Chapter 6 Chance
Chance
Once it sank in fully, all the way down, I couldn't sit still. The parade outside and the people coming into the bakery were too much.
I stuck my head out of the back, where Maeve was taking care of customers in the front. "I'm gone." Maeve merely nodded. She was too busy to give me attention.
I didn't even bother kicking off my boots when I stormed into my house.
I just kept moving. Atrium to kitchen, to living room, to the narrow hallway, then doubling back again.
Once the edge was off, I paused in the kitchen, staring down at my phone.
My whole body was wired in a way that had nothing to do with panic.
Every time I closed my eyes I saw her face from the parade, older but still hitting me in the same place she did seventeen years ago.
That spark never dulled. If anything, it had teeth now.
I'd set the parade photo as my lock screen.
Tash's kids, no, my kids. Our kids against the brick of a building.
There was no way I was crazy. I could see myself in both of them.
But what stopped me cold was the memory of their mother.
The exact tilt of her smile flickered behind my eyes, and the old heat that had knocked me sideways came back fast. Too fast. Like my body remembered her long before my brain caught up.
Lola, my white Persian, twined between my ankles now that I'd stopped.
She kept giving these pitiful meows, as if her lack of treats was somehow the most urgent problem in the room.
I ignored her as I walked slowly into the living room.
She nearly tripped me twice, but I didn't care.
My brain couldn't find a way to care about anything but the way my life had just detonated.
I was too wrapped up in the image of Tash at nineteen and the woman she'd become today.
The way she held herself now had a steadiness that pulled at something deep in my chest. I didn't know how I'd missed it for so long, or how I'd gone this many years without recognizing the pull for what it was.
I dropped into the battered armchair in the corner of the living room, balancing my phone on one knee.
Lola, never one to miss her moment, sprang up and planted herself square in my lap, tail flicking like a possessed feather duster.
Her purring ratcheted up a notch the second I started scratching behind her ears.
I had to talk to my brothers. Evan spent all his spare time hunting the Order and could find anyone or anything. Or if he wasn't available, Damon. He'd rip the theory apart, hit below the belt, and help me sort out what the hell to do next.
First, Evan. I pulled up a text.
I need to find a woman. I think she had my kids.
He replied immediately.
Will contact as soon as hunt ends. Call Damon. Let me know what happens.
That meant whatever he was hunting, it was in the stalking and killing phase, and he couldn't risk talking. Fair enough. Given how obsessed he was, the fact that he'd actually answered was a little surprising.
I wasted five seconds debating a text versus a call for Damon, my middle brother.
I needed him to actually look at the evidence.
The video app took forever to load, which was probably my own fault for never updating anything.
When Damon's grumpy face finally appeared on the screen, he was hunched over his kitchen table, mug of coffee steaming in front of him, even though it was probably closer to dinnertime in Nashville.
He didn't bother with a hello. "You look like hell."
"Nice to see you too, brother." I shoved Lola's tail out of my face and tried to look calm. "You got a minute?"
He made a show of checking his phone, then shrugged. "I was about to start dinner, but whatever. You look like you're about to chew through rocks. What's up?"
My mouth went dry. I just stared at him, knuckles whitening around the tablet. Lola kneaded my leg like she was rooting me to earth. "Promise you won't hang up?"
Damon smirked. "Depends. Are you about to confess to murder or propose?"
I barked a laugh. It came out strangled. "Worse. I think… I think I might have kids. Twin girls. With Tash. A human whom you've never met."
I got no reply except dead silence. Damon blinked, momentarily stunned, then threw his head back and laughed so hard he nearly sloshed his coffee onto the keyboard. "That's good. You had me going. Seriously, though, what's eating you?"
"I'm not joking."
He lowered his cup, the smirk fading as he took inventory. "Run that by me again. You think you have kids with a human woman you've never mentioned?"
Mentioning her had never come easy. Even thinking about her used to light up every nerve I had, which was something I never learned how to talk about.
She wasn't just a mistake or a fling, despite being the only one-night stand I'd ever had.
Even then, she was a spark I couldn't hold without burning.
I nodded. "I saw her in town today. At the festival.
It's been seventeen years since I saw her.
She's got twin daughters, teenagers. They look like—" My voice caught, and I had to start over. "Look, I'll just show you."
I angled the tablet so he could see the photos side-by-side. First, the girl from the parade. Next to her, our mother from the eighties. "Tell me I'm nuts."
Damon squinted, peering. I thought he wasn't convinced. Then his eyes narrowed, and he leaned in so close his nose nearly pressed the glass.
He whistled. "Shit, Chance. That's… damn."
"Right?" I couldn't keep the manic energy out of my voice. "Look at her. That's Mom's face, period."
He didn't argue. He stared for another few seconds, then let out a thoughtful breath. "That's something. Apparently, dragons can have kids with humans after all? Huh. Have you talked to Mom?"
I exhaled, fighting a surge of anger. "Seventeen-ish years ago, Tash figured out who I was. We hadn’t exchanged last names, but it’s a small town.
She went to the house. Told my mother she was pregnant.
Our mother told her it couldn't possibly be mine and paid her off.
" That last bit still burned. "And didn't even bother to check with me.
" The thought of her standing there alone, carrying something that belonged to both of us, ate at me.
The idea she'd gone through all of it without me cut deeper than I expected, and the ache left behind had nothing to do with anger.
I expected Damon to crack wise about that, but he just grunted, jaw tightening. "What a fucking mess. You okay?"
"Not even remotely." I looked down at the photo again, then at the cat, whose ears twitched like she was following the whole mess. "I need to find them, Tash and the girls, but I don't even know where to start."
He straightened up, all business now. "Well, what do you know?"
I rattled off what I knew and what Maeve had told me while I paced around the house.
One daughter was named Meredith. The name on the credit card receipt was N.
Winters, so I was pretty sure Tash's full first name was Natasha.
They'd just moved to Laurel Gap. As I spoke, a text came in from my mother with the address she'd had when Tash was pregnant.
With my children. I still couldn't believe it.
"From what she's told Maeve during her bakery shopping, Tash is in town for hellbender conservation, and works for some government thing." I'd already dug through social media and gotten nowhere. No personal phone, no address, zip.
Damon made a face. "It could also be the NRCS, the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Both are federal, so there's going to be a federal record. They don't exactly broadcast staff info, but there's gotta be something."
He was already typing, fingers a blur. I pulled up my own browser, tossing Lola a cat treat to keep her from attacking my feet.
For a solid ten minutes, it was just us and the sound of furious typing.
Once in a while, Damon would mutter something under his breath.
I scrolled every link with "Natasha Winters.
" LinkedIn, university alumni pages, even some sketchy directory sites with pop-up ads that tried to sell me miracle weight loss juice.
Most of it was old. University of Tennessee, full-ride, major in herpetology.
Past work at the Knoxville zoo. I found a couple of articles with her name listed in tiny, footnote-sized print, stuff about salamanders and hellbenders and conservation projects that sounded like actual science.
Nothing personal. No mailing address, no field office, not even a department directory.
"She's good at this," I grumbled. "Like she's been hiding from the feds or something."
Damon snorted. "Maybe she's hiding from you."
He wasn't wrong. "If I could just talk to her, just for a minute. I don't even want to scare her, you know? I just—" I broke off, unwilling to say I was desperate.
Damon filled the gap. "You want to know those girls."
More than anything. But the longer we searched, the more hopeless it started to feel. Tash left less of a footprint than most criminals. Hell, better than most dragons. Either she was careful, or she just didn't feel the need to show off her life online.
I scrolled past another NRCS press release. Same stock photo, same boring boilerplate about Tash. But there, six paragraphs down, was her name. "Winters, Natasha, Wildlife Biologist, Hellbender Project Lead."
I read it out loud. Damon let out a low whistle. "Project Lead? That's heavy duty."
"I'm not even sure what a hellbender is," I admitted, squinting at the laptop.
Damon sat back, rubbing at his jaw. "Giant salamander. Native to these mountains. Some of them get as long as your arm." He grinned. "Fitting, really."
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, hilarious."
He grinned. "Just saying. Maybe you could offer to show her some reptile biology."