Page 74 of The Alpha's Cursed Queen

Jimmy puts the report down but watches me, his expression tense. “You’re not going to like it.”

My intention was to trash the report. I have no business diving into Alice’s life. After what I put her through? I betrayed her! How can I expect her to forget that?

But Jimmy’s words give me pause. “What do you mean?”

My friend walks over to the bar, opens a bottle of whiskey, and pours a generous amount into a glass. He turns around and hands it to me. “Maybe you should chug this before I tell you.”

For Jimmy to be encouraging me to drink, it must be bad. My heart sinks. “What is it, Jimmy?” He winces, and upon seeing the look on his face, I drain the glass in my hand before slamming it down on the desk. “Tell me.”

“She has a daughter,” Jimmy says quietly. “She married a human man soon after she disappeared. His name was Paul Scott. He was an engineer, and he died in a workplace accident when her daughter was a year old.”

A bitter taste fills my mouth.

She was married.

I’d thought I was prepared for anything, but clearly I hadn’t imagined that she would have gone and gotten married to someone else. “How old is the daughter now?” I force myself to ask.

“Records show that she is six. She’s in first grade.”

I reach for the report, knowing Jimmy would have been thorough. As I knew I would, I see a picture of the child clipped inside the file. A little girl in pigtails smiles back at me. She has Alice’s hair. Her eyes are green, though. She’s adorable.

My chest tightens with unspeakable grief. If things had been different, would this have been my daughter?

I close the file, unable to look at her anymore.

My mind and my heart are at war. Alice married a human. She lay in bed with him. She let him touch her, and she conceived his child.

When I took Alice’s virginity, she was shy, inexperienced. Did he teach her about her body, about what drove her crazy? Did she love him?

My wolf is pacing inside my mind, anxious, angry, and hurt. However, the voice of reason in my head asks me what I expected. Did I expect her to sit and pine for me? After everything I put her through, did I expect her to yearn for me and still hold a candle for me? After all, I got married, too, didn’t I?

“Get me that whiskey,” I say darkly. Jimmy doesn’t waste any time. I take a swig straight from the bottle. Then, I pick up the report and throw it in the trash. “I don’t want to hear anything about Alice Lane ever again. Get in touch with Katherine Lockhart and tell her that we will only go ahead with this deal if a new lawyer represents her company.”

Jimmy hesitates. “Are you sure about this, Darian?”

“Did I stutter?” I glower at him. “Why don’t you go and do what I told you to do instead of wasting time?”

My friend’s jaw tightens. “Yes, sir.”

Once he leaves, I bury my head in my hands. A child. She has a girl who looks just like her. She’s raising her daughter alone.

Did she love her husband? Did he make her laugh like I used to? Was he the one who healed the scars I put on her soul? Did she forget about me when she was with him?

My vision blurring as the pain consumes me, I pick up the bottle of whiskey and hurl it against the door. It shatters into a thousand slivers of glass. As the whiskey stains the carpet, I stare blindly at the wall. The agony brewing inside me doesn’t disappear.

I’ve always prided myself on being a reasonable man. On being logical rather than letting my heart make decisions for me. And logic dictates that I should stay away from Alice. She has no place in my life. I should be happy that she managed to make something of herself after what I did to her.

And yet, all I can think of is her in bed with a man who is not me. My wolf is growling, desperate to get out. It wants to go lay claim to the woman it chose seven years ago.

“Enough!” I snarl, getting to my feet. “Alice is not ours. She’s not ours!”

I walk over to the window and open it, desperate for some fresh air.

Alice doesn’t even smell like a wolf shifter anymore. She doesn’t quite smell human, either, but she definitely doesn’t give off the scent that is unique to our kind. Humans, witches, and wolf shifters all have unique scents that help my kind differentiate among them.

Alice smells like none of the three. She did smell tantalizing the other day, though. It stirred my blood. And I wasn’t the only one who noticed; the lawyers on my team also caught that scent. It didn’t escape my notice that every wolf shifter in the room was watching her, desire emitting from each of them. That’s why I held off on talking to them after our meeting. I didn’t think I would be able to stop myself from ripping out their throats.

The blast of fresh air does nothing to calm me down. It’s the right decision to ask for Alice to be removed from this collaboration.

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