Chapter 202

Zane POV

It was getting to the point where I couldn’t sneeze without someone commenting about it online, so it was futile to hope that the art fair wasn’t going to be internet fodder.

Officially, it was a showing of the work of first- and second-level students at Saradon Elementary. Unofficially, it was my child’s “grand appearance,” and after Grace’s performance, expectations were ridiculously high.

I would have given pretty much everything I had, if it were possible, to spare Chloe the circus. We left the car with Buddy and Danielle, and Sarah and I did our best to protect my daughters’ faces from what seemed like a thousand camera phones as we entered the art building.

It didn’t help that the other parents doubtlessly resented the fact their children’s artwork was being completely overshadowed. I had talked with the school about perhaps showing Chloe’s work at a separate affair, but they’d insisted that Saradon Elementary was home to many famous artists and that I was being a typical “overprotective” father.

The truth was, I wasn’t trying to protect Chloe as much as I was trying to ready her for the life she was going to be living. Sarah and I had worked damn hard to keep the girls’ faces off the internet, but that wasn’t going to work much longer. After today, everyone who cared about my girls were going to see their faces and see that Chloe had taken first prize not just at her level, but for the whole school.

On the positive side, Chloe would be offered an art scholarship that would basically set her up for life. On the negative side, she wasn’t quite six years old. Yes, she was an alpha. Yes, her father was the Pack Alpha.

And her uncle had been murdered. And she’d been kidnapped as a child and left to be raised by a human. Nothing in Chloe’s life made sense, and I was about to watch her become famous.

I hated it. I hated everything about it.

To keep sane, I looked at Sarah. She was resplendent. I knew she’d spent hours on her appearance, and it showed. Part of me desperately wanted to throw her over my shoulder and run away.

Saradon Elementary was an excellent school, but ultimately it was a school for pups, and it smelled like chalk and Play-Doh. We walked down a hallway lined by lockers, and Sarah’s heels clack-clacked on the tile floor.

Grace and Chloe walked in front of us as we merged into the crowd. They smiled and greeted their friends, and Sarah and I nodded and smiled at the teachers. At that moment, I couldn’t remember a single person’s name.

Sarah stepped a little closer to me as we walked and whispered, “Do you smell Play-Doh?”

I laughed, which made a few people look at us.

“If I grab Chloe and run out of here, will you watch my back?” I asked her.

“Absolutely. And I’ll have Grace in my arms.”

Chloe rolled her hand back in a maneuver I’d never seen before and scowled. “Would you two stop stressing so much? It’s just my art project.”

“And you just won the price for the whole school,” Sarah said. “Can’t we be nervous?”

“I can sing, if you think that will help,” Grace said, which startled me until I realized she was joking.

Chloe blew a raspberry.

We entered the auditorium and were led to the front row by a frantic-looking young man I would later learn from Chloe was a chief hall monitor, which was evidently some sort of school honor.

“It’s so lame,” she told me. “But yeah.”

Sarah and I sat on either side of my daughters, and soon enough the crowd settled. On stage were some adults, I presumed teachers, who sat there looking important. One of them, a beta with blue hair, waved surreptitiously at Chloe, who waved back.

“That’s Mrs. Almyer,” she told me.

“Your art teacher?”

“Yeah. She’s really great.”

I waved at her too, which made Mrs. Almyer smile.

A man stood up from the row of chairs and made his way to the podium center-stage. The crowd quieted.

“Thank you, you’re so kind” he said, which I thought was an odd way to start. I looked over at Sarah to see what she thought, and she rolled her eyes and mouthed at me, “The principal.”

“We’re here today to celebrate the accomplishments of our students, which I confess make me incredibly proud. Saradon Elementary has an excellent reputation for fostering some of the best of us, solves and humans, and I have to say this year’s class of students keeps that tradition alive.”

The first student to be honored was a math scholar, and after that was an eight-year-old human who had gotten a book published, something with dragons, and then we were treated to the school’s acting scholar, who recited Shakespeare with a depth of feeling that was truly impressive.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:

I confess, I zoned out slightly at that point. I still couldn’t understand how Scott made $20,000,000, and I had no idea who might have poisoned him. Was it some sort of business rival?

I remembered the day I found out I had a brother. I’d been excited, and then I met him.

What was it about Scott that had made me suspect him even back then? I had wanted to transform the second he walked into the room, tear his throat out with my fangs, and bay over his corpse.

I hadn’t, of course. And now someone else had killed him, slipped him poison, presumably, watched him die. And here I was at some school function that would have been enjoyable if it weren’t going to change my daughter‘s life.

A small hand slipped into mine, startling me, and I looked down to see Chloe’s beloved face.

“It will be all right, Dad,” she said.

“I would protect you from the world if I could.”

She smiled. “I know.”

“And now, I want to show you the winner of our art competition,” the principal said. “I have to admit, this is a first for us, a first-level student winning our overall prize, but I think when you see what Chloe Cavendish has made for us, you’ll all agree she deserves this honor, and more.”

The principal led us in a round of applause while Chloe’s statue was shown in a series of slides. They’d come to the poppy garden to shoot her work, and it was perfect. The dutiful applause grew ardent.

Chloe stood up then and walked on stage. The principal handed her a certificate of achievement, and then applause grew as she gave a little bow.

Then it was over, and Chloe walked back to her seat next to me. I kissed her on her forehead, and looking her bright blue eyes, I had a vision of the woman she would become, kind and lovely. I looked up at Sarah then, and her own blue eyes told me she understood.

I put an arm around Chloe and watched the rest of the ceremony making sure I didn’t actually cry.