Chapter 2
BIANCA
The leather backseat is cold beneath my legs.
Weller sits beside me with his zip-tied hands loose in his lap and his shoulders square while Ellis checks the rearview mirror every few seconds, as if he’s waiting for one of us to attack him.
I’m shaking. I don’t remember when it started, and pressing my hands flat against my thighs does nothing to stop it.
Ellis’s sweat is strong enough to smell from the backseat.
Weller doesn’t touch me or look at me, so I count the blocks instead. Three. Four. We’re heading back to the estate, back to that locked house, while Owen wears a collar and the others sit trapped in another car. My hands won’t stop shaking. I press them flat against my thighs. Still shaking.
“Take Sycamore Lane next,” Weller says pleasantly.
Ellis’s gaze snaps to the mirror. “Sir?”
“Sycamore Lane. Next left.”
“I have orders to return you both to?—”
Weller leans forward and loops his bound arms over Ellis’s head.
The zip tie catches across his throat. Weller jerks back, and the SUV swerves.
Ellis makes a wet, strangled noise. One hand claws at Weller’s sleeve while the other wrenches the wheel toward the shoulder.
We bounce half off the road and stop with gravel spraying beneath the tires.
“Breathe,” Weller says softly. He eases the pressure enough to let Ellis drag in a breath. “Good. Sycamore Lane. Next left.”
Ellis’s face is red from his jaw to his collar. Tears stream from his eyes. “I can’t?—”
Weller yanks his bound wrists back for one warning second. “Sycamore Lane,” he repeats, as if Ellis is a waiter who keeps getting his order wrong.
The SUV pulls back onto the road. The turn signal clicks, and Ellis makes the next left with Weller’s bound wrists still braced against his throat.
Radios erupt around us, static and voices from the other SUV, from dispatch, from several confused people trying to figure out why we’ve left the route.
Ellis reaches for his radio with a shaking hand.
“Don’t,” Weller says. The hand drops.
We drive three blocks in silence. Sprinklers are running on half the lawns we pass. Weller’s expression never changes, even when Ellis’s breath catches wetly around the restraint.
Ellis stops in front of my parents’ house and puts the SUV in park. He keeps both hands on the wheel.
“Remove these,” Weller barks, and Ellis cuts the plastic holding his wrists together. Once he’s released, he opens the door and then gets out.
I stay in the backseat, staring at the angry red stripe rising above Ellis’s collar.
“Bianca,” Weller says quietly from outside, holding his hand out to me.
I place my palm in his. All I can think about is how warm it is when I climb out.
Winston is already on the porch when we reach the steps, balanced on his crutches. I suppose Weller texted him to meet us here, but he didn’t mention it. Winston’s face lights up when he sees me, then he notices Weller behind me and the smile slips.
“B.” He stumbles forward.
I catch him around the waist while he wrestles his crutches back into place.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“I need to talk to Mom.”
He studies my face, then looks at Weller. Weller hands him the photo. And his face works from confusion to shock. “Who is this?”
“The devil’s mother.”
“No. How the fuck?”
The front door opens before we knock like she sensed we were coming. Mom stands there in her garden apron with dirt on her hands. Relief crosses her face first, then worry. She pulls me into a hug that smells like banana bread and lavender soap.
My throat feels tight.
“Honey, you didn’t tell me you were coming.” She steps back and looks from Winston to Weller, who’s waiting at the edge of the porch. “I would’ve made dinner.”
“We’re not here for dinner, Mom. We need to talk.”
Her gaze drifts to the SUV idling at the curb, Ellis’s silhouette visible behind the wheel. “Of course. Come inside.”
The smell of the house hits me the moment I cross the threshold. For one dizzy second, I’m twelve and nothing terrible has happened yet. The floorboards still creak in the same places. I step over the bad one beside the entry table without thinking.
Mom twists her dirty hands in her apron. “Let me get everyone something to drink. I have lemonade, or I can make coffee?—”
“Mom.” Winston maneuvers through the doorway, his tone sharp. “Sit down.”
She freezes. “What’s going on?” she asks. “Or should I say, what else? Just tell me. I can’t stand the suspense.”
I start pacing, and then stop to press my fingers against the scars on my knees through my dress. I force myself to stop.
The nervous habit I picked up the first time I was ever assaulted. Being a girl is dangerous for your health.
Fun, but scary.
“Who is my father?”
Mom blinks. “What kind of question is that? Bianca, you know who your father is.”
“I know who raised me. I know who carried me on his shoulders until I was much too old for it.”
She lowers herself onto the floral couch. “Then what are you asking? Why would you think anyone else was your father?”
I hold the picture out to her.
Mom accepts it and frowns at the woman in the picture. “Who is this?”
“Dr. Montgomery’s mother.”
Her hands go still. “No.” She shakes her head but doesn’t look away from the photograph. “That can’t be right. Where did you get this?”
“The internet,” Weller says from beside the door.
Mom’s lips part and her hand starts trembling. The photograph creases in her grip.
Winston shifts forward, knocking one of his crutches against the coffee table. “Do you want to explain what is going on?”
Mom flinches. “It’s not what you think.” Her fingers are crushing the edges of the photo.
“Were you sleeping with him when you got pregnant?”
Her head jerks up. “No.”
“Then tell me what happened.”
Mom looks at the photograph again. “Emmett and I dated before I met your father.”
“There is some confusion over who that actually is.”
“Gregory,” she says. “Gregory is your father, Bianca. Whatever that photograph means, it does not change who raised you. Who loves you.”
“I know who raised me. But something must have happened with Emmett?”
She sets the picture on the coffee table with both hands and stares at it, her eyes unfocused. “After I met Gregory, Emmett remained a friend. He and your father became close. We traveled... played golf together. He was present for a few of my heats before Winston was born.”
Winston rubs both hands down his face. “I regret asking any questions. Ever.”
I don’t. I keep looking at Mom. “You told me you could barely remember dating him.”
Her gaze drops to the photograph.
“Barely any time at all,” I say. “An unserious fling. You left out the part where he came to your heats after Dad was in the picture.”
“Bianca, what happened between the three of us wasn’t only mine to explain. Your father was in the garage with Winston, and you were asking questions I didn’t understand. I was trying to?—”
“Make it sound harmless?”
“No.” She presses her lips together. “Yes. Smaller, perhaps. I didn’t know what was happening to you, and I panicked.”
“You lied to me.”
Her thumb drags across the bent edge of the photograph.
“About how serious Emmett had been, yes. Not about the injection. I believed what he told me when I gave it to you. That it was for your benefit. I went through every piece of paper I could find after you left, and I still don’t know what was in that shot.
I haven’t called him. You told me not to. ”
“And Dad was fine with this arrangement?” I ask.
Mom’s spine straightens. “Of course he was. It wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Your father was comfortable with it. A heat can be difficult for one alpha to manage alone, and a beta’s presence helps dampen the intensity.”
My dad sharing my mom is a hard concept for me to swallow. He’s always been super possessive.
I need to stop thinking about this right now.
“After Winston, that portion of our relationship ended,” she continues. “Your father and I settled into our life here. When we tried to have another child, nothing worked. Emmett offered to help. He was a trusted friend and a respected doctor.”
The chair in his office had an adjustable arm.
The tourniquet tightened around my bicep, and his fingers tapped until a vein rose beneath my skin.
The needle slid in while he asked about school, my interests, the awakening that never came, how I was feeling, whether I liked any boys.
I answered his every question, then thanked him on the way out like a complete idiot.
“He used his own sperm instead,” I say flatly. I’m disgusted by the thought of it.
Mom shakes her head too fast. “No. We don’t know that. He wouldn’t?—”
“Look at me. Then look at her...”
She looks from the photograph to me. Back again. Her hand covers her mouth.
“No,” she says again, but it breaks in the middle.
“He couldn’t have. I didn’t consent to that.
I would never have—you think I would have let him near you if I knew?
You weren’t presenting. Every appointment, every test, he said he was helping.
He said you needed monitoring, and I believed him. He was my friend, and I thought?—”
“You thought he could fix me, but he’s the one who broke me.”
Mom’s shoulders draw in.
“B,” Winston says. The doctor has moved into his voice. “She didn’t consent to any of this.”
“I know.” My chest tightens until every breath hurts. “It doesn’t change anything.”
“Don’t defend me.” Mom wipes beneath her eyes with the heel of her hand and only smears the mascara farther. She looks at me. “I gave him access to you. And you have every right to hate me.”
Her next breath breaks into a sob, then another, until her whole body shakes with them.
“I don’t hate you.”
“Why would he do this?” she asks.
“He felt entitled to you.” I gesture to her, and then myself. “And then he felt entitled to me. But he doesn’t love me. He traumatized me in the name of science. He let Whitney traumatize my mates.”