Chapter 179

Bianca

The room was in chaos.

Zelda grabbed Isaac by the lapels of his expensive suit and slammed him against the wall. Zane dove at Ethan, who had just locked the door behind him. The sound of fists connecting with flesh and bodies hitting furniture filled the air.

I backed toward the window, my eyes looking around wildly at the chaos surrounding me. This couldn’t be happening.

Five years. Five years of hiding. Five years of building a life in secret to protect my son. And in the span of weeks, it was all crumbling around me.

Goddess, I was a fool. A bloody fucking fool. I should have known better than to participate in the election, but I had been overly confident and too focused on taking down my father to think about the consequences…

Ethan held up his hands as he approached me, expertly dodging Zane’s attempt to grab him. “We just want to talk.”

Behind him, Zelda had somehow managed to tackle Isaac to the floor. The coffee table overturned as they went down together, sending a vase crashing to the ground. Glass shattered across the hardwood. Isaac struggled beneath Zelda, but she had him pinned, one knee on his chest, her hands gripping his wrists.

“I told you to leave her alone!” Zelda shouted, slamming his wrists into the floor. “You should have listened to me! You never fucking listen to me!”

“She’s my wife!” Isaac twisted in Zelda’s grip, facing her now, then flipped them so she was pinned down. “You knew she was alive and you didn’t tell me!”

“Because you’re a fucking idiot!” Zelda kneed him directly in the groin, making him cry out in pain. “You couldn’t be trusted! I knew you would freak out before she was ready and it would ruin everything!”

Ethan took advantage of my distraction to step closer. “Bianca, please. Just listen—”

Before he could finish, Zane appeared beside me. In one fluid motion, he grabbed a decorative vase from a side table and smashed it over Ethan’s head. Ethan stumbled backwards, cursing, and Zane shoved him away from me.

“Stay the fuck away from her,” Zane snarled.

My mind raced, looking for a way out. The door was locked, and Ethan was between us and it. But the window was always an option.

I raced for the window, my hands shaking so badly that it made my fingers fumble with the lock. Finally, I managed to unlock it and fling the window open, sticking one leg through.

I had to get out of here. Had to get back to Silvermist, back to Callum. Had to call off this entire stupid fucking campaign and go back into hiding—

But then my gaze met Isaac’s, and my heart stopped beating.

He had stopped struggling beneath Zelda, and his eyes were now locked onto mine. Those blue eyes that had once looked at me with such love, now wide with shock and… hope?

Yes. Hope. Desperate, wild hope that made him look so much like the man I’d fallen in love with five years ago. The playboy prince who had swept me off my feet. The man who had once looked at me like I was his entire world.

Not the cold, calculating king who had tried to have me killed.

Not a stormy ocean, but rather a sunlit sea, coral reefs catching the light just beneath the surface.

Isaac. My Isaac.

My wolf surged forward. “He’s our mate!” she cried. “Tell him who we are! You can’t run anymore!”

I gripped the windowsill, struggling to restrain myself against my wolf’s urgency. It took every bit of self control I had not to rush over to Isaac right now and let him mark me.

I wanted it. Wanted him. Goddess, how badly I fucking wanted him.

But I refused to move. Dug my fingernails so hard into the windowsill that pain jolted up my arms from the bite of the wood.

“Stop it,” I scolded my wolf. “He tried to kill us.”

“No! Look at him!” my wolf pleaded. “Does he look like a man who wanted us dead? He’s our mate! Stop this!”

I looked again. Isaac was still staring at me, tears shimmering in his eyes now. He looked… broken. Lost. Like a boy who’d had his heart ripped out.

I couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe it was my wolf’s doing, maybe it was my own, but before I knew it I had stumbled away from the window, nearly collapsing to the floor in my haste.

“ENOUGH!”

The room went silent at the sound of my voice. Zelda froze, one hand gripping a fistful of Isaac’s hair while the other was reeled back to slap him. Zane and Ethan paused mid-grapple, Ethan with his arm around Zane’s in a headlock while Zane grunted and strained against the hold.

All eyes turned to me.

I took a deep breath. This was it. No more running. No more hiding. I reached for my hat, ready to pull it off, to confirm their suspicions and finally show them all who I really was.

But before I could, there was a click as the door unlocked from the outside.

We all froze, snapping to attention as a servant in a crisp uniform stepped into the room holding a key. The poor man stopped short, eyes widening as he took in the scene.

Zelda still had Isaac pinned to the floor, her elegant evening gown hiked up to her thighs. Isaac’s hair was sticking up in all directions, his tie undone. Ethan still had Zane in a headlock, and both men whipped their heads up to look at the servant.

And I was standing in the middle of it all, glasses missing, hat slightly crooked, looking like I’d been caught in the middle of a storm.

The servant blinked rapidly. “What is going on here…?”

For a moment, none of us spoke. Then Zelda released Isaac and stood, offering the servant a dazzling smile as she smoothed down her dress.

“A raccoon,” she said confidently. “It got in through the window.”

The servant’s eyebrows shot up. “A raccoon?”

“Massive creature,” Ethan agreed, releasing Zane. “Vicious. Nearly took my eye out.”

“I’ve never seen a raccoon in the Presidential Palace before,” the servant frowned.

Isaac stood up, brushing glass off his suit. “Well, now you have. Or rather, you haven’t, because we chased it away. Out the window. Just now.”

The servant looked at the open window, then back at us. “The window.”

“Yes,” I said, scooping up my glasses and quickly putting them back on, even though they were fucking cracked now and the frame was bent. “It was… quite the spectacle.”

The servant surveyed the destroyed room once more, then shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you all to leave. This room is now off-limits until it can be cleaned and repaired.”

“Of course,” Zelda said sweetly. “We were just on our way out.”

We filed out of the room like scolded children, the servant watching us with narrowed eyes as we passed. Once in the hallway, I immediately turned to leave, desperate to get away before any more confrontations could occur.

But a hand caught my wrist, stopping me. I looked up to see Isaac staring down at me, blue eyes still fixed on me with that same desperate hope.

“Is it really you, Bianca?” he whispered.

Zane stepped forward protectively. “Let her go, Thorne.”

But my wolf was howling again, “Tell him! Tell him! He’s ours!”

And for once, I couldn’t silence her. The pull was too strong, the bond between us too powerful to deny any longer. Five years of running, of hiding, of pretending to be someone else—and all it took was one look from those goddamn perfect blue eyes to break my resolve.

“Yes. It’s me.”

Isaac’s eyes widened, tears shimmering in their depths like the sun glinting off the ocean. His grip on my wrist slackened.

“Bianca…”

Suddenly, a cold voice cut through the air behind us. “I heard there was a commotion.”

I turned to see Oliver Ravenwood, my father, standing at the end of the hallway with Mason by his side.