Page 23 of Lycan Prince's Secret Baby

I knew exactly what Sam was going to say before the words left his mouth. “That Blood Moon Leah’s been working her charms on young Kyle here, which I bet would give her access to vital information. She was living under his roof for quite some time about a month ago.”

I squirmed beneath my father’s regard. He couldn’t know about what had happened between Leah and I. If standing before Healer Maria had made me feel ashamed of my feelings for Leah, the idea of my father catching wind of them had me feeling like there was a lead weight in my stomach and I’d been chucked into the ocean. I was going to die if he ever discovered it.

“Leah?” my father asked. “As in, the daughter of the former Blood Moon Beta?”

For the second time today in this chamber, I felt my ignorance. Leah had never mentioned that her father had been the Blood Moon Beta.

“The very one,” Sam affirmed.

“And wasn’t she the one engaged to the Blood Moon Alpha heir?” Charlie asked.

Sam nodded, and my father’s gaze looked far off as he considered this information. All the while, my pulse spiked with this new news that pulled my insides in all sorts of directions as if I was being eviscerated. Leah had been engaged to the runaway Blood Moon Alpha heir? Was she still engaged? Did she still care about him? Even as my foolish heart decided to focus on the wrong thing, my mind started to run the track that my father and the other members of my pack here were working along. With her connections to the hierarchy of the Blood Moon Pack, Leah was a prime suspect for a spy. But certainty beat through me. Leah wouldn’t do that. Leah was a Blood Moon, but I knew deep in my heart that she wasn’t the informant in our midst.

“I would never give a Blood Moon important information about our pack,” I began, defending myself.

My father interrupted, “But there could be other ways this Blood Moon obtained critical information—pack documents?”

I shook my head, even as my mind flashed with the memory of Leah and me entwined on papers, two times now, asking a question I could hardly bear to consider.

“I always keep sensitive information locked in my safe,” I retorted, pushing back against the tide of doubt threatening to steal through me.

“And can you look me squarely in the eye,” my father charged, “and tell me that this Blood Moon has never been in your office?”

Incendiary thoughts erupted in my mind; frustration simmered. My jaw clenched, fighting back the blinding rage. But I couldn’t lie to him—my father and Alpha.

“No, I can’t,” I said, the capitulation tasting bitter as I forced the words out.

A mixture of guilt and anger twisted in my gut as my father leaned back, his gaze shifting to Sam. “I’d like you to go with Kyle to his office and look for any signs of tampering with the safe.”

My world tilted on its axis as Sam shadowed me toward my office, his presence looming. I directed him to the safe where I kept pack documents, my heart pounding with uncertainty.

The moment we arrived, a sickening dread crept over me. The documents insidehadbeen moved.

The disarray wasn’t how I’d left it.

And Leah had been the last person to visit my office with me a couple of nights ago. Charlie’s words haunted me.“They had word from someone of where we’d be. Nothing else makes sense.”

As I recalled our interactions, doubt invaded my mind, thick as fog. Had Leah deceived me? The heat had seemed so like the estrus symptoms that had previously caused me to lose my senses the first time I’d kissed her. But she’d been adamant that she’d taken her medication. But could I really trust anything she said?

I recalled her arriving just as I’d shut the safe door. Her knock had sounded just as I’d let it fall shut, but what if I hadn’tlocked it? What if she’d been standing outside the door, listening to my movements and distracted me? I recalled her leaving immediately after our encounter, but I had gone upstairs to shower afterward. What if she had snuck back in to steal pack documents? What if everything between us had been a lie?

The thought sliced through me, and for the first time, I worried that I couldn’t trust my own heart.

Chapter 13

Leah

Daylight filtered through the grimy cabin windows, casting light over the mismatched furniture. I lay on my bed, my heart heavy despite the unexpected gift of an afternoon off.

“I wonder if the cleaning crew will finish early, too?” Mary mused from her perch, cross-legged on her own bed beside me. Her fingers deftly wove her golden hair into a braid like spun gold.

We’d been sent home early from the kitchens at the abrupt order of the Moonlight supervisors, who had closed up at the news the Moonlight Alpha had returned.

“Maybe,” I replied, the word leaving me lethargically. Even talking felt like too much effort. I was secretly dissatisfied with the time off. Slogging in the kitchens kept my mind occupied and offered respite from unrelenting thoughts—thoughts that spiraled on a loop, dissonant like a record stuck on a scratch.

Stuck onKyle.

The aftermath of our night together weighed heavily in my chest. I couldn’t shake the taste of betrayal, edged with shame andfrustration. How could he sleep with me and then turn cold, pinning everything that had happened between us on my estrus? Disgust roiled within me.

---