Her voice travels through the house. She’s giggling about something. It was like music to my ears. A sound that I hadn’t heard in so long, it made my chest pound with pure happiness. If only her mother could see her now.

I would come home from a hunt to find my baby wide awake and playing games with her mother. She was always so excited to see me and my mate would tell me the same thing every single time. Dorothy couldn’t sleep without a goodnight kiss from me. That last night, I never even got to tuck her into bed.

My heart had more than shattered. It was made one hundred times worse by the fact there was no trace of Dorothy anywhere. Just a fucking note from Blair with the words, “I win!” She had covered their tracks perfectly.

Following the giggles to the kitchen, I see Dorothy laid on the floor as the Lycan pups crawl all over her. Her giggles echo throughout the house.

I look at the twins, one identical to Dane while the other had Neah’s features. Neither of them had a bad soul, yet. At this age, they have tiny balls of light to reflect their souls, not a millimetre of darkness to be seen anywhere.

“She loves playing with them.” Dane tells me.

“They are Lycans.”

“You have been raised to believe they are all bad. But take it from your kid, they are not all like that.”

“The boys are just pups, they haven’t developed yet.”

“I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about Damien and Mallory. She loves them both.” He points to my baby girl.

“Is Daddy mad?” Dorothy asks quietly

“No, I’m not mad.” I offer her a smile and drop down to her level. She looks directly at me without returning the smile. Her eyes are just as bright as her mothers.

“Not you, my other Daddy.” I feel a tightening around my heart, it feels like it’s being crushed

“He’s not your Daddy, baby girl.”

“Yes he is. He saved me. Daddies save us.”

My kid loved a Lycan as though they were family and I hated that.

“Daddy Damien isn’t mad.” Dane tells her. “He had to go and check on Raven.”

“Raven’s sad?” Her small voice asks

“Yes.”

“Jenson made her sad because he is dying?” She squeezes a little teddy bear to her chest.

Dane goes quiet. He stares at my little girl. I recognise the look, it’s the exact same one I get when I say something and they don’t understand how I know.

“She hasn’t met him has she?” I ask as Dorothy is distected by the boys

“No. She shouldn’t know.”

“Hunter genes.” I murmur with a smile. “And by the look on your face, this isn’t the first time she has thrown you a curveball, is it?”

Dane calls for an omega to take the kids away so that we can talk. When they are gone, he gestures for me to sit at the table.

“She makes a few comments, now and again. Nothing major but we started making sure she wasn’t in the room, just in case she was paying more attention than we first thought.”

“You won’t be able to hide anything from her. You are lucky she is young, wait until she is old enough to read souls.”

His crimson eyes don’t give away his surprise, but the straightening of his spine does. “You can read souls?”

“How do you think I know random information? Got any beer?”

He gets up and moves to the fridge, pulling out a couple of bottles.

“That’s why you don’t like Damien, because of what you can see?”

“Bingo!”

“Why do you wind Eric up?”

“Because it’s easy. By the way, you might want to check in on him. He gave his mate a cracking punch.”

“She’s good.” I add when he locks eyes with me.

I take a swig as he decides how to reply, when I fire my own question at him. “How long has she been calling herself Kitson?”

“Neah has always been a Kitson.”

“Not her, the other one. Kitson doesn’t come from her fathers side, but her mothers, passed down like her fancy blood. They shared the same father, correct?”

He nods at me. “What did you know her as?”

“Blair Everwood. It’s funny.”

“What is?”

“Changing her surname to one that comes from a long line of powerful Lycans. It sounds to me like she is trying to convince people that she is the long lost female Lycan that they all need.”