Chapter 14
Makari
The meeting is supposed to be simple; a routine morning at the edge of the southern property line, overlooking the preserve Ursa Arcane funds each year.
A place where quiet streams wind through mossy rocks, where our patrols switch from armed men to rangers in forest-green jackets.
Paperwork about wildlife corridors and land trusts lies spread across the long wooden table in the open-air pavilion.
It should be simple.
But nothing has been simple since Roxanne.
She stands across the table from me, head bent over a stack of conservation reports, her braid falling over one shoulder. The early sunlight makes a halo out of the smallest, stubborn flyaway hairs she never quite tames. I try to focus on the numbers, the maps, the trustee signatures.
But I’m not looking at the paper.
I’m looking at her.
And I’m thinking about the way she avoided my eyes all morning. The way her smile for the land manager was too polite. The way she tensed every time I stood too close.
She’s hiding something.
She’s been hiding something for a while.
I’m patient, usually. But patience with her feels impossible. “Your signature goes on the dotted line,” she says, tapping the final page without looking up at me.
Her voice is calm and professional. Detached.
That detachment irritates me more than it should.
I sign the paper, set the pen down too hard, and then lean against the table. “So,” I say casually, “how’s the ex?”
Her head snaps up. “What?”
I shrug as if the question means nothing. As if it hadn’t sat inside my chest the last two days like a blade angled inward.
“The father of your daughter,” I say. “The one who couldn’t bother to stick around. That ex.”
Her throat works. She looks back down at the papers, fingers tightening. “He’s not—we’re not talking about this.”
I ignore that. “Is that the man your sister taunted you about?” I ask. “The one at the masquerade? That night she told you to stop waiting around for boys too weak to be men? Or have there been others since me?”
Roxy’s eyes flash. “Mak.”
“What?” I feign confusion, ignoring her use of my first name in front of my men.
Most left to watch the woods and chat with the land manager, who is all too happy to meet with Ursa Arcane.
“I’m only trying to understand. A man abandons his own child, leaves you to handle everything alone and makes you chase work that’s too damn dangerous.
” A sharp, bitter laugh escapes me. “He sounds like trash.”
Her jaw tightens, eyes flashing in a way that makes me want to kiss the defiance out of her. “Can we get back to work, please? I need to finish packing tonight.”
But the thought of some faceless coward walking out on her—on them—makes something vicious spread through my chest. I step closer to her side of the table, my hand resting on her lower back as if to make sure she’s real, still here, still mine even if she doesn’t know it. Roxanne stiffens.
“And he just disappeared?” I say, my voice soft and lethal. “Didn’t care if you were safe? Didn’t care if your child had a roof? Didn’t care that you had no one to rely on?”
Her hands clench.
“Mak,” she says again, warning in her tone.
The warning makes something hot and reckless rise inside me. “And you’re still defending him,” I say tightly. “That’s the worst part.”
“I’m not defending him. You’re making assumptions.”
“Then why the secrecy?” I step around the table until I’m standing directly in front of her. The land manager is watching us now, awkwardly. He’s wanting to say goodbye, but is not sure if he should interrupt whatever is happening between us. “Why won’t you just say his name?”
“Because it doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.” I already know his name, but she doesn’t need to know that. Eric Harlan. He got a spot on the local force thanks to his uncle, who died an alcoholic two years ago.
She flinches, barely, but enough.
Enough to light a fuse.
“Oh,” I say quietly. “I get it.”
She looks up.
“It wasn’t one man,” I continue, letting derision lace through my voice.
“You moved through men quickly then, didn’t you?
Enough that you don’t know who—” The thought of it, of other men having their hands on her, making her moan like I did, sends a roar through my body I’ve never felt before.
I’ve built my empire on logic and secrecy, but if given the chance I’d rip through her lovers like the bear they say I am.
Roxanne slams her palm down on the table.
I fall silent.
Her breath is sharp, chest rising and falling, cheeks flushed dark.
Then she says it.
She spits the words out like they burn her tongue.
“Andi is yours.”
The world tilts.
For a moment I think I misheard her. The sound of the river, the distant call of a raven, the wind through the pines—everything seems to drop away from the edges of the world until all I can hear is the pounding of my pulse.
Somewhere, the men are escorting the land manager off the property.
I hear a car door close, but the rest of the world is dead to me.
“What,” I say, low and dangerous.
She swallows, chin trembling, but eyes fierce. “Andrea is yours. You are her father, Makari.”
My heart slams against my ribs. I grip the edge of the table to keep from moving, from doing something I’ll regret.
Roxy takes a step back as if she thinks I might actually tear the pavilion apart.
Maybe I could. The fury, the shame, is that sharp.
“You knew,” I say through clenched teeth. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”
“No,” she says, voice shaking now. “I didn’t.”
I shake my head slowly, a laugh tearing from me, hollow and disbelieving. “You expect me to believe that?”
“I mean, I knew it was you but… We didn’t exchange names!” she bursts out. “We didn’t trade numbers or talk about our lives. It was dark, and loud, and we were both—” She cuts herself off, then tries again. “We had one night. That’s it. I never even saw your face until I walked into your office.”
I stare at her.
The storm inside me rages, tearing at logic, at memory, at restraint. I see the cabin. The way she pushed her hands into my hair. The way she moaned when I touched her. The way she tasted like heat and honey and something I’d craved long before I knew her name.
I remember the vault.
Her body. Her breath. The way she whispered please like a prayer.
Now the truth slams into me like a blow. That night didn’t end with the vault. It ended with a child. My child. Andi is my child.
I grab the edge of the table, and the whole structure shudders. Roxy flinches again.
The fear in her eyes stops me. It cuts directly through the rage and leaves something raw underneath.
I exhale once, harshly. “You should have told me.”
Her chest heaves. “How?” she asks, voice breaking. “How, Mak? Should I have put an ad in the paper? Should I have gone around town asking who the masked man—”
“Enough!” I snap.
But the image flashes anyway. She was alone. Pregnant. Had no idea who I was. No name. No contacts. Nothing.
Addiction was crippling me, and Bratva’s had the worst operations going on. I was living a life that chewed me up until I didn’t recognize myself.
Even if she had found me, I would not have gotten involved with a child then. Not even my own.
Roxy’s voice softens, barely audible. “I didn’t know.”
My pulse slows. Not steady, but enough for clarity to seep back in. I stalk away, dragging a hand over my face. “For a week,” I say quietly, “I thought she belonged to another man.”
She opens her mouth. Closes it.
“I thought someone else had put their hands on you. Had a claim on you.” My voice roughens. “I thought you gave someone else what you gave me.”
She stares at me like she can’t decide whether to be furious or heartbroken.
Then I said the one thing I shouldn’t have said: “I thought you had a son.”
Roxy’s head jerks back, brows knit. “A son?”
“Andi,” I say, exhaling slowly. “It sounded like a boy’s name.”
Something cold flashes in her expression. Fuck. I said something wrong.
She takes a single, deliberate step toward the door of the pavilion. “Well,” she says tightly, “I’m sorry to let you down.”
“Roxanne—”
But she doesn’t stop; she just strides through the pavilion and into the field beyond, her boots crushing the wet dewy grass as she goes to find Andrea, our daughter, and put distance between us.
The papers on the table flutter in the morning wind, useless, irrelevant compared to the roaring emptiness expanding inside my chest.
I have a daughter.
I have a daughter.
And the woman who carried her, who raised her, who was alone through every moment of it, is walking away from me with bitterness and hurt.
I want to go after her.
I want to demand more answers.
I want to pull her close and grip her waist and ask why she didn’t find me sooner, why she didn’t try, why she didn’t know—but I already know why.
Because six years ago, I was a shadow. Nothing more to her than a stranger at a masquerade. She could turn the same question back on me: if I cared, if she mattered, why hadn’t I sought her out?
After all, it’s her I’ve been dreaming of all these years. I didn’t have it in me to imagine that one day I’d find her again, that I could try to deserve her again. And I never could’ve imagined that she’d give me this gift.
I watch her silhouette shrink as she climbs the slight rise toward the trail where she last saw Andi, followed closely by Dima—her guard dog.
I watch until she disappears over the crest. Only then do I exhale.
Roxy said she didn’t know.
But now I do. And I have years to make up for.