Chapter 10 10
Aurélie POV
“ROAR!”
Delphine throws her tiny hands up, joining the game as the “big scary wolf” protecting her brother. She launches herself at Fabrice, fingers wiggling, trying to tickle him into submission.
“Oh no… I’ve been attacked!” Fabrice groans dramatically, collapsing to the decking with theatrical slowness so both Dominique and Delphine land safely in his arms.
He had been there for every moment of their lives.
He was the one who anchored me through their birth the one who held my hand, whispered strength into me when I felt it draining away. To Delphine, he was Daddy. She adored him, worshipped him, needed him to read her bedtime story every night. He was also the only one she trusted to spray “monster repellent” under her bed before she slept.
Dominique, though, saw him differently.
To him, Fabrice was an uncle beloved, trusted, but not his. Deep down, instinctively, he knew. A beta couldn’t sire an alpha-born child. Even without knowing his status, Dominique felt the truth inside his bones. One day, he’d start asking why he and Delphine weren’t the same… why something inside him was stronger, sharper.
Delphine’s playful shriek snaps me out of my thoughts. I chuckle quietly as I watch them both climb on top of Fabrice, now pretending to have “captured a dragon.”
“Come on, little ones. Time to finish your project before dinner,” Miss Lambert calls from inside. Our housekeeper, a blessing from the Goddess herself, had been teaching them, preparing them for schooling, giving them the stability I wished I’d had as a child.
“Mummy! Uncle Fabrice don’t eat without us!” Dominique yells as he leaps off Fabrice and runs to Miss Lambert.
“Dominique… why can’t you call Daddy Daddy?” Delphine scolds, taking Miss Lambert’s hand. They wander off still bickering loud, dramatic, inseparable.
“They’ve grown so quickly,” Fabrice laughs, watching them disappear. Only when they’re gone does the warmth slip from my face. The smile the softness is only for them. The rest of the world only sees the mask.
“Yes,” I murmur, voice quieting into something like a prayer. “The Moon Goddess has blessed me richly.”
“I’m loving their little personalities,” he says with a smile. “Delphine is just like you our little princess. And Dominique… he’s something else entirely.”
I don’t respond not to that. Because he is something else. He is the destined Alpha King. One day I will have to tell him the truth. But not now. Not while he is still my innocent little boy.
I sit on the couch inside the lake house, facing the glittering water. I slip off my shoes and rub at my aching feet. Fabrice joins me, gently pulling my legs into his lap and massaging my feet with practiced hands.
“I like to think they see me as a father figure,” he says quietly. “Someone who’ll always take care of them.”
“Of course they do,” I whisper, closing my eyes, letting the tension melt from my spine.
“Aurélie…”
His sigh makes me open my eyes. He’s staring at his hands, brows pulled tight.
“You’ve spent four years rebuilding the Darkvale Pack,” he says softly. “You’ve expanded it. Stabilized it. Given it purpose again. And I want to be here for all of it for you, for the children. I want to stand beside you. I want to be a father to them…and a mate to you.”
My heart tightens painfully. I force it into stillness.
I don’t have time for love. I barely have time to breathe. Everything in my life is a weapon, a plan, a step toward vengeance. Fabrice believes that rebuilding my parents’ pack would have been enough that once I restored it, I would stop.
But he’s wrong.
I want the Bloodnight Pack to suffer.
I want them to choke on the agony they dealt me.
I want them to understand loss the way I lived it.
The expansion was only the beginning a way for smaller packs to break free from the tyranny of the Bloodnight name.
“The children will always be yours as much as they’re mine,” I say quietly. “But romance… I can’t think about that, Fabrice. Not when there’s still so much that needs to be done.”
“I knew you’d say that,” he mutters, though there’s no anger only resignation. “But have you ever stopped, Aurélie? Have you ever asked yourself whether it’s truly the expansion holding you back?”
“Fabrice”
“Or whether it’s the fact that you never really got over Damien?”
The air freezes.
My breath halts.
My heartbeat stutters.
Damien.
The name I never speak.
The ghost I never allow myself to think about.
The man whose memory still burns, even when I want it dead.