A Second Chance for Alpha Ayden

Chapter 7

SAMANTHA

"What is that?" I ask, and my voice comes out sharper than I mean it to, because I've already seen where Ayden's eyes have gone.

The token in Alisa's hand is small, carved from dark wood and worn smooth like it's been handled by someone for a long time before it ended up here. She's still asleep, her fingers curled loosely around it, completely unaware that she's holding something that just made the Alpha standing in front of me go pale.

"Give her to Sharon," Ayden says, low and urgent. "Now."

I don't argue. Something in his voice tells me this isn't the moment for pride, and I hand my sleeping daughter over to my sister instantly. The second Alisa is out of my arms, Ayden steps forward and gently works the token free from her fingers, careful not to wake her, turning it over in his palm.

“The mark on it matches the one carved into the tree at the border,” Ayden says.

I look to see the crude symbol, cut deep enough that whoever made it wanted it to last.

"How did this get into her hand?" I ask, and I hear my own voice shaking now, all my careful composure from the drive here completely gone.

"I don't know." Ayden's jaw is tight, his eyes scanning the entry hall like he expects someone to still be watching us. "But someone was close enough to put it there. Close enough to touch her."

The words land like a blow. I think of every moment since we arrived, the drive up, the greeting, the attack, the chaos on the porch, the second where someone could have slipped close enough to my daughter to press something into her hand without anyone noticing.

"Get warriors on every entrance," Ayden says, turning to Lucian, who's just come through the doors behind him, trying to catch his breath. "Nobody should be allowed in or out without being checked. I want the guest wing swept top to bottom."

Lucian is already moving before Ayden finishes the sentence, barking orders down the hall, and within minutes the packhouse is a different place than it was an hour ago. I start to see warriors at every door, the calm facade completely stripped away. Everyone can see what I've quietly suspected since the moment Lucian walked into my bakery three days ago.

This was never just about a treaty.

"We need to talk," Ayden says, once the immediate chaos has settled and Alisa has been carried off to sleep in a secured room with two warriors posted outside her door. "Alone."

"I have questions of my own," I tell him. "Starting with why my daughter had a Stormfang mark in her hand five minutes after your pack was attacked."

"I don't have an answer for that yet. But I will."

He leads me to his office, the same one…I realize with a small, unwelcome jolt, where he must have sat and made the decision to reject me five years ago. The room hasn't changed. Same dark wood desk, same tall windows looking out over the training grounds, same calmness that used to feel comforting and now just feels heavy with everything unsaid between us.

He closes the door and doesn't sit down. Neither do I.

"How long have they known about her," I ask, before he can start whatever careful, controlled version of this conversation he's clearly preparing. "You said it yourself…It's been months maybe."

"I don't know how long but I only know what the Stormfang wolf told me, that Stormfang has been aware of her existence for months, waiting for the right moment to be sure." His hands press flat against the desk, knuckles whitening. "Samantha, I need you to tell me everything. From the night you left, to right now. Every piece of information."

"Why? So you can decide what to do about it? So you can take charge the way you did five years ago, without asking me what I wanted first?"

"No." His voice cracks slightly on the word, and something in it makes me pause. “Because ever since I saw her, I wonder if she is my child, Samantha.” He says, “And if she is..I want to know her birthday, I want to know if she was born early or late, I want to know if you were alone in some hospital room somewhere while I sat in this exact office telling myself I'd made the right choice. I don't know anything, and every hour that passes without knowing feels like one more year I've already lost with you both."

I stare at him for a long moment, feeling something in my chest crack open despite every wall I built around it over the last five years.

"You want to know," I say quietly. "Fine…I’ll tell you. "

He sits, and for the first time since I walked back onto Moonclaw territory, he looks less like an Alpha and more like the boy I used to know before Elder Frois ever spoke a word into his ear.

"I left that night with nothing but a broken heart," I begin. "I didn't know I was pregnant yet. I found out three weeks later, in a clinic two towns over from here, completely alone, because I hadn't told anyone where I was going, not even Sharon."

His face doesn't move, but his hands curl slowly into fists on the desk.

"I thought about coming back," I continue. "For about a day. And then I remembered exactly what you said to me in front of the whole pack, and…” I pause. “I decided I'd rather raise a child completely alone than raise her watching her father look at her mother like she was nothing..."

"Samantha…"

"I'm not finished." My voice is steady now, steadier than I expected. "I worked three jobs until I was seven months old and could barely stand behind a counter anymore. Sharon found me four months after I left, tracked me down through a cousin of hers, and she's been the only family Alisa has ever known outside of me. I named her myself, alone.” I pause to catch my breath. “She was born on a night with no moon at all, which the nurses thought was strange, given everything they know about wolves."

Ayden's expression shifts at that, something flickering behind his eyes that I can't quite read, gone before I can name it.

"I built a bakery out of a building that used to be condemned," I finish. "I built a life. And for five years, your daughter never once asked about you, because I never once gave her a reason to wonder."

The silence after I finish stretches long enough that I start to wonder if he's going to say anything at all.

"There's something you don't know," he says finally, his voice low and unsteady in a way I've never heard from him. "Something about my bloodline. Something Elder Frois used against me the same week I rejected you, and something Stormfang may have just proven they know as well."

My stomach drops. "What are you talking about?"

He looks up at me, and for the first time since I arrived, I see real fear in his eyes, not for himself, but for our daughter sleeping down the hall who has no idea what she's just been born into.

"Alisa isn't only in danger because she's my daughter," he says. "She's in danger because of exactly what kind of Alpha's daughter she is."