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LUCIEN'S POV

The old werewolf legends book felt clumsy in my hands - I had obviously never expected to find myself with a reason to read these tales before becoming a father. Linda looked on with patient amusement as I struggled to pronounce names from centuries past.

"It's Fenrisúlfr, Daddy. Not Fenris-oofer."

"Right. Fenrisúlfr." I attempted once more, but spectacularly mangled the Old Norse pronunciation. "Your mom would be a lot better at this.”

“But you’ve come,” Linda said simply, as if that rendered my horrible storytelling ability irrelevant. "That's what matters."

The words landed harder than any tactical critique. I had spent the last few hours engaged in futile attempts to perform normal fatherhood activities with the dogged persistence I usually reserved for military campaigns. The results had been... mixed.

Breakfast had been a disaster — the stove smoked and bleated interminably while I managed to commit most sins of breakfasting: burned eggs, barely cooked bacon and I set off the smoke alarm in my own house somehow. Linda had eaten it after all, saying my “crispy style” was “very creative.”

And I’d tried to braid her quickly lengthening locks, watching an instructional video on YouTube with the concentration of someone disarming a bomb. The effect was as though it had been a bird’s nest created by someone who’d never seen a bird or a nest.

“It looks beautiful, Daddy,” Linda declared while stroking the disaster that had been set afire on her head.

Now I was reading bedtime stories — the term bedtime stories suddenly seemed absurd when we were in some ancient supernatural chamber and Linda was aging too quickly to have a normal bedtime — and learning that being a dad meant continuing to show up even if you had no idea what you were doing.

“Tell me about how you met Mommy,” she said, putting down the legends book in favor of something more personal.

I paused; how to describe grown-up complexities, to a nine-year-old daughter who was also accessing the wisdom of ancestors from centuries past?

We met at a cross-pack conference. She was young, combative already showing signs of the leader she would become. I was. “…I just, I stopped and tried to find some words that were my own. "I was arrogant. I saw her strength and longed to own it instead of honoring it.”
“I think that’s a mistake,” Linda said, in the brutally frank manner of childhood.

"It was a huge mistake. I did wrong to your mother, I took decisions which made us lose close to five years. Cost me five years with you."

"But you're here now."

"But I'm here now," I nodded, holding her in my arms. “And I swear to you, little star, I’m not leaving anymore.”

A very tired and determined Laura appeared in the doorway. I saw her take in how Linda looked — that she was still aging, our daughter’s face maturing — with a mother’s sadness as well as pride.

“The Council call came in,” she said softly, indicating her phone. "Four hours. Non-negotiable."

We’ve been preparing for this, but it comes at the worst possible time. My mother’s metamorphosis was coming to a head, and breaking us up now would have been playing with history.

"I will!" I answered at once. "I can represent us both, keep you around to be with Linda.
Lucien, the Council called for me. If you show up instead—"

“Then they’ll be stuck with a father who is done playing political games and threatens the family.” I rose to face her. “Laura, I've spent the last five years focusing on pack politics instead of what really matters. And I’m not making that mistake again.”

"This could ruin your reputation among normal packs. To publicly make a claim on Linda, to swear solidarity with me against the Council… none of that is going to appear as anything but weakness.”

"Let them. I’d rather you view me as weak and be there for my daughter, than stay in power by abandoning her again.”

There was something that changed in Laura’s expression—surprise, or perhaps thankfulness, for sure a recalibration of who I’d grown to be. We had been working together for days, establishing a parenting rhythm that seemed to flow naturally despite our tumultuous past.

She was better with emotional support than me, and seemed to just know how Linda needed things to go. I was there to provide security and tactical planning, but I learned from observing how Laura maintained a balance between strength and gentleness. Our two styles of activism were complementary to each other and together we formed something bigger than either of us could achieve alone.

"You've changed," she said softly.

"Becoming a father changes you. So is knowing what you lost because of your own dumb ass.”
We were standing close enough that I could smell her, storm winds and steel, as familiar and enticing then as it had been five years earlier. Our hands touched, and neither of us moved away.

"Laura, I need you to know—"

"Daddy, Mommy," Linda interrupted her sense of urgency belying the childlike timbre. “My great-great-grandfather Aldric is showing me something bad. Your former buddy, Daddy — the lady with the short dark hair — she’s got someplace to go that has shit on me. She wants to hurt Mommy at the Council place.”

The mate bond. I had almost forgotten about it—the link between Unni and myself that was never properly snapped because I'd never rejected her outright as my mate, just our relationship. And that connection allowed me to follow her, might even let me get to her before she got to the Council with whatever information she found.

“I must leave,” I said, already walking out. “The mate bond is the reason I can find her, kill her before she ruins everything.”

"But Linda's transformation—" Laura started.

“You will be protected by you, by the ancient presence, by every warrior we’ve ever trained.” I stopped at the door and, glancing back at my daughter and the woman with whom I’d never quite stopped caring:. “I gave Unni the power to destroy our family once by my own cowardice and stupidity. I won't let her do it again."

"Lucien," Laura shouted just as I exited into the hallway, "take care. She’s not that woman you knew.

"Neither am I," I replied.

The bond of mates tugged at my thoughts like a compass devoting north, light but persistent, guiding me through the corridors underneath the vampire castle to whatever awaited. I’d spent the last five years trying to make a marriage between myself and Unni work, based on obligation and political alliance, ignoring that we had never truly been mates.

And this one last time, that fake bond would serve a purpose: to keep safe the real family I now had found.

The rope took me through disused halls and concealed doorways, becoming thicker as I got closer to Unni. I could sense her emotional state through the link — desperation, fury, a warped sort of determination that belonged to someone who’d sacrificed too much for this not to work.

And I found her in a storage room, a tiny dark windowless space full of files and photographs which told the world about Linda's life, my life with Laura, every secret we had ever tried to keep. She was worse than the last time I’d seen her—her not-fully vampiric transformation had continued, and she was caught between species in a manner that obviously hurt.

"Lucien," she said, lifting her eyes from honey-brown to red. “I didn’t know if you would sense me through the connection.”

"What are you doing, Unni?"

"Ensuring my children's future. These twins that I bear — they are meant to come into the power, not be shoved aside by your illigitimate child with some bitch.” She pointed to the evidence around her. “The Council will recognize Laura for what she is—a menace to the supernatural balance. And Linda will be proven to be a monstrosity that need never have been."

"Linda is my daughter. She’s not guilty in all of this.”

“She is a weapon, waiting to be deployed. She should be ideally removed from the equation now if we don’t all want to end up as lez-breeding material.

When I realized that, I knew that Unni was no longer human. The vampire influence, the supernatural pregnancy, the pent up hate- it had changed her into someone she didn’t recognize.

“I can’t allow you to bring that back to the Council.”

"You can't stop me. Despite everything, we're still bonded. You just can’t bring yourself to really hurt me.” She was leaving, assured of her conclusion.

But she'd miscalculated. Our mate bond was built on our old relationship—the one where I’d valued politics over true emotion. That bond had already died the moment I’d taken Linda’s hand and realized what real family was.

"You're wrong," I said quietly. “I could not bear to do that to Unni, whom I had loved, at least believed I had. But that woman is dead the moment you put my daughter in harm's way. What I know is that what’s in front of me right now is a threat to my family. And I will never not protect them."

As I lunged to block her, she made her last play of all—admitting that copies of the evidence already had been wi-retransmitted to Council members and firing off a final pulse…The information Laura and Linda tried to deny others—and avoid having used against them—know.

The mate bond I thought would aid in stopping her, had actually been the weapon she’d wielded to draw me away from my family at the time that mattered most.