Page 70 of Shifter's Secret Baby

Briar was in there. I could smell her, even from the distance between us. Or maybe I just wanted to smell her so desperately that I hadn’t let her scent far from my memory since the day she’d left my estate. I couldn’t go to the house and be near her. I didn’t trust myself around her, not when I knew now that she was with my child and needed my protection more than ever.

But if I took her home with me, and truly committed to being with her, would that enact the curse?

But if she was there, it also meant that she was safer than anywhere near me. I had offered her money and a place to go, and she had chosen to return to her father.

“Take me home,” I instructed Royce.

I would have Rachel reach out to her and see if she wanted me to set her up somewhere else again. It was the best I could offer. And then I would need to figure out what to do about Barney and the money he still owed me. As long as Briar still deemed him part of her family, I couldn’t very well end him, tempting as it was.

I’d handled it all badly, but there wasn’t an erase button on the past. If there had been, I would have never allowed for the curse in the first place.

Rachel was in the outer office when I arrived, and I gestured for her to follow me inside.

“I’ve been calling you,” she told me, an eagerness to her. “I’ve been doing some research on the Ambroses through my own family lines.”

I raised an eyebrow skeptically, not wanting to get my hopes up again.

“And?”

“The Ambroses don’t exist anymore, at least not the family name, but there must be descendants floating around.”

The disappointment I’d been expecting gripped my chest.

“How do we find them?” I asked, knowing that it was an impossible ask.

“It’ll take time, but it can be done, just like any other family line.”

“Will it matter?” I asked dully. “Even if I find a descendant fae, what will it do?”

I had been so hellbent on locating a tie to Valeria that I hadn’t even been certain that her kin could lift the curse if they wanted.

“The Ambroses were very powerful—you were right,” Rachel reassured me. “Their bloodline will run strong, as will their magic. A fae, even this many generations later, will be able to lift a curse with two decades remaining.”

“Assuming she wants to.”

“Assuming she exists and that you can offer her something worthwhile,” Rachel agreed. “But I’m sure you can come up with an enticing reward for her troubles. That’s half your business model, isn’t it, Ash?”

I wished I shared her optimism, but it had been many years since I’d known any brand of hope.

“I need you to go to Briar again and deliver a message,” I told her. “Tell her that I am still willing to put her and her child up in a place if she wants to leave her father.”

Rachel stared at me. “Really, Ash?” she demanded angrily. “In this world?”

I bristled. “I can offer her security, too,” I growled. “What else do you want from me?”

“She won’t survive as a single mother, not in MacShire. Maybe if you send her to Montshire, but then she’ll have to endure another slew of problems.”

I glowered at her. “She’s not being cast into the gutters,” I snapped. “But her father is apt to take her child and sell it.”

“Unless he finds her a husband.”

I couldn’t breathe at the notion of Briar, my Briar, being married off to someone else, with some other man acting as a father to my child.

But my options were limited.

“Just go and present it to her!” I roared, knowing everything Rachel was saying was right.

She opened her mouth to presumably argue with me more, but the office phone rang before she could.

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