Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Luca’s POV
I don’t know who hung up the phone—me or Charles. But I stopped hearing the words after he told me a truth that had been gnawing at me for weeks. For a few seconds, I sat in a daze, wrapping my head around it.
Ollie was my son.
I had a son.
A flood of emotions surged through me all at once.
There was joy—the pure, gut-deep kind. Joy in knowing I had a little boy—a bright, sharp child.
There was relief, too. That I’d been right all along. Because I don’t know how I would’ve handled it if I found out Leila had a child with someone else. That she’d let another man touch her in the way only I ever should have.
Then came the rage. White hot, searing rage that made my pulse roar in my ears.
Because for five years, I had a son I didn’t know existed.
Five years of living in ignorance, not knowing my own blood was out there, unprotected.
Five years of missing everything—his first steps, his first words, his first birthday. Everything.
Slowly, I lifted my head to look at Leila.
She stared back at me in confusion, her cheeks flushed, lips still swollen from our kiss. Her breathing was uneven, like she could feel the sudden shift in my energy.
“What is it, Luca?” she asked softly.
“How long were you planning on lying to me?” My voice came out hoarse, strangled, barely holding back the fury surging through me.
Leila’s brows pulled together. “What are you talking—”
“Ollie is mine!” The words exploded from my mouth. “Ollie is my son, and you kept that from me for five fucking years!”
The color drained from her face as she took a step back. I saw it—the instant she reached for her defenses. She folded her arms tight against her chest and jutted her chin forward like she was preparing for battle.
“Luca, I have told you before. Ollie is not—”
“Stop with the lies, Leila,” My voice cut through the air between us. “Just stop. I knew it the very moment I set eyes on him. He has my eyes, he has my hair color. He’s the perfect replica of what four-year-old me looked like. And all I needed was just the confirmation.”
I opened my email and turned my phone toward her.
“The DNA confirms that Ollie is indeed my son.”
She froze. Her expression faltered when she saw the screen, and in that moment, I saw something flicker in her eyes. Not just shock. Fear.
And it confused the hell out of me.
What the fuck was she afraid of?
Why did the truth make her look like she’d just been cornered by a predator?
She’d rather carry the weight of raising a child alone—go through the isolation, the physical pain, the emotional war zone of pregnancy—than tell me?
“How did you—” Leila was saying, her brow pinching, voice tight with confusion. Then she stopped. Her eyes widened slightly. And just like that, the fear ignited into fury.
“You stole my son’s hair?”
“Our son.” I ground out. “He is my son, too, Leila. How can you just erase me from his life that easily?”
“I didn’t erase you from his life. You were never in his life to begin with.” She shot back.
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. “Is that what you tell him whenever he asks for his father? Is that what you were going to tell him when he grows up and starts asking why he never met his father?”
Leila stared at me for a long beat, her eyes bright with heat, her body trembling from restrained rage. I searched for something in her face—remorse, guilt. But there was none.
And that pissed me off.
She shook her head. “I can’t do this, Luca. It’s late and I have to get back to my son tomorrow. So, if you could just—”
She turned to leave, to shut me out again. But I was in front of her in a flash, blocking her path.
“No, you don’t get to do this, Leila.” My voice dropped, low and pulsing. “You don’t get to be the one who’s angry when you’re the one who hid something this important from me. When you stole five precious years of my life with my son.”
“What do you want me to say, Luca?” she yelled. “That I’m sorry? Well, I’m not!” Her voice trembled with fury. “You don’t get to stand there and act like I stole something from you. I mean, you already believed the accusations of me being a thief—and now you’re calling me one to my face.”
Something shifted in my chest, and I felt my wolf stir, growling from within. Not at her. At me.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Leila…” I tried to say, but she shook her head with a fierce, violent vehemence.
“No, Luca.” Her voice cracked, hoarse with buried hurt.
“Over the past few weeks, I started to forget what happened between us five years ago. I let myself forget how you treated me. How you destroyed me.” She took a shaky breath, her arms falling to her sides.
“You deceived me with all your talk about love. About how you wanted me to meet your father. About how beautiful our future would be…how we’d start a family.
“You were my Fated Mate, Luca,” she whispered amidst the crack of her voice. “You were supposed to complete me. Make me whole.” Then quieter, she added. “Instead, you shattered me. Completely. Broke me to the point I didn’t want to live anymore.”
The sting in my chest bloomed into something worse. She went on, her voice steadier now, cutting sharper with every word.
“You want to know why I didn’t tell you about Ollie?
” Her gaze never left mine. “Because I didn’t trust you, Luca.
I didn’t trust you not to do to our son what you did to me.
You showed me exactly what your love looked like—conditional.
Fragile. Fickle.” A tear slid down her cheek, but she didn’t wipe it.
“You cast me out, rejected me, turned your back the second you heard something bad—without even asking if it was true. You knew the entire pack was against us, and still, you didn’t give me the chance to explain. ”
Her voice thinned out with pain. “I was going to tell you I was pregnant that night,” she said, dabbing at the tear slipping down the other cheek.
“I’d woken up on a high. I was so damn excited.
We were going to start a family. And what did I get?
Silence. A cold, brutal rejection. Like I was nothing. ”
She exhaled sharply, like the truth had been rotting inside her and now finally clawed its way out.
“That’s not the kind of father I wanted my son to have. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
I recalled that night with horrifying clarity. I could still see her eyes, wide and pleading, while I stood there like a stranger. I’d thought I was protecting myself—from betrayal, from humiliation.
But all I did was destroy something sacred.
I’d rejected my Mate.
While she was carrying my child.
I ran a hand down my face, breathing hard. My chest was rising and falling like a man who’d just been shot in the heart. Guilt and anger twisted in my gut.
“You should have told me,” I said, voice quieter now, strained. “I had a right to know.”
She scoffed, blinking back more tears, arms folding across her chest like she needed to hold herself together. “You lost that right the moment you stopped trusting me.”
“I didn’t stop trusting you, Leila,” I bit out. “You betrayed—” I stopped. “I thought you betrayed me.”
“And you believed the worst of me. Rejected me. And then forgot about all we shared, all the promises you made to me every time you made love to me.”
“You think I forgot you?” I snapped. “I tried, Leila. I tried to forget. I buried myself in work, in anything that could make me feel something—anything to drown it out.” My voice was tight with restrained agony.
“But it didn’t work. Nothing worked.” Even when I felt betrayed and used, I still couldn’t stop needing her.
It made me feel pathetic, like some kind of masochist clinging to the one person who’d broken me.
Her eyes closed briefly. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t say that now.”
“Why not? It’s the truth, Leila.”
“It’s too late for truths.”
Something inside of me broke. I took a step back, drawing in a breath, steadying the storm inside.
Then I leveled her glare. “I want to be in his life.”
Her eyes flared. “Look, Luca, you can’t just…swoop in and change everything.”
“I’m not asking for permission, Leila,” I said. “You raised him. You did what I should’ve been there to do. I see that. And I hate that you had to do it alone.”
She looked away. Her jaw clenched so tightly I could see the tremor in it.
“I hate that you were scared of me,” I continued. “That I made you feel like you had to protect him from me. That’s not the man I want to be. Not to you, and definitely not to him.”
I took a step forward. “And now…I just want to be there. For my son.”
I saw it in her eyes. The trepidation. The fear. She had once been excited to tell me she was pregnant. And now…she was terrified of what would happen if I stepped into our son’s life.
That realization hollowed something inside me. My wolf winced, the weight of that pain too much to bear.
“I can’t stop you, Luca. We both know that,” she said quietly. “But we’ll do this on my terms.”
I could insist that I had as much right to the child as she did. But I didn’t want to further push her away. I’d take even the glimmer of an opportunity to be with my son. And I’d rather we did it when Leila and I weren’t at loggerheads with one another.
“Tell me how you want it, Leila, and I’ll follow it to the letter. I’m not losing my chance with him.” A beat. “Or you.”