Chapter 184
Blake
Jasper's hands flew up in a defensive gesture, his head shaking rapidly enough that his unwashed hair flew around his face. "Yes! Yes, exactly! I know she's not dead! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply—I just meant she shouldn't be going through this kidnapping, shouldn't be Court's prisoner right now. Connor would be devastated if he knew she'd been taken, that she was in danger again after all these years of hiding. He spent so long trying to keep her hidden from them, off their radar, and now they've found her anyway and—"
The room went very, very still.
Every wolf in that cluttered space froze, the air suddenly thick with tension as Jasper's words registered. Through our bond, I felt Asher and Cole's matching confusion, the way their minds were trying to process what they'd just heard and coming up blank.
"Connor would be devastated?" Asher's voice was carefully controlled, each word precisely enunciated in that way that meant he was holding onto his composure by his fingernails. "As in... present tense? As in he'd be upset now, if he knew?"
Jasper nodded, looking genuinely confused by our reaction, like he couldn't understand why we were all staring at him like he'd just announced the sky was green. "Well, yes. Obviously he'd be upset. He loves his daughter, even if he hasn't seen her in ten years. The guilt eats at him constantly—I see it every time we talk. He and Celeste both, they made the choice to leave her behind, thinking it would save her life, but neither of them has ever forgiven themselves for—"
"Connor is alive?" The words exploded out of me before I could stop them, my gunpowder scent detonating through the room with the force of my shock and fury, so thick it made the air shimmer. Through our bond, I felt Asher and Cole's matching disbelief slam into me like a freight train, their own pheromones spiking in response—ebony going sharp as broken glass, mint turning to pure ice.
Jasper took a step back, his pale eyes going wide with sudden understanding as he finally realized the magnitude of what he'd just revealed. "You... you didn't know? You thought Connor was dead? But he's been—Celeste too, they've both been in hiding for the past decade, moving every few months to stay ahead of Court's trackers. I'm the only one who knows where they are at any given time, the only one they trust to maintain contact without leading Court right to them. I thought—Connor said if anyone ever came looking for him, especially Alphas connected to Kara, it would mean she needed help, that Court had finally found her despite all our precautions. He made me promise that if you ever showed up, I should tell you everything, help you protect her, give you whatever information you needed to—" He trailed off, looking between our shocked faces with growing alarm. "You really didn't know they were alive?"
"No," Asher said, his voice deadly calm in that way that meant he was one wrong word away from completely losing his shit. "We did not fucking know. For ten years, everyone—including Kara—believed her parents died shortly after abandoning her. That they'd gotten themselves killed through their addictions and debts, that she was alone in the world except for a family that treated her like garbage."
"Oh God." Jasper's face had gone even paler, if that was possible. "She doesn't know? Kara doesn't know her parents are alive? That they've been trying to keep her safe all this time? That everything they did was to protect her from—"
"She thinks they threw her away like trash," Cole said, his voice thick with emotion, mint scent going bitter with the pain of it. "She thinks they chose drugs and gambling over her. That she wasn't worth staying for, wasn't worth fighting for. Do you have any idea what that's done to her? The kind of damage that causes?"
Through our bond, I could feel Blake's rage building—not just at the deception, but at what this meant for Kara. How many nights had she cried herself to sleep, believing she was unwanted? How many times had she looked at that old photograph of her parents, the one she kept hidden in her room, and wondered what she'd done wrong to make them leave? How many times had we made it worse with our cruelty, our constant reminders that she was nothing but a debt to be paid?
And all this time, they'd been alive. Hiding. Safe. Leaving her to suffer while they stayed out of Court's reach.
"Where are they?" Dmitri's voice was barely above a whisper, but it carried the weight of ten years of grief and desperate hope, the sound of a man who'd thought his daughter was dead and just found out she might be alive. "My daughter... where is Celeste? And Connor? Where the hell have they been all this time?"
Jasper's expression shifted again, cycling through confusion to dawning horror as he finally understood the magnitude of what he'd just revealed, how many lives had been shaped by a lie that was meant to be protection. His hands started their anxious rubbing motion again, and when he spoke, his voice was small and uncertain in a way that made him sound years younger.
"I... I thought you knew. I really thought—Connor was so sure that Victoria would have told Kara the truth eventually, once she was old enough to understand. That she'd know her parents were alive and working to keep her safe, even if they couldn't be there with her. He said Victoria promised to take care of Kara, to treat her like family, to—" He stopped, reading our expressions. "She didn't, did she? Victoria didn't take care of her."
"Victoria treated her like a fucking servant," Blake snarled, his control finally snapping under the weight of too many revelations. His wolf surged forward, turning his eyes gold and making his canines lengthen as his anger manifested physically. "She made Kara work off her parents' debts like she was property. Gave her a storage closet to sleep in. Let us—let the whole pack—treat her like she was nothing. And you're telling me Connor thought she was being cared for? That he's been alive this whole time and never once checked to make sure his daughter was okay?"
"He couldn't!" Jasper's voice rose, defensive now. "Court was watching! They had people everywhere, waiting for any sign that Connor or Celeste were still alive, that they'd try to contact Kara. If he'd reached out, if he'd tried to see her, Court would have found them all. They would have taken Kara years ago, when she was too young to defend herself, too young to—"
"So instead she grew up thinking she was abandoned," Cole said quietly, and the pain in his voice cut deeper than any shout could have. "Thinking she wasn't worth loving. Thinking her own parents chose to leave her behind because she wasn't good enough."
The room fell silent except for Jasper's ragged breathing and the distant howl of wind outside. Through our bond, the pieces started clicking into place with sickening clarity. Kara hadn't been taken randomly. This had been planned, probably for years. Court had been watching her, waiting for her to come of age, to see if she'd inherited whatever power her mother possessed. Waiting for her eighteenth birthday, for her first shift, for the moment when her true nature would be revealed.
And we'd played right into their hands, too busy dealing with our own guilt and mistakes to see the real danger lurking at our borders. Too focused on making up for our cruelty to notice the threats circling closer.
"Tell us everything," I said, my voice rough but steady, channeling all my rage and fear into cold determination.