The Alpha's Property

*** Xavier ***

I had banished everyone from my lands in a fit of rage and now my daughter hasn’t returned to speak to me. A yearning in my chest was stopping me from doing anything else. I needed to see her again, I wanted to know her. My little girl. She is a beautiful woman now and from the tiny scraps of information her mother fed me, I know she was married with a child of her own and living in Germany, she was training to be a doctor. So how did she end up in my territory, mated to my enemy?

No doubt her mate will keep her away from me now, and I hated that he had something so powerful to use against me. I had enjoyed testing the boundaries of Alpha Aiden, who was a stark contrast to his own father. I had never liked Alpha John Goldrick and the incident that caused our fallout had always stung me. I had been painted as immoral for what I had done but I had stuck to the laws of our kind. I did not betray any of our customs and yet I was treated as though I had.

I have summoned Alpha Martin to act as an emissary between us. I have asked him to invite Alpha Aiden and his mate to come and talk in an informal manner. I just hope she agrees.

My mate is now blanking me, she hasn’t spoken to me since Junior told her I had a daughter. I had tried to protect her from the truth: Evangelina was conceived in the weeks just before I found my mate. There is only a couple of months between her and Junior.

I found out when she was born that her mother wanted to place her up for adoption. I was in an impossible bind because I couldn’t tell my mate I had another child so bringing her home and raising her myself wasn’t an option. I therefore begged Rose to keep her and to keep the fact that I am a werewolf a secret too.

Rose said she had no job, no home, and no money to raise a child and so I had agreed to help her financially if she kept our little girl, didn’t tell my mate about her, and gave her a decent home.

She agreed and I asked if I could name her after my mother and she had allowed it because she didn’t have a name in mind, she had deemed it pointless when she was giving her up for adoption. I had my misgivings but selfishly I dismissed them, not wanting to uncover any truth that could destroy my world.

“What was your mother’s name?” she asked absentmindedly.

“Evangelina. I know it’s a mouthful but it’s a beautiful name for our beautiful little girl.” She hadn’t seemed that interested, as long as the money was transferred to her, she didn’t care.

In the few correspondences she had sent in the years since that last meeting she referred to my daughter as ‘Eva,’ she never mentioned much about her, only that she needed more money each month and Eva was developing well. She insinuated that Eva was human and I accepted that.

Now the past has come to blow my mundane life apart. My mate is hurt, embarrassed and enraged by my lies. My son refused to respect me and my authority already but now he had a mean glint in his eye, he has another way to get to me. And my little girl finally knows who I am and I am ashamed that I ignored her to make my own life easier.