The Hidden Alpha (Alma Venus Shifter Brides 2)

Another pause.

“You might be right. I’ll think about it.”

Jonathan felt the person was about to end the call, and hurried to slip in one last suggestion.

“The Guild can make everything so much easier.”

After a slight moment of hesitation, the call ended. Jonathan set his phone on the table and rubbed his eyes and temples with both hands. It was time to call it a day.

CHAPTER THREE

Hybrid

The trip to London had taken Seth away from his investigation. Back in Ekviknuna, Blake got swamped with new responsibilities, which often involved meetings with her uncles and their Yakos, going out more often and actually being part of the community. It kept Amelia busy, as she always had to be there to cover Blake’s scent with her own. This allowed Seth to spend a lot of time at his cabin, buried in documents, declarations, birth certificates, and a huge list of phone numbers he had to call in order to track back Amelia’s parents’ steps. The bear-shifter detective had done his job well, and Seth couldn’t believe he had given up so easily. The wealth of information he had acquired on Stephen Bennet and his wife, Milla, had brought him pretty close to something… Seth didn’t know what exactly, not yet, but he was getting there himself. However, as Blake’s Yako, he had to be there for most meetings, which could keep him away from his work for hours. Amelia was a fast learner, fortunately, and it took her one week to get the hang of how the clan’s internal affairs worked. She could replace Seth any time, and when Blake realized that, she told Seth to focus on his investigation, knowing what he was doing was important. Amelia was surprised at first, but she was soon distracted by the Sylfur brothers and their attempts to influence Blake. As long as Damon and part of his earth were still in Ekviknuna, she couldn’t relax. None of them could. Damon had told Blake he couldn’t go back to Canada just yet, when the whole family seemed to be more united than ever. Roman’s death had been a huge blow to all of them, and he wanted to do everything in his power to help the clan recover. Right…

Meetings, discussions, arguments… That was how the first two weeks after London passed. Amelia still had no idea about what Seth was doing. Sure, both Seth and Blake had promised her to look into the old case, but she never had high hopes they would actually find something. So, she had moved on and focused on the present, just like she had done many years ago.

Seth’s breakthrough happened when he least expected it, at the end of January. He had been trying to track down the midwife who had helped Milla give birth, and when he finally got ahold of her, he nearly forgot the many questions he wanted to ask her. The phone call lasted for hours, but at the end Seth had the whole picture. All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. It made sense why it had been so difficult to find the old woman. She hadn’t only been Milla’s midwife, but also Milla’s best friend. Her only friend, in fact, if Seth didn’t count her husband, Stephen Bennet. And after Milla and Stephen were murdered and their child ended up in the social care system, the woman made her choice: she took her family and ran as far away from London as possible. She was only human, after all, and she couldn’t risk her own family’s well-being.

It was time for Seth to come out clean and tell his lover and mate the truth. His investigation was over. He had all he needed to help Amelia discover who she really was. With Amelia’s and Blake’s help, maybe he got to make sense of some of the truth himself, because there were still some unanswered questions. So, Seth put all the files he had in order, placed them neatly on his desk, and asked Amelia and Blake to join him for dinner at his cabin. The conversation he intended to have with them couldn’t take place at the mansion, in the heart of Ekviknuna, where Roman’s four brothers seemed to have eyes and ears in every corner, no matter how dark and secluded it was.

***

Confused and surprised, Amelia allowed Seth to replace the empty plate in front of her with a rather big stack of files. She threw Blake a concerned glance, but the Inari was sipping her red wine while checking her messages. Seth sat down next to her and took her hands into his. They had just finished dinner, and the only things left on the table were the bottle of wine and their glasses. Amelia couldn’t drink more than one, and she had been taking small sips to make it last.

“What’s this?” she asked. A strange feeling in the pit of her stomach told her it had nothing to do with the clan.

“This is what I managed to find out about your parents.”

“Oh.” She looked at the files, but made no move to pull her hands free. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what they contained. “I don’t know what to say… I thought you two had forgotten about that. And with all that has happened lately…”

Blake set her phone aside and poured herself more wine.

“How could we forget?” she said. “We promised you we’d look into it.”

Amelia bit her lower lip. Seth squeezed her hands to draw her attention back to him.

“I told you I wouldn’t rest until I found out who murdered your parents. Unfortunately, I kind of failed because I was unable to track down the killers. I don’t even have their names. However, I know what they are and why they did what they did.”

“What they are…?” The odd formulation confused her even more. She had honestly never thought Seth and Blake would ever find out more than the police had.

“Amelia, my love…” Seth started. He paused for a moment to look deep into her eyes. “Your parents we

re not who you think they were, and what happened to them wasn’t just some sort of unfortunate coincidence, two psychos who happened to target them that night.”

“What do you mean?” Her brows furrowed and she finally wanted to pull her hands free, but Seth didn’t let go. He wasn’t finished.

“You’ll have all the time in the world to study those files. For now, just listen to me because what I’m about to tell you is going to change… everything. It might even have a huge impact on Clan Sylfur. Hell! It will probably turn the whole fox-shifter faction upside down!”

Blake chocked on her wine. “All right, now you’re scaring me.” She had known why Seth had insisted they had dinner at his cabin and she had been curious to find out what he had managed to unravel about Amelia’s case. Even knowing that the Tricksters were involved, she still hadn’t expected anything major. Sure, Milla was a fox-shifter, which meant that Amelia couldn’t possibly be her daughter. She was probably Stephen Bennet’s daughter with another woman. For some reason, the Assassins’ Guild went after Milla, but that hardly indicated the truth, whatever it was, could concern the whole faction.

“Yes, you’re scaring me too,” said Amelia. “Just tell me already.” She eyed the stack of files again, now dying to know what they contained.

Seth took a deep breath. He had gone through what he had to say a dozen times, but he was still nervous that he might forget something.

“Amelia, your mother was not human.”

Amelia merely lifted an eyebrow, signaling she needed more details for the information to actually register.