, since I’d just become Alpha.”

“Of course she did,” I muttered. That part, at least, tracked with everything I knew about Olivia.

“But there was a problem,” Elijah continued. “Apparently, she found out that you and I had a fated mate bond, and she took steps to keep us apart. She partnered up with Mason. Did you know they were childhood friends?”

I almost gagged from the force of the revelation. “N-No.”

“Well, they were. And she recruited him to date you, to keep you distracted and away from me. In the meantime, she got close to me,” he continued. “We became friends, although I wasn’t interested in her like that. Even so, everything was going according to plan for her until Ava interfered with your relationship with Mason. It derailed her plan.” His throat bobbed.

I leaned my head back against the wall, clenching my teeth. Of course it was all a manipulation from the start. It sounded like Mason must have actually fallen for me if he still broke up with me after Ava’s meddling, but still. It broke my heart to know that it had begun as a lie.

“And what did you do shortly after the breakup?” Elijah asked softly.

The pieces were starting to fall into place, and I pressed my hand to my head, whispering thickly, “I went to a party… That night, I was drugged...”

“Yes. Olivia had drugged my drink, planning to sleep with me while I was incapacitated, because I had declined her romantic advances. But somehow, our drinks got swapped.”

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. “So I drank your drugged drink, and then...”

“Olivia had a backup dose of the drug. She drugged my second drink when she realized the first one had gotten swapped. So we were both impaired.”

I closed my eyes, trying to remember that night. All I’d ever recalled were fragments—a strong hand on my waist, dark eyes, the feeling of rightness even through the haze of whatever drug had been in my system. It had been Elijah all along.

“And Thea...” I couldn’t even finish the thought. It was too overwhelming.

“Was conceived that night,” Elijah confirmed. “Our daughter, Agnes. Not Olivia’s.”

Tears pricked at my eyes. All this time, the child I’d been mourning, the baby I’d searched for, had been right in front of me…

“But that makes no sense,” I said, shaking my head. “The DNA tests—”

“I’m getting to that point.” Elijah sighed, his face grim. “After that night, Olivia realized her plan had gone sideways. But she wasn’t giving up. She managed to sleep with me soon after, although I have little memory of it—I was drugged again.”

Elijah’s eyes darkened as he continued. “According to her, she was taken straight to the underground science facility, where the pregnancy was monitored closely. That’s why no one ever saw her while she was pregnant; she spent the entire duration of the pregnancy there.”

He cleared his throat and went on, “Until just days before the due date. You see, Olivia had made friends with a doctor there, who discovered through a test that Olivia’s baby wouldn’t actually have elemental abilities—that they were mistaken about Olivia’s latent abilities, and she had none—and that if the head honchos found out, they’d have both the baby and Olivia executed. So she helped Olivia escape.”

I was silent, motionless. I couldn’t believe it. It felt like I was hearing the plot of a movie, not real life.

“Olivia gave birth in that cave where the bones were found. But the baby was stillborn.”

My hand flew to my mouth. Despite everything Olivia had done, the thought of her losing her child was devastating. I knew the feeling all too well, and it broke my heart for her.

“The bones we found...”

“Were her daughter’s,” Elijah confirmed. “Not Isabella’s. Not our daughter’s.” He took a deep breath and went on, “She found out, although I’m not sure how, that you—and thus Thea, or Isabella—have elemental abilities. So she took some of the drugs she’d saved from the science facility, stole Thea, and fabricated a fated mate bond with me so you couldn’t interfere.”

My mind was racing. “But the DNA tests we did on Thea... they all showed she wasn’t mine.”

“That’s where it gets even more twisted,” Elijah said, his jaw tightening. “According to Olivia, Elemental Enterprises owns the DNA testing center we used. And the doctor that helped her escape was transferred there at some point. She helped Olivia again; she falsified the results to protect Olivia’s secret. Somehow, Olivia then bargained with Elemental Enterprises to let her raise Thea until her powers came to fruition. I suspect she was grieving her stillborn child and wanted to have a family with us, even if it was all fake.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to make sense of it all. “So when I had Thea tested to see if she was my daughter...”

“The results were intentionally falsified to show she wasn’t.”

“And the bones we found in the cave...”

“Also falsified to show they were Isabella’s—your daughter’s—remains.”

My father’s cryptic warning echoed in my mind: “Do your own research before you believe anyone. Trust no one.” Had he been warning me about the falsified DNA results? How had he known?

I buried my face in my hands, overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all. Thea was my daughter. My actual, biological daughter.

Allegedly.

“How do we know Olivia isn’t lying?” I muttered, my voice muffled by my hands. “This could all be another one of her manipulations.”

Elijah sighed. “Trust me, I had the same thought. That’s why I’m not taking her word for it. I found a testing center several packs away, one that has no connections to anyone in this area. I’m going to send samples from all three of us there tomorrow, and James is already exhuming the baby bones to have tested. We’ll get definitive proof, one way or another.”

My stomach clenched at the thought of that poor baby’s bones being dug up, but I knew it was the right thing to do. We’d bury her again, ensure she was laid to rest properly. If Olivia was telling the truth, then she could be there for the second burial, too. She deserved at least that much, even if she was still a conniving monster who had done some heinous things for the sake of a paycheck.

“But Agnes…” Elijah’s voice tugged me back to reality. “I think she’s telling the truth.”

I nodded, unable to speak past the lump in my throat. I wanted it to be true, and yet part of me was afraid to believe, afraid to let myself feel the joy that was pressing against my chest. If it wasn’t true, if this was all some cruel trick...

“If she’s lying,” I whispered, “I want you to unmark her. Kill her.”

Elijah didn’t answer, which was probably for the best, because we both knew I didn’t mean it. Instead, he gently wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close.

“We’ll send the samples first thing in the morning,” he said softly. “We should know for certain by Thea’s eighth birthday, which is in just a few weeks. And if Olivia was telling the truth… Then we’ll tell Thea on her birthday.”

I nodded and leaned into him, clinging to the hope that was blossoming in my chest despite my best efforts to contain it. After so many years of searching, of grieving, could it really be true?

Could my daughter have been alive and safe in her father’s arms all along?

Could fate have brought the three of us back together against all odds?