Chapter One
Five years later
Screams filled the air. Penelope closed her eyes and sent a prayer to the heavens that it wasn’t her baby girl. That sounded exactly like her daughter, but then, she also recognized the alpha’s son as.
“I hate you!” Seconds later… “Mommy!”
Her name being called had her turning toward her little girl.
One of her little pigtails had come loose, and tears ran down her face.
“Alexa, baby, what’s wrong?”
“I hate Landon. He … he … pulled my hair.” Her hands were screwed into fists as she started to sob.
Of course, her little girl was never one to take much in the way of an attack, and Landon came running toward Gertie, holding his stomach.
“She punched me in the stomach!” He was trying to hold in his tears, but Penelope knew differently.
It was moments like this when Penelope doubted if the rumors of fated birth mates were true, seeing as Landon and Alexa were … well, there was no polite way to say it, but they seemed to fucking despise each other.
They couldn’t get along. Not even for ten minutes without something going wrong.
When they were babies, and even toddlers, they were fine. They played together, and she’d seen them snuggle.
Since going to playschool, everything had changed.
She didn’t understand what was happening.
“You pulled my hair,” Alexa said, drawing Penelope’s attention back to her daughter.
“They’re pigtails. You’re a wolf. Not a pig.”
“I hate you!”
Penelope quickly wrapped an arm around her little girl and smiled at Gertie. “I am so sorry about this.”
“It’s fine.” Gertie was doing the same thing with her son.
Their children were not mates. Not even close.
This wasn’t the first time this had happened. A few weeks ago, Landon had thrown mud at Alexa, and her little girl had shoved him over and forced him to eat it. She wasn’t proud of her little girl’s actions, but at least she knew her baby girl could take care of herself.
It wasn’t good though.
“What is going on here?” Marcel asked.
Their children, a little terrified of the alpha voice Marcel put on, stopped wriggling and bowed their heads.
“Nothing,” Alexa said.
“Nothing,” Landon said.
“Good, if this is nothing, then go and play together.”
The two glared at each other, but like other times, they held out hands. Then under Marcel’s watchful eye, they went and joined the other children for play.
****