Chapter 101
Kara
After breakfast, Cole suggests teaching me to swim in the yacht's indoor pool—a beautiful, climate-controlled space with a glass wall that looks out onto the ocean, tropical plants in terracotta pots, and soft natural light filtering through skylights.
I change into the gold bikini they bought me in Anchorage. It's modest by bikini standards—high-waisted bottoms, a top that actually covers things—but when I catch my reflection in the mirror, I barely recognize myself.
This is who you are now, I think. Not the girl in the storage room. Not the servant. This... sun-kissed, marked, claimed creature who wears gold and gets swimming lessons from her mates.
The thought should make me happy.
Instead, it makes me feel like I'm watching someone else's life.
Cole is already in the pool when I emerge, water droplets clinging to his shoulders and chest. Blake and Asher have claimed loungers on the pool deck, ostensibly to "supervise," but really they just can't seem to let me out of their sight.
"Come here," Cole says, extending a hand.
I walk down the steps into the shallow end. The water is perfectly warm, lapping at my waist. Cole's hands find mine, and he pulls me closer until we're chest-to-chest, the water creating a pleasant friction between us.
"First lesson," he says softly. "Trust the water. It'll hold you if you let it."
For the next hour, he's patient and gentle—showing me how to float, how to kick, how to move my arms in something resembling a doggy paddle. Blake and Asher call out encouragement from their chairs. My wolf is delighted by this, by being the center of their attention, by the way Cole's mint scent grows stronger every time I manage something new.
Eventually, I shed the floaties and wrap myself around him instead—arms around his waist, legs around his hips. He goes very still.
"Kara," he says, voice strained. "You can't—"
"Can't what?" I ask innocently.
"Can't press against me like that and expect me to maintain control."
Through the bond, I feel his restraint—and the desire underneath it. The need. But also his determination not to push, not to assume, not to take more than I'm willing to give.
I should pull back. Give him space.
Instead, I tighten my grip.
"Cole," I say quietly. "I need to ask you something."
"Anything."
"Why does Luna Victoria hate me so much? I mean the real reason." I search his face. "Not the debt. Not my parents. What is it about me specifically that she can't stand?"
Cole's entire body goes rigid. Through the bond, panic floods from him—and guilt.
"Kara—"
"Please." I frame his face with my hands. "No more secrets. You said there was something I deserved to know. Is this it?"
For a long moment, he just looks at me. Then, through the bond, I feel him reach out to his brothers.
She's asking. What do I tell her?
The truth, Asher sends back, grim. She has a right to know.
Should've told her before, Blake adds, frustrated. Shouldn't have waited.
Cole takes a deep breath. Kisses my forehead. And says, "Don't be angry. Please. Whatever I tell you next, remember that we love you. Remember that nothing changes that."
My heart starts to pound.
"Cole, you're scaring me."
"I know. I'm sorry." He swallows hard. "It's about your father. About Luna Victoria. About... why she really took you in."
He begins to swim toward the deep end, pulling me with him, and I let him. Let him draw me into the shadows where the glass wall shows only dark blue water and the occasional flash of a tropical fish.
"Luna Victoria's father remarried when she was young," Cole says quietly. "His second wife brought a stepson into the family—not Victoria's blood brother, but she loved him anyway. Raised him like he was hers."
My throat is tight. "And?"
"And he grew up. Fell in love with a woman Victoria hated. A woman she thought was dragging him down into gambling, drugs, dangerous people." Cole's mint scent has gone bitter with anxiety. "They got married anyway. Had a daughter. And when that daughter was eight years old, her parents got into trouble—serious trouble. The kind that ends with people disappearing."
I can barely breathe.
"Victoria begged her mate—Alpha Marcus—to help. To pay off the debts. And he did. He paid every cent." Cole's voice drops. "But the couple didn't stay. They knew the people they'd crossed were still hunting them. So they decided to run. To disappear. To spend their lives moving from place to place, always looking over their shoulders."
"Cole—"
"They couldn't take their daughter with them. It was too dangerous. Too unstable. So one night, in a blizzard, they left her on the front steps of Midnight Estate." His eyes are wet. "And Victoria found her. Screaming and crying in the snow. And even though Victoria had loved that little girl's father like a brother, even though she'd saved him... she couldn't forgive him for leaving. For choosing drugs and danger over family. And she couldn't forgive the woman who'd corrupted him."
My vision is blurring. "Who—"
"Your father's name is Connor," Cole whispers. "He's Luna Victoria's stepbrother. The woman he married—your mother, Celeste—is the woman Victoria blames for destroying him. And you..." His voice breaks. "You're the daughter they abandoned. The debt they left behind. The living reminder of Victoria's greatest failure."
The world tilts.
Connor. Celeste. Abandoned.
Everything I've wondered, everything I've feared—it all crashes down at once.
"You're telling me," I say, voice shaking, "that Luna Victoria is my father's sister? That she took me in because of family? That all this time, she's been—what, punishing me for my mother's existence?"
"She took you in because she loved Connor," Cole says desperately. "Because even though she hated what he'd become, she couldn't let his daughter freeze to death. But every time she looks at you, she sees Celeste. Sees the woman who ruined her brother. And she... she can't separate you from that."
Through the bond, I feel Blake and Asher racing toward us. Feel their alarm at the spike in my emotions.
But I can't focus on them.
Because ten years. Ten years of being treated like garbage, like an obligation, like something to be tolerated—
It was never about the debt.
It was about my mother.
"You knew," I whisper. "You all knew?"
Cole's face crumples. "Asher knew from the beginning. Blake found out recently. I... Luna told me. Made me promise not to tell you until you were ready."
"Ready?" The word comes out as a shriek. "When exactly was I supposed to be ready to learn that I've been paying for my mother's sins my entire fucking life?!"
Blake and Asher crash into the pool, water exploding around them. Within seconds, they're at my sides, their scents wrapping around me—but I shove Cole away, shove all of them away.
"How long?" I demand, looking at Asher. "How long have you known?"
"Since I was sixteen," he says quietly. No excuses. No justification. "My father told me. He said it was pack business."
"And you never thought to mention it?" My laugh is wild, edged with hysteria. "You never thought that maybe, just maybe, I deserved to know why the woman who raised me hated me?"
"We were going to tell you," Blake says urgently. "After the marking, after you settled—"