Somewhere around dawn, while the sky was still blue, I woke to the feeling that someone was watching me. It had always been a common occurrence to wake up and find Franny watching me the way she was now, at the foot of a stranger’s bed. She looked the way she had right before she’d died, her beautiful features hardened with disappointment as she stared down at me.

Usually, when I’d find her watching me, I’d ask what she was doing and the answer was always the same. “Just wondering what it’s like when you dream.”

I’d always just chalked it up to her being kind of a weirdo and figured that normalcy was the one thing I had going for me. The one thing she could possibly be drawn to. She was so wonderful and strange, from her constantly shifting moods to the melancholy that sometimes overtook her for months at a time. She’d told me once that I was boring and simple and that was why she loved me. There were no surprises, good or bad.

I hadn’t taken it too personally, because she was a goddess and I was a mere mortal graced with her presence. Everyone knew it, from her to the men she entertained while I was at work.

I knew this wasn’t like the other times she’d woken me with her watching. This time, she wasn’t real. Even though I doubted I was fully awake yet, I was conscious enough to know that she couldn’t really be here. I sat up and let the sheets fall, and she kept watching me with that serene, knowing expression that reminded me of how much more she knew about… everything.

I’d just never imagined there was quite that much more to know.

“Hello, Jack,” she said warmly.

“You’re not here.”

Her lips curved as she looked around the room. “Can’t get anything past you,” she said casually, standing. The hem of her pink cotton dress pooled around her ankles as she walked to the other side of the room. “How are you liking Romania?”

“It’s not exactly a pleasure trip,” I said, climbing out of bed. The part of me that wanted to go over to her and take her into my arms, even if she wasn’t real, was tempered by the part of me that knew she’d disappear if she didn’t simply push me away. “Ellie—“

“I know what happened,” she snapped, turning on me with a look of pure spite in her gaze. It was the look I was used to seeing in her eyes, so it didn’t come as any surprise. The way it filled me with longing did. Longing just to see her look at me that way one last time in reality. “You failed, Jack. I trusted you with our child, and you failed us both.”

“I know.” My throat tightened and I took another step toward her, walking softly in case I alerted the real me somewhere up in the waking world. “But I’m going to fix it. I know I didn’t protect you, but I’m gonna bring her back.”

“You or Nicolae?” she spat. “I gave up everything to get away from him and you’ve delivered our son right into his hands.”

I flinched. Even in my goddamn dreams, we had to have this argument. “We don’t have a son, Franny. For God’s sake, do you still not get that?”

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand! You know nothing of this world. The world I gave my life to keep him out of,” she seethed, her hands trembling as she made fists of them at her side. “I made you promise not to leave Clarksville. One thing. I asked one thing of you, but you couldn’t even do that, could you?”

I swallowed hard. “I did what I had to do, for both of us. You left us. You left me without a fucking clue about what was going on, about how to help her through this. After sixteen years, did you really not think I deserved the truth?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but her eyes narrowed as they locked on the door. I turned to see what it was that had drawn her attention away from me, but by the time I looked back, she was gone.

I felt an intense pressure on my chest that brought me back to reality, and to my body. When I opened my eyes, I cried out in alarm at the sight of two bugged-out eyes as blue as the sky staring back at me through a mess of reddish-brown curls. The little imp barely weighed more than a sack of potatoes, but all of it was concentrated on my chest as he crouched on top of it with his bony little feet. When I screamed, so did he and the alarm made him use my chest as a springboard as he leaped onto the floor, landing crouched like a wild animal.

I was sure it was another dream as I flipped the light switch on the wall. The little goblin shrieked like the light was about to turn him to ash and shielded his eyes. He was a scrap of a thing, barely five if that, wearing footy pajamas covered in Batman logos that might as well have been fur for the way he was snarling at me. “What the hell?” I muttered, stumbling my way out of bed.

The goblin-child grabbed the door and threw it open before scampering out into the hall. I pursued him to the kitchen where Nicolae was standing over a fresh pot of coffee. The kid climbed his leg and clung to his back, staring at me over Nicolae’s shoulder with the wide-eyed fixation of a baby bear who knows it’s safe behind its behemoth parent.

Nicolae scowled over his shoulder at his cling-on, but his lack of alarm made it clear this was far from an unusual occurrence. He looked back at me, his frown deepening. “What did you do?”

“What did I do?” I cried. “I just woke up to find that little creep sitting on my chest gawking at me!”

Nicolae sighed, peeling the boy off his back and holding him at arm’s length as he kicked against the cloth confining his feet and made fierce snarling sounds in protest of being removed from his safe perch. “Andrei, what did I tell you about sneaking into other people’s rooms?” he scolded.

The boy ignored him, kicking and grunting. Nicolae set him down and he dove for the elevator, reaching up to jab the buttons as many times as he could until the doors slid open. He dove into the car and glared at me as he crouched behind the elevator panel, like he was afraid of me. I stared in confusion until the doors slid closed before turning to Nicolae and asking, “What the hell was that about?”

“That was Andrei,” he answered, sitting at the counter. He poured a cup of coffee and slid it over to me. “That’s what we call him, at least. He’s a pup my men rescued on a recent mission.”

“Rescued? From where, a zoo?” I asked, sitting across from him.

“From the woods. He’s only recently been able to shift into his human form, and as you can see, he’s having some trouble adjusting.”

I blinked. “So he really is feral?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I thought you said werewolves can’t shift until puberty. He can’t be more than what, five?”

“We assume. We haven’t been able to track down his parents yet, and I imagine when we do, we’ll find that they’re dead,” he said, growing somber. “As for him being able to shift, that’s true except in cases of extreme trauma. It’s not uncommon for young wolves to revert to their beastly forms to cope.”

“Oh.” Well, now I felt like shit. “So you adopted him?”

“Regular wolves care for those who cannot care for themselves,” Nicolae said, pouring a dash of creamer into his own coffee. It was a surprisingly human thing to do. I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t picture the guy eating or drinking like normal, even though he was at least as much man as he was beast. “We’re not so different.”

“I see. You still could’ve warned me. I would have at least locked my door.”

Nicolae smirked. “But then I wouldn’t have been able to see that look on your face.”

I flipped him off and took a sip of coffee. He might have been a weirdo, but he made a decent cup of Joe.

“I was going to come check on you anyway. You were making quite a racket in your sleep.”

“Rough night,” I muttered, running a hand through my hair. “Who was that guy I heard here last night?”

“That was Mason, my chief lieutenant,” he answered.

“What, like a military?”

“More like a police force, but yes. Sometimes that, too.”

“So you really are at war with the Majerus pack?”

“Among others,” he answered. “Our race is ancient. We’re always at war.”

“Sounds like a real hoot.”

“You will be accompanying me to an event tonight,” he announced, ignoring my comment.

“An event?”

“Several members of the pack have returned from an extended stay in friendly territory, and it’s my responsibility to welcome them. It will be a good opportunity to introduce you.”

“I’m not crazy about the idea of partying while my daughter’s missing.”

Nicolae gave me a look, leaning over the counter. “Let’s get something straight. Your daughter is not missing. I know exactly where she is, right down to the coordinates. She is not a hostage. Right now, according to pack law, she is with blood relatives who have as much right to her as I do.”

“But they murdered Francesca!” I cried.

“And proving that will be incredibly difficult if not impossible.”

“You said it yourself, Francesca was your mate and that means Ellie belongs to you.” I couldn’t believe those words had actually left my mouth, but the only way to argue this insanity was on its own terms. What little I knew of them, at any rate. The look on Nicolae’s face when my words sank in was so much more troubling than anything he had said this far.

“Francesca was my rightful mate,” he said slowly. “But the ratification of our mating is on tenuous legal ground.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that Francesca ran on the night we were to be mated. We consummated the arrangement, but she left before she was marked as mine.”

“Marked?”

“When two werewolves are mated, we bite to leave a permanent mark that announces belonging,” he explained.

“Right. Kind of like wedding bands, only for freaks.”

Nicolae smirked. “I told you, this world would not be easy for you to understand. There is a reason we seldom allow humans into it.”

“Then how do you make more werewolves?”

“We are born, not turned. No human has ever survived a werewolf’s bite without going insane and having to be put down.” He hesitated. “Not in recorded history, at least.”

I shuddered. I wasn’t sure which would be the worse side of that coin. “So you and Franny were never actually mated,” I said. A day ago, that would have come as a sweet relief, but now…

“No,” Nicolae replied bitterly. “She ran before it was official, but you are now one of four living people who knows that. Claire and Damon could try to claim Ellie on that basis if they knew, but…”

“They would have to admit they were the last people who saw her alive,” I muttered.

“So you see the dilemma. In either case, Francesca’s disappearance is enough to call my claim into question. It’s their word against mine.”

My head was throbbing, burdened by all the questions I was afraid to ask. There was one that stood out among the others, and I had to know. “When you say you and Franny consummated the mating before she left, you mean…?”

“The same as it means to humans.” He took a sip of his coffee, watching for my reaction. Like he was trying to see if I was keeping up enough to arrive at the same question that had obviously occurred to him. The question that would answer so many others.

“Ellie could be yours,” I gritted out. Now, it made sense. The whirlwind of lust that had led to Ellie’s conception, and Francesca’s desire to rush into marriage. I’d always wondered, but knew it didn’t change anything, even now that the possible sperm donor was right in front of me.

“It is a distinct possibility,” he answered. “In fact, given the rarity of human-wolf hybrids, I would say it’s far more likely.”

I could tell what he was thinking. For once, that smug expression was far from a mystery.

“I’m sorry you had to find out this way.” He sounded almost sincere about it, too.

I laughed, staring into the black liquid in my cup. “Guess it makes more sense than the alternative. Why the hot new girl in town was in such a hurry to shack up with the most average guy in all of Kentucky.”

Nicolae’s expression shifted a little. He seemed surprised by my self-awareness. “You’re taking this better than I expected.”

“You expected what, a temper tantrum?” I asked. “Maybe that I’d throw a punch?”

“Humans males are at least as volatile as we are. You’re just not capable of doing as much damage.”

I grabbed a bottle of what I hoped was vodka off the counter that had been left out from the night before and dumped it into my coffee mug. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“Are you sure about that?”

I looked up at him, swallowing my anger. “It doesn’t,” I said through my teeth. “If it turns out that Ellie really is mine, are you still going to want her back?”

“Of course.” He seemed offended by the same insinuation he’d made of me seconds earlier.

“One thing I don’t get,” I admitted, hoping the alcohol would make my hands stop shaking. It wasn’t withdrawal. I hadn’t touched the stuff much since Ellie was born, but I couldn’t blame all my nervous energy on the wakeup call from hell I’d gotten, courtesy of Andrei. Franny’s ghost was still with me, her words all the more biting in the context I now had. “If you think Ellie is yours, why not just stake your claim that way? Surely that’s a more convincing argument than I could make as Franny’s… consort.”

“To explain it to you would require an understanding of pack law that you simply don’t have.”

“Try.”

He sighed. “If Ellie is my biological child and if I make a claim to her on those grounds, the status of my mating to Francesca will still be an obstacle. Pack law always favors the she-wolf in matters of custody. The Majerus pack will use the fact that she ran away as proof that Francesca did not want our child raised by me, and the Court will almost certainly decide the matter in their favor.” The hurt in his voice took me off guard. “On the other hand, your status as Francesca’s consort is indisputable. As I said, we are matrilineal. If you are assumed the biological parent, as Francesca’s consort, you are Ellie’s rightful custodial parent. Are you following me?”

My head felt like it was going to split open, but I answered, “Yeah. Mostly. According to your laws, Franny belonged to you, I belonged to her, Ellie belongs to me and that means we both belong to you, by proxy.”

He stared at me for a second, and I found his surprise over the fact that I understood more insulting than his snarky remarks. “Yes. That’s about the long and short of it.”

“Maybe you wolves just aren’t as complicated as you like to think,” I said, taking another sip of my drink.

Nicolae didn’t smile, but his eyes did somehow. “Perhaps not.”

I reached for a muffin in the basket on the counter. I hadn’t had much of an appetite over the last few days, but now that I knew Ellie was at least safe from physical harm for the time being and we had a plan for getting her back, however bizarre it seemed, I was famished. “So all that’s gonna hold up in your Court?”

“That is my hope. Our packs being at war complicates things and will require an impartial arbitrator,” he explained, folding his hands as he watched me. I realized he was probably judging the way I buttered my muffin, so I ate it dry. Fucking snob. “There are still some logistics I need to work out before I file an official claim, but the first step is introducing you to the pack.”

“Why?” I asked, realizing I should have waited until my mouth wasn’t full.

He arched an eyebrow. “Just… try to keep yourself out of trouble until the designer comes.”

“Designer? Why, and where are you going?”

“She’s going to need to fit you for some formal wear for tonight. I’m going to work.”

“There’s gotta be something more useful I can do than sitting on my ass getting fitted for party clothes,” I protested. I’d never been away from work for this long, and on top of worrying about Ellie, it was driving me insane.

“I’m afraid we don’t have any ores to mine at the moment.”

“One, fuck you. Two, I mine coal. It’s a fossil fuel, not an ore.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, how did you get into that, anyway?”

I stared at him. “Uh. Pretty much the same way any southern schmuck does. I was eighteen with a wife and a kid on the way, and I needed a job that paid well.”

“Right.” He finished his coffee and stood, draping a coat over his arm. “Well, try to behave yourself while I’m gone.”

“Worry about that rabid puppy running around your building, not me,” I called after him.

Just like that, I was alone in the kind of place I’d once been certain only existed in magazines. The condo was rich in every sense of the word, but I wouldn’t have traded it for the happy little shack we’d owned any day. Even if those happy memories had become fewer and further between toward the end.