The Alpha's Lost Heiress

Birthright

POV: Millie

I'm adopted. I've always known it. The truth was impossible to miss. My parents are tall and blonde, just like Chasity. Me? Not so much. I barely hit five feet four inches, even on my tiptoes. Tiny - what my mother always called petite, like that made it sound better. Soaking wet, I weigh a whole one hundred and five pounds. My skin is brown, my cheekbones are high and wide, and my eyes are brown and gold with little flecks of darker brown scattered through them. People who don't know better think I'm Hispanic. I'm not. I can't say for sure, but I've always figured Native American. Without the physical proof written all over my face, I wouldn't have any clue where I came from.

Growing up in a wealthy L.A. suburb isn't easy when you don't look like everyone else. I used to be jealous of the little girls who were going to grow up looking exactly like the Barbie dolls they carried around. I wanted my mother's pale blonde hair and my dad's clear blue eyes. As an only child who was adopted and stuck out like a sore thumb, the only thing I ever wanted was to fit in. God, I tried. But even as kids, the others knew something I didn't. No matter how hard I worked at it, I'd never belong in their world.

I don't know why I never looked for my birth parents. Maybe it was loyalty to the only parents I've ever actually known. Adopted or not, I was their kid and they loved me for being me. I have no memories of any life before the adoption. I was a baby when it happened. There's probably a ton of paperwork somewhere if I cared enough to look for it. I think I'm better off not knowing. My mom always says she took one look at me and fell in love, and that's all I've ever needed to hear.

I don't spend much time wondering who I might have been if things had turned out differently. I never even tried to guess the name my real parents gave me. Being Millie Klein, adopted daughter of Thomas and Suzanne, works just fine for me. I don't want to be anyone else. I'm okay being exactly who I am. Which is good, because I'll never get the chance to know my real parents anyway. They're dead. At least, that's what the lawyer says.

I spread the folder open across my lap, papers scattered over the carpet between two half-packed boxes, and stare at the attorney's letterhead like it's going to explain itself if I look long enough.

I didn't ask for details about how they died. I didn't need to. Mr. Hhanes Galloway, attorney at law and apparently a man who can't stand silence, was more than happy to fill in the blanks without me asking.

"Your birth mother died shortly after you were born, dear," he said over the phone, that nasally Midwestern accent dragging out every word like he had all day. "Wrong place, wrong time, I'm afraid. Took your grandfather years to piece together the details on an unknown woman caught in gang crossfire, before he finally proved she had a name. A home. And a baby girl lost to the system."

A baby girl. Me.

Who knew lawyers could be romantic? Mr. Galloway told me my father died of a broken heart not long after my mother left him. I didn't believe it, not until I dug through decades of old newspaper archives myself and read the story in black and white.

Even now, something about the whole thing feels wrong. Why did my mother leave my father? Where was she going? What was she running from, or running to? Why didn't she have a single piece of ID on her? Everyone has a social security number, a driver's license, a credit card, something that connects them to somewhere.

"Your grandfather left no stone unturned looking for his missing daughter-in-law and granddaughter," Mr. Galloway told me, like that was supposed to settle things. It wasn't until six weeks ago that he picked up the trail where my grandfather left off and finally found me.

I went through my adoptive mother's old records too. The details are sketchy at best. No next of kin to notify. No one to fight the adoption. No one to claim me. Not a single missing persons report filed on the unknown woman who left me behind. Nobody ever came forward to identify her. Nothing linking me to anyone, and an overworked California child welfare office more than happy to find someone willing to take me.

Mom calls me her cabbage patch kid. Says it was meant to be. I'll admit I'm curious enough to want answers, to see all the pieces finally fit together. It won't change anything though. Not really. I know exactly who I am, no matter what the adoption papers, the newspaper clippings, or the chatty Mr. Galloway have to say about it.

My grandfather left me everything. The house. The woods. The farm animals. A trust fund with more zeros than I know what to do with. He died about a year ago, and it's taken Mr. Galloway this long to track me down. For a man so willing to talk my ear off about everything else, he went strangely quiet the one time I asked how my grandfather actually died.

"Old age, I'd assume," I said into the phone, mostly to fill the silence.

"Mm." That was it. Just a sound, and then he changed the subject.

I'm twenty-four, so old age makes sense, mathematically. Some part of me doesn't buy it for a second.

So many parts of me are pulling in different directions, moving forward and getting dragged backward into a past that could have been my present if things had gone differently. Chasity's answer was the obvious one, the easy path. Sell the property, the animals, the house. After all, what do I really owe a grandparent I never met? Nothing, probably. I don't owe Nathaniel Blake Galloway, also known as High Backed Wolf, or Neeheeoeewootis, a single damn thing.

"There's no mistake about your grandfather's final wishes," Mr. Galloway reminded me, pride creeping into his voice. "And I hope you understand, you come from a proud heritage. This inheritance is your birthright, as the last person left in your grandfather's family."

History has never been my thing. It's clearly his, though, and he was more than eager to walk me through it. My branch of the family came right out of the land the house sits on. It's been in the family since 1810, back when the first log cabin was built by hand. The current house, the one waiting for me, wasn't finished until 1839.

"A lovely grand old Victorian," he called it, "just full of family history. You'll come to love it, I'm certain."

I wish I shared his certainty that the rolling farmland of central Indiana is where I'm supposed to be. I'm not certain of much these days, except for the growing feeling that none of this adds up the way it should.

Mr. Galloway's love of history didn't stop at the house either. He spent a good twenty minutes catching me up on my ancestors and the land they're buried under. Shawnee and Scottish blood, apparently, and according to him, the old legends about my family and that land run deep.

Out of pure curiosity, I had to ask about the name. I wish I hadn't. Turns out it's no coincidence Mr. Galloway worked so hard to find me. He's a distant cousin. Our great, great, great, great, great, great grandfathers were half-brothers, and he was, in his words, pleased to be the first to welcome me home.

"What were they like?" I asked him. "My grandfather. My parents."

For a man who never shut up, he suddenly had nothing to say. "I think that's something you should decide for yourself," he said carefully, like he was picking each word with care. "In time, you'll learn a lot of truths. Some you'll wish you hadn't."

I still don't know what he meant by that.

"And my birth name?" I pushed.

Mysterious again. "I think you'll come to your own conclusions about that too."

Maybe it doesn't even matter what name my birth parents gave me. Maybe it's something awful, like Bertha, and he's too professional to say it to my face. Or maybe he's worried that if I knew it, I'd run, and he'd spend another year hunting me down all over again. The only thing I know for sure is that my real last name is Galloway, and somewhere in a forgotten corner of rural Indiana, there's a home and a history just waiting for me to dig it up.

There is one bright spot in all of this, one tiny spark of light besides the obvious. I love wolves. I always have, since I was a little girl. While the other girls were playing with Barbies and sneaking into their mothers' jewelry boxes to dress up, I was daydreaming about wolves. I'm pretty sure I was the only kid in preschool actually rooting for the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs. I dream about wolves almost every night, and in those dreams I'm never just watching. I'm one of them, running flat out with the pack.

I know everything there is to know about wolves. I respect the quiet strength in them, the calm way they carry themselves. And let's be honest, I know exactly what it feels like to be a lone wolf. For once, luck actually worked in my favor. Out of everything Indiana apparently has going for it, I couldn't care less about the Indy 500 or endless miles of cornfields. The one thing that actually catches my interest is the wolf sanctuary that happens to share my new property line.

I'm supposed to meet Mr. Hhanes Galloway in person the day after tomorrow. I've got the directions saved in my phone's GPS app, because when I tried looking the place up on my laptop, Google Maps came up empty. The town hasn't technically existed since 1878. At least that settles one thing. The place will definitely deliver on privacy and being away from everything.

I'd love to say I'm excited for the next chapter of my life, but I'm not. I can't shake the feeling that something's off about all of it - the inheritance, the sudden distant cousin, how neatly the whole thing landed in my lap wrapped up in a bow exactly when I needed it most. I'm rich, or I will be once the paperwork goes through. All that's required of me is a trip to his office, a few signatures, and the keys handed over.

I'm suspicious. Especially of Mr. Galloway. I looked him up online myself. He really is a licensed attorney in Indiana, no question there. It's the rest of his story I have a hard time believing.

I don't pretend to understand how inheritances or wills actually work, but I would have thought Mr. Galloway needed some kind of proof that I am who he and my dead grandfather think I am. What makes either of them so sure, when I'm not even sure myself? Would I spit on a cotton swab to prove it, for an estate worth that much money? I don't even need to think about that one for very long. We're talking serious money here. Spit is free.

I wasn't about to take his word for any of it, obviously. He sent over a copy of my grandfather's will, and I had a friend of Chasity's, an actual attorney, look it over. It's real. The land, the house, hell, even the chickens, are together worth a small fortune, and the trust fund has more zeros attached to my name than I've ever seen in my life. I'm one rich b***h, to put it bluntly. I still can't quite wrap my head around that.

Maybe Chasity's right. Maybe I should take the money and run. Logically, I don't owe anyone a thing. But it doesn't sit right with me to sell off a place I've never even seen. At the very least, I should go take a look for myself before I decide anything.

I honestly don't know what my life's big goal even is at this point. I've got a degree in library sciences, but I'm fairly sure there's not exactly a demand for librarians out in the middle of nowhere. There doesn't seem to be much demand for librarians anywhere, if I'm being honest. If the land's as pretty and the house as charming as Mr. Galloway says, maybe I open a bed and breakfast. Or rent the place out to tourists looking for a getaway. Maybe I just soak up the quiet and finally sit down and write the great American novel.

Who knows? Luckily though, thanks to my generous grandfather, I've got the money and time to figure it out.