Chapter 60 *

Chapter 60 Chapter 60
Angelina’s POV
The middle-aged woman sighed. "Mom, you know we can't bring this up when he's around. It breaks him every time. That private investigator called again last week. Still no leads."
The mother's eyes were wet. "I just want my granddaughter back. She'd be in her twenties now. If she's even still alive. Why did God have to test our family like this?"
A man—Derek's brother, maybe—spoke quietly. "The worst part is, he still blames himself. Says if he hadn't taken down that gang leader, Aurora would still be alive and their baby girl wouldn't be missing."
"Twenty-three years," the mother whispered, wiping her eyes. "Twenty-three years of not knowing if your child is dead or alive. No parent should have to go through that."
The middle-aged woman put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Mom, please. Derek will hear you. You know he can't handle it when you cry about this."
My fingers dug into the armrest.
His wife is dead? The child is missing? He's been searching for twenty-three years?
I came here ready to kill him. Ready to make him pay for abandoning us. I'd rehearsed the confrontation in my head a hundred times—cold, brutal, final.
But now everything was wrong. The pieces didn't fit.
If he's been looking for his daughter for twenty-three years, then he didn't abandon her. Which means...
Derek walked back into the living room from his study, phone in hand. He immediately noticed the tension. His mother's red eyes. The somber expressions.
"What's wrong?" he asked, concerned.
His mother quickly wiped her face and forced a smile. "Nothing, honey. Nothing at all."
Derek's eyes lingered on her, unconvinced, but he didn't push. Instead, he turned to me and sat down across from the armchair.
"Sorry about that, had to take a work call." He tried to lighten the mood. "I didn't even ask your name. What should I call you?"
I looked directly into his eyes. Searching for any hint of deception, any sign this was an elaborate lie.
"Aria," I said clearly. "My name is Aria."
Derek went completely still.
The coffee mug in his hand started trembling. Color drained from his face. "Aria," he repeated, voice barely a whisper. "Aria."
His mother noticed immediately. "Derek? What's wrong, honey?"
Derek's voice cracked. "That was the name. Aurora wanted to name our daughter Aria if it was a girl. She said it meant 'lioness' in Hebrew. Strong and fearless."
They chose that name for me. Aria. The same name I chose for myself when I was reborn in this body.
The room went silent. Everyone stared at Derek, then at me.
The middle-aged woman—stood up quickly. "Derek, don't. It's just a coincidence. You can't blame yourself forever. It wasn't your fault. It was those monsters who killed Aurora!"
"No," Derek said, his voice breaking. He covered his face with his hands. "It was me..."
I watched him fall apart. This man—this strong, capable soldier—crumbling in front of his family.
He's been carrying this guilt for twenty-three years. Thinking he killed his wife and lost his daughter. And I came here ready to kill him.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly, standing up. "I'm just a student interested in joining Special Forces. I didn't mean to cause any pain."
His anguished expression broke something inside me. I didn't know what to do with this feeling. This wasn't what I expected. A clean, brutal massacre would have been so much easier than this tangled mess of emotions. I needed to find proof he was lying. I needed to find the deception.
I kept my voice steady, pushing forward. "What happened to your wife Aurora? And your daughter?"
Derek's head snapped up, eyes sharp despite the tears. "Why do you want to know?"
"Because I'm interested in understanding what drives someone to dedicate their life to Special Forces," I said calmly. "Sometimes it's patriotism. Sometimes it's personal loss. And you seem like someone carrying a heavy burden."
His sister jumped up. "That's enough! You have no right to—"
Derek raised his hand, stopping her. "It's okay, Sarah."
He stared at me for a long moment, like he was trying to see into my soul. "You know what? You're right. I am carrying a burden. For twenty-three years. You want to know what happened? Fine. Maybe saying it out loud to a stranger is exactly what I need."
He stood and walked to a cabinet, pulling out a bottle of expensive whiskey. He poured himself a glass.
"I'll have one too," I said.
Derek raised an eyebrow. "You're fifteen."
"I insist."
Something in my tone made him pause. After a moment, he poured a second glass and handed it to me. "Let's talk outside. This isn't a conversation for the living room."
We walked up to a second-floor balcony off what looked like the master bedroom. The night air was cool, carrying the scent of jasmine from the garden. City lights twinkled in the distance below Mountain View Estates.
"Your family mentioned something about a gang leader. What does that have to do with Aurora's death?"
Derek's expression turned even more bitter. "That's just a lie I told them. A cover story. The fewer people who know about werewolves, the better. I didn't want my family getting involved in that world. It's too dangerous."
He looked out at the city lights. "I told them I took down a gang leader during a mission, and his people came for revenge. Killed Aurora, took our daughter. It's easier for them to understand than the truth."
"And what is the truth?" I pressed.
Derek leaned against the railing, staring at his whiskey. Then he asked abruptly, "Are you a werewolf?"
How does he know?
I kept my expression neutral, but inside I was shocked. A human shouldn't know about werewolves.
But I nodded anyway. An Alpha King didn't need to play mind games with humans. In the face of absolute power, all schemes and tricks were meaningless.
Derek let out a long, bitter laugh. "Fate really has a twisted sense of humor."
He downed his whiskey in one gulp. "Aurora was a werewolf too. A Gamma from Meadow Pack."
What he said was consistent with the information.
"I was human," Derek continued, his voice rough. "Just a young soldier who fell in love with a woman who could turn into a wolf. Sounds crazy, right? But Aurora was my fated mate. You know what that means in your world, don't you? The one person the Moon Goddess destined for you."
I nodded slowly, not trusting myself to speak.
"Meadow Pack's Alpha, Marcus Matthews, was furious," Derek said. "A Gamma warrior bound to a mere human? It was beneath the pack's dignity, he said. Everyone opposed us. The Alpha, the Beta, even Aurora's own parents. They said it was an insult to the pack bloodline."
He gripped the railing, knuckles turning white. "Aurora chose me anyway. She stood before the entire pack and renounced her place. They cast her out. She gave up everything—her family, her pack, her identity as a wolf—just to be with me."
"We settled in the human world, got married, and had a daughter. Three years of simple, perfect happiness."
Derek's voice broke. "Then one night, I came home from a mission and found Aurora dead. Murdered. And our three-year-old daughter was gone. Vanished. No forced entry. No struggle. Just Aurora lying in a pool of blood, and our baby girl missing without a trace. Like a ghost had come and destroyed my entire world in one night."
Shock hit me first, then rage—white-hot and all-consuming. But underneath it all was something else. Sadness. Regret.
She threw away everything for love. And for what? Three years of happiness before someone murdered her and stole her child?
I didn't know whether to admire her courage or mourn her foolishness. Love had made her vulnerable. Love had gotten her killed.
Mother, was it worth it? Was he worth losing everything?
I stood there, the whiskey untouched in my hand. The wind carried the smell of chlorine from the pool below.
"I tried to investigate," Derek continued bitterly. "I went to Meadow Pack, demanded answers. But they wouldn't cooperate. Said it wasn't their problem anymore—Aurora was Rogue, dead and gone. And I was just a human. What was I going to do against werewolves? I couldn't fight them. Couldn't force them to tell me the truth."
He laughed, a hollow sound. "Twenty-three years of searching. Private investigators, police contacts, every resource I have. Nothing. My daughter is gone. Probably dead. And I'll never know who took her or why they killed Aurora."

My throat tightened. I'd spent so long believing I was unwanted, abandoned like trash. That my parents had thrown me away without a second thought.
But this man had been searching. For twenty-three years.
All that hatred I carried. All that rage. It was built on a lie.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to destroy something. Someone had stolen those years from us.
Whoever did this will pay. They will pay.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly. It was all I could manage.
Derek wiped his eyes roughly and turned to look at me. "You know what the worst part is? Every time I meet a young werewolf woman, I wonder if she could be my daughter. If somehow, against all odds, she survived. That she's out there somewhere, not knowing I've been looking for her every single day for twenty-three years."
He stared at me with red-rimmed eyes. "You even have Aurora's eyes. The same green color. For a second, when you said your name was Aria, I thought maybe..." He shook his head. "But that's just wishful thinking. My daughter would be twenty-three now, not fifteen. And the chances she's still alive are..."
He couldn't finish the sentence.