Chapter 185

Bianca

Isaac was here. Actually here, in Silvermist, brought here by my invitation… And he was about to meet the son he’d never known existed.

Clara was waiting by the front door, her hand resting on the knife at her hip. Always prepared for a fight. Benjamin was leaning against the wall beside her, while Zane lingered near the staircase, probably hoping he could still talk me out of this.

“Where’s Callum?” I asked.

“Playing in his room,” Clara said. “I told him his daddy needed to talk to you first.”

I nodded, smoothing my hands down my sweater one more time. “Okay. Let them in.”

Clara opened the door, and I lifted my chin. Isaac stepped inside first, looking every inch the king he was in his dark jeans and button-down shirt. Behind him came Ethan, which I’d expected.

What I hadn’t expected was the third figure.

“Zelda?” I blinked in shock as Isaac’s cousin strolled into my entryway like she owned the place.

Little had changed about her over the past five years, although she seemed a little rougher around the edges. But even then, her flight attire—a crisp black jumpsuit that nipped in at the waist, a pair of perfectly polished combat boots, and her blonde hair perfectly braided over one shoulder—was still perfect.

“Hey,” she said, looking around and wrinkling her nose. “Nice place. Very… rustic.”

“What are you doing here?” I blurted out.

Zelda glanced at Isaac, then back at me. “We need to talk. Before Isaac meets his son.”

Isaac’s jaw tightened. “Zelda has some explaining to do.”

“Don’t we all,” she shot back.

The tension in the air was thick enough to choke on. Clara’s grip tightened on her knife, and Zane stepped closer to me. Isaac was supposed to come alone—I’d just suspected that he would bring Ethan anyway. Zelda was not on the list. But I held up a hand.

“Fine. We’ll talk.” I looked around at everyone. “Dining room. Clara, can you…?”

She nodded, immediately turning on her heel and striding into the kitchen.

Twenty minutes later, we were all seated around my dining table. Clara had outdone herself with a spread of roasted chicken, vegetables, and fresh bread. The smell should have been comforting, but my stomach was too knotted to eat anything.

Isaac was sitting across from me, his blue eyes fixed unwaveringly on me. Ethan was next to him, while Zelda had claimed the seat right beside me. Zane, Benjamin, and Clara filled out the rest of the seats.

“I didn’t know you knew how to cook, Clara,” Zelda said, spearing a piece of chicken on her fork and holding it up.

Clara chewed and swallowed slowly. “I picked up a few skills over the years.”

The way she looked at Clara seemed more than a little bitter. Could I blame her, though? Both Clara and I had run off without a word. We had let Zelda believe we were both gone. And we had been friends.

“So,” I said, wanting to ease some of the tension between my old friends, “Zelda, what did you want to explain?”

Zelda set down her fork and leaned back in her chair. “I figured out you were alive about three months ago.”

The room went dead silent. Even Clara stopped chewing.

“How?” Isaac’s voice was flat. But I could see the storm brewing in his eyes—thunder over the ocean.

“Please. You think I wouldn’t recognize my best friend just because she dyed her hair blonde?” Zelda rolled her eyes. “I can spot bleached hair from a mile away—honey, you need a keratin treatment.”

“So you knew,” Isaac said slowly, “and you didn’t tell me.”

“No, I didn’t.” Zelda’s chin lifted defiantly. “And I had good reason to keep it a secret, Your Majesty.”

“What possible reason—”

“Because if Bianca faked her death,” Zelda interrupted, “if she went to the trouble of staying hidden for five years, even from us, then she obviously had a damn good reason for doing it.”

Isaac’s hands clenched on the table. “She had my son. Our son.”

“And she was protecting him.” Zelda was calm. “From what, I didn’t know at the time. But I wasn’t about to drag her out of hiding until I understood why she was there in the first place.”

I stared at her with a slack jaw, equal parts surprised and grateful. So that note had come from her after all, which meant that Zelda had been the first to discover my true identity. Despite the fact that I had left her without so much as a letter, she had still gone out of her way to protect me.

Guilt quickly began to overcome the other emotions.

“So, anyway, I kept an eye on you,” she said matter-of-factly. “Made sure you stayed safe and undiscovered. Had Mel fly by every now and then to check on things.” She tilted her head. “I assume you got my note.”

“I did.” My throat bobbed. “So you were watching me for months?”

“Someone had to. You were playing a dangerous game, running for office. I was terrified someone else would figure out who you really were.” Zelda’s gaze flicked to Isaac. “Especially when this idiot started investigating ‘Ashlyn Rivers.’”

Isaac’s jaw worked. “I had every right—”

“You could have ruined everything,” Zelda snapped at him. “Do you have any idea how close you came to exposing her? To the media, to her enemies, to anyone who might want to hurt her or Callum? To her father?”

Isaac snapped his mouth shut. Zelda turned to me again and said, “If Isaac discovered your identity publicly, it would have been a disaster. So I did everything I could to throw him off the scent. Obviously, that didn’t work out so well.”

Isaac was staring at his cousin like she’d just sprouted a second head. “You made me think I was going crazy. All those times I said Ashlyn reminded me of Bianca, and you told me I was imagining things.”

“Because you were about to blow her cover.”

“She’s my wife!”

Was his wife.

The room fell silent again. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me, waiting for my response. But I was too busy trying to process everything Zelda had just told me.

She’d protected me. For months, she’d watched over me and Callum, keeping us safe without asking for anything in return. She’d risked Isaac’s anger and his trust, all to make sure I stayed hidden until I was ready to reveal myself.

“Thank you,” I murmured, looking at Zelda. “I don’t know what would have happened if—”

“Don’t get all weepy on me,” Zelda interrupted with a wave of her hand. Still perfectly manicured as always. “I’m still fucking pissed at you for running away from me, bitch.”

Despite everything, I felt my lips twitch.

A laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep in my chest, suddenly. Then Zelda started giggling, and even Ethan cracked a smile. Soon the whole table was laughing, all except for Clara, who was just watching everyone and clutching her knife. Although even her eyes glimmered with humor.

For a moment, I could almost pretend we were just old friends catching up over dinner. That there weren’t five years of pain and misunderstanding between us. That Isaac wasn’t engaged to another woman. That I wasn’t terrified of what would happen when he met Callum.

But the moment couldn’t last forever.

As dinner wound down and Clara started clearing away the plates, the reality of why we were here settled back over me. Isaac kept glancing toward the stairs, toward where he knew his son was playing. His hands were shaking slightly as he reached for his water glass.

He was nervous. The great Isaac Thorne, king of the Lycans, was nervous about meeting a five-year-old.

Finally, when the last dish had been cleared and Clara had disappeared into the kitchen, I stood up. My legs felt like rubber, but I forced myself to walk around the table to where Isaac sat. Slowly. Painstakingly. Finally, I reached him and stopped a foot away, my hands clenched into fists at my sides.

He looked up at me, and the hope in his eyes, like the sun cresting over the ocean’s horizon, nearly broke my heart all over again.

I took a deep breath and asked, “Do you want to meet your son?”