Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
The door opened three inches.
Kellen shoved Mara behind him.
"Stay back."
The woman outside did not enter.
Rainwater ran from her hair and white dress, forming a dark puddle beneath her bare feet.
Kellen stared through the narrow opening.
Evelyn Vale had aged.
That was the first thing he noticed.
The photograph in his father's file had shown a woman in her late thirties with dark auburn hair and intelligent gray eyes. The person outside looked nearly sixty now. Fine lines framed her eyes. A pale scar ran from her left temple to her jaw.
But there was no mistake.
It was her.
Mara stepped around Kellen.
"Mom?"
Evelyn's face broke.
"Mara."
Mara moved.
Kellen caught her.
"Wait."
"That's my mother!"
"It could be someone who looks like her."
Evelyn gave him a bitter smile.
"You sound exactly like your father."
Every muscle in Kellen's body hardened.
"How did you get past my gate?"
"I didn't."
"Then how are you standing here?"
"Because your security system isn't yours anymore."
Kellen stared at her.
Evelyn looked past him at Mara.
"Baby, I'm sorry."
Mara's expression transformed from shock to anger.
"You're sorry?"
"I can explain."
"You were dead."
"I know."
"For eighteen years."
"I know."
"You let me bury an empty coffin."
Evelyn closed her eyes.
Mara's voice cracked.
"I spent every birthday talking to a gravestone."
"I know."
"No, you don't."
Mara pulled free of Kellen.
"You don't get to say that."
Evelyn remained outside.
She did not try to cross the threshold.
That detail mattered to Kellen.
"Why won't you come in?" he asked.
Her gaze shifted to him.
"Because the house remembers my scent."
Mara stared.
"What does that mean?"
Evelyn's eyes moved toward the dark corridor behind them.
"It means we don't have much time."
Kellen laughed once without humor.
"People keep saying that to me tonight."
"Then perhaps you should listen."
He stepped closer.
"You know about the seven women."
Evelyn's face changed.
Mara noticed.
"So she does."
Kellen held up the photograph.
Evelyn went pale.
"Where did you get that?"
"Someone left it in my house."
"Tonight?"
"While Mara slept."
Evelyn whispered something under her breath.
"What?" Kellen demanded.
"We're too late."
Mara's anger faltered.
"Too late for what?"
Evelyn finally entered.
The second her foot crossed the threshold, an alarm shrieked through the estate.
Not the security alarm.
A different sound.
Deep.
Mechanical.
Something hidden within the walls.
Kellen had never heard it.
Evelyn shouted, "Turn off the fireplace!"
"What?"
"Now!"
Kellen slammed the control panel.
The flames vanished.
Evelyn ran toward the stone surround, dropped to her knees, and pressed three sections of marble in sequence.
A click sounded.
Part of the fireplace wall moved.
Kellen stared.
There was a hidden compartment in his own home.
Inside sat a black metal box.
His father's initials were engraved on the lid.
K.C.
Kellen's blood chilled.
His father had shared his initials.
Killian Croft.
Evelyn pulled out the box.
"You knew my father."
"I worked for him."
"As a physician?"
"At first."
"Then?"
She looked at Mara.
"Then I discovered what the Croft family had been doing."
Kellen's expression hardened.
"Be careful."
"This isn't an accusation, Kellen. It's history."
Mara wrapped the blanket around herself and stood beside them.
"What history?"
Evelyn opened the box.
Inside were folders.
Medical records.
Photographs.
Vials.
A leather-bound journal.
And eight silver pendants identical to Mara's.
Mara touched the necklace at her throat.
"What are those?"
Evelyn's voice lowered.
"Protection."
"From what?"
"Your blood."
Silence.
Mara almost laughed.
"What?"
Evelyn looked directly at her daughter.
"Your father wasn't who I told you he was."
"My father died before I was born."
"No."
Mara stared.
Evelyn continued.
"He didn't die."
Kellen's instincts sharpened.
"Who was he?"
Evelyn hesitated.
That was enough.
Kellen understood before Mara did.
"No," he said.
Evelyn looked at him.
Mara turned between them.
"What?"
Kellen shook his head.
Evelyn whispered, "Your father was a Croft."
Mara stopped moving.
Kellen's voice turned dangerously quiet.
"Which one?"
Evelyn's eyes filled with shame.
"Killian."
Mara stared at Kellen.
Kellen stared at Evelyn.
The room seemed to tilt.
"My father?"
Evelyn nodded.
Mara backed away.
"No."
"Mara—"
"No."
"Listen to me."
"You are saying Kellen's father was my father?"
"Biologically, yes."
Mara looked physically ill.
Kellen's mind raced through dates.
He was thirty-three.
Mara was twenty-seven.
Six years apart.
Possible.
His father had been married.
Possible.
His father had been cruel.
More than possible.
Mara touched her throat.
"Then Kellen is my—"
"No."
Evelyn answered too quickly.
Both looked at her.
Kellen stepped closer.
"What aren't you saying?"
Evelyn shut her eyes.
"Killian wasn't your biological father, Kellen."
Nothing moved.
Not Mara.
Not Kellen.
Not even the rain seemed loud enough anymore.
Kellen's voice was barely audible.
"Say that again."
"Killian raised you. He gave you his name. But he wasn't your biological father."
Kellen's hand curled into a fist.
"You had better know exactly what you're saying."
"I delivered you."
That stopped him.
Evelyn continued.
"Your mother almost died during childbirth. Killian was there. So was I."
Kellen had no memory of his mother.
She had died when he was five.
"What was his name?"
"Your real father?"
"Yes."
Evelyn glanced at the hallway.
"Not here."
Kellen slammed one hand against the marble wall.
"I'm finished with people deciding what I get to know in my own house."
Evelyn didn't flinch.
"Your real father's name was Rowan Mercer."
Kellen knew the name.
Every old family knew it.
Mercer.
A bloodline that had disappeared after the Peninsula War twenty-nine years ago.
A rival line.
An Alpha family.
Supposedly extinct.
"You expect me to believe that?"
Evelyn removed the leather journal.
"Believe your mother."
She handed it to him.
The first page bore handwriting he recognized from childhood birthday cards locked away in a cedar box upstairs.
His mother's.
Kellen,
If you ever read this, Killian failed to destroy everything.
His knees nearly weakened.
Mara watched him.
For the first time since arriving, she saw the feared man lose control.
Not violently.
Silently.
His thumb trembled against the paper.
Evelyn touched his arm.
He jerked away.
"Don't."
She withdrew.
Mara approached slowly.
"Kellen."
"I'm fine."
He wasn't.
She knew better than to argue.
Evelyn looked toward the photographs of the seven women.
"Those women weren't sent here as partners."
Kellen lifted his eyes.
"What?"
"They were tests."
"By whom?"
"Someone trying to determine whether the Mercer bloodline survived in you."
Mara frowned.
"Why women?"
"Because certain inherited responses only activate around compatible bloodlines."
Kellen's mouth twisted.
"You made human beings sound like laboratory animals."
Evelyn flinched.
"That is exactly how your father treated us."
"Killian?"
"Yes."
"What did the women have?"
"Fragments of old family lines."
"The pendants?"
"Protective markers."
Mara touched hers.
"Then why did they run?"
Evelyn looked at Kellen.
"They weren't afraid of him."
Kellen's face darkened.
"Then what?"
"They were warned."
"By whom?"
"The same person who sent that photograph."
A loud thud sounded upstairs.
Kellen immediately turned.
Evelyn whispered, "He found me."
"Who?"
She grabbed Mara.
"We need to leave."
Kellen blocked the doorway.
"Nobody leaves until you tell me who."
Another thud.
Closer.
Mara looked toward the ceiling.
Footsteps moved across the upper floor.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Kellen reached beneath the sideboard and removed a handgun from a hidden magnetic mount.
Mara stared.
Evelyn said, "That won't stop him."
"Who?"
The footsteps stopped directly above them.
Dust shifted from the ceiling.
Then a man's voice came through the estate speaker system.
"Hello, son."
Kellen froze.
Evelyn whispered, "No."
The voice laughed softly.
"You opened her journal."
Kellen's grip tightened around the weapon.
"Show yourself."
"Oh, I will."
A door opened upstairs.
Evelyn backed toward Mara.
"Kellen, listen to me. Your father—your real father—did not die in the Peninsula War."
Kellen looked at her.
The staircase creaked.
One step.
Then another.
Someone was coming down.
A man's shadow stretched across the wall.
May you like
And Evelyn whispered the name Kellen had been told belonged to a dead man.
"Rowan."
