Page 53 of Secret Wolf Baby

I gave another strangled laugh. “You say that now,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Try me.” His thumb stroked my cheek. I leaned into it unconsciously, taking solace in the gesture, steeling myself for what I feared would be the imminent explosion.

“It’s about Claire,” I finally said.

“What about her?” he asked.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, then forced myself to open them and look directly into his.

“She’s yours.”

Chapter 17 - Jackson

“She’s yours.”

At first, the words didn’t register. I frowned, blinking as I tried to figure out what she meant by “yours.” My what?

And then it hit me.

My jaw dropped, and I took a step back, my hand sliding away from Audrey’s face as I stared at her, trying to fully grasp what she had just said.

“Mine,” I repeated numbly. “As in, my kid?”

She gave the tiniest nod, her face strained with unease and panic.

“And I’m guessing you don’t mean in the metaphorical sense or because you and I are mated,” I said, my throat going dry.

She shook her head, her entire body rigid, every muscle tensed and coiled. Her eyes searched my face, trying to gauge my reaction.

My mind went back to that night eleven years ago. Eleven years. Claire was ten. God, how had I missed it? We had the same hair color, similar mannerisms. I had thought the matching hair color was a coincidence, and the mannerisms were there just because we had been spending time together. But no, Claire was my kid.

My kid. I had a kid.

I struggled to process it. It felt like I’d just been whacked on the side of the head with a sledgehammer. My mind seemed unable to fathom the idea.

My wolf was a different story. He growled in approval, his tail swishing. He seemed content. Happy, even. I had to wonder if he had always known, and was just waiting for me to figure it out on my own.

I stared at Audrey, who looked back at me with an anxious expression on her face, her arms wrapped around her stomach. She looked terrified. How long had it taken her to muster the courage to tell me? And how the hell had I not figured it out on my own?

Another memory struck home. Saul, Audrey’s father. He had said I looked familiar. It hadn’t been because we had run into each other while I was working on a mission or anything like that. It was because of Claire.

I ran my fingers through my hair to give my hands something to do as I continued to process the situation. Claire was my daughter. The bizarre thing was, she was the exact type of kid I would have wanted: smart, a good learner, a good hunter. She enjoyed games and had a bit of a goofy streak to her.

Then I thought about all the time I had lost, and what might have happened if I had known about her from the start. Frustration and annoyance rippled through me. All those precious things I had missed because Audrey had kept Claire a secret instead of coming back to my pack when she found out she was pregnant. Instead of letting me help, letting me meet my daughter and help raise her, she’d decided to return to an abusive home.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” I asked. I couldn’t hide the flash of irritation in the words. “That’s kind of a big thing, you know. Maybe I would have liked to have known that the first time I met her?”

Audrey winced. “I know, and I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have debated telling you a hundred times. There were so many times when…” She took a deep breath as she ran her fingers through her hair, looking off into the distance as she tried to find the right words. “But I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of how you might have treated her,” she finally said. And some of that old spark, that old fire I had fallen for all those years ago, flickered to life in her voice. “You left me once before.”

“You thought I would leave you because of Claire?” I asked.

“I didn’t care whether or not you left me,” she said. “But I didn’t want to introduce Claire to her father, only for him to turn around and reject her. Trust me, I know from experience what that feels like.”

Those last words slammed home in a way that nothing else did. I turned to look at Audrey. For a moment, we were both kids again. She had just wandered into my pack, looking for a new place to stay. I remembered asking her during one of the first times she came over to hang out with Mira what she was doing here. I’d asked her if her parents would be worried sick about her.

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