Lycan Prince’s Secret Baby (Moonlit Forbidden Love #1)

Chapter 10

Kyle

The shadows grew across my study walls as the evening light slipped away. This was the time of day when Leah used to bring me a cup of tea. Even after a month without her, I still found myself half expecting to hear her gentle knock on the door.

Since Leah left, the house felt uncomfortably hollow. To drown out her absence, I lost myself in work. Rationally, I assured myself that it wasn’t any different without her here. After all, I’d spent most of the time when Leah was here alone in this room doing exactly what I was engaged in now—absorbed in reforms and typing up page after page of notes to present to my father.

But it was different. Her absence thudded in the silence. The lack of her light footsteps and soft breaths haunted me at all hours. With my shifter senses, I’d been able to tune into her frequency like tuning into a radio station. And I found myself unconsciously reaching out, even now, to try to hear it.

And her humming as she cleaned.

Goddess, how I miss that.

How many times had I found myself unconsciously humming the refrain from “Blood Moon Rising”? Something tugged at my heart as I wondered whether her mom had sung it to her like my mother had. My chest ached as I remembered the quiver in Leah’s voice as she’d shared with me that her mother had passed away—lost in the war between our packs, just like my mom.

My fingers strayed to my neck, where my necklace ordinarily rested. I’d lost it, and a wave of bitterness swept over me. It seemed that I was losing everything that was precious to me lately. The keepsake of my mother’s was a blow. I’d searched everywhere in my office and all around the house, retracing my steps, but it was nowhere to be found.

But, amidst the loss, I discovered something else. The night Leah and I had kissed, I’d pulled her shirt off her. It had fallen down behind my desk. While hunting for my necklace, I’stumbled upon the fabric lying forgotten behind the desk. It still carried her wildflower scent. I'd kept it, a dirty little secret buried in my desk.

As the quiet of the house threatened to crush me, I reached for it, allowing me the solace it had become. The soft fabric was wearing thinner each time I clutched it to me. The scent was there, but it was a fading sweetness. I gritted my jaw, desperately searching for traces of her perfume. It reminded me of wildflowers in late summer, too close to decay. The scent of my own skin in the fabric had suffocated it. My scent was like the first heavy frost of fall, killing the last of the summer blooms.

Letting out a heavy sigh, I settled the shirt back on the stack of papers beside me, feeling empty like the room itself—an expanse of muted colors swallowed by the encroaching night. The dim desk lamp shivered up the walls. It was clearly time to try to find something else to distract me. Inspired by Maria’s faith in me, I had begun planning our pack reforms. The hostility from the last council meeting lurked like a shadow, a reminder of the enormous resistance I would face, fueling me to keep refining my ideas and ensuring I collected the data that would help me win over the council.

After finalizing the last notes, I hit print with a sense of accomplishment. The printer whirred to life, sounding too loud in the silence. I gathered the documents, their weight a comforting anchor. Something that told me I was doing something. I was here, putting in the hard work to make a difference to my pack. I gathered up the documents from the desk, valuable papers with evidence of Sam’s embezzling. I tucked them away in my safe, wondering how long it would be before I got the opportunity to present them to my father. A report had just come in from him and the Moonlights that they were moving in on the rebel Blood Moons. If they were successful, I supposed it could be mere days before I got to present my findings to him.

As I shut over the safe, a knock reverberated on my office door. It must be Mark. Ordinarily, he knocked on the front door, but he had been even more like my shadow of late. Clearly, he was getting comfortable and letting himself in these days. He’d been helping me draft up the reform proposals and plans. We had also been training a lot together. Throwing a few punches with him was the best outlet I’d found to fight my thoughts of Leah.

Hopefully, he was up for an evening session now. “Come in,” I called out, thinking of how therapeutic it would be to go and spar a bit in the training ring. The night’s cool air would soothe my pent-up frustrations, and the movement would banish the aches that came from too long spent at this desk.

The door swung open, revealing Leah framed in the doorway. My breath caught as her ember-hued locks cascaded over her shoulders, a vivid contrast to her familiar white shirt and well-worn jeans. She looked serious, channeling the same energy she had the last time she’d knocked on my study door. A sense of déjà vu tripped through me as if I’d been transported back to that moment in the past. But, this time, there was no tea in her hand.

I stared, entranced, my heart racing at the sight of her.

Am I dreaming?

I had dreamed of her many times since her departure.

Just then, she pulled something out of her pocket, and my heart lurched when I recognized the bronze rune-marked pendant hanging from the black cord. My necklace. The one I had thought lost to me.

Just like Leah.

“I came to return this,” she said, her voice guarded. “It slipped into my top when—” She paused, shaking her awkwardness and stepping closer. “Anyway, I’ll just leave it here.” She reached to lay it on my desk. Her hand froze mid-air.

I saw what her eyes had landed on: her white shirt, bundled on top of my paperwork and covered in my scent. It felt like a damning indictment of everything I’d tried to suppress. My heart beat in my chest as if it had been bared and laid out before her.

Her cheeks flushed, and I saw she gathered exactly what I’d been doing with it. But Leah’s embarrassment quickly shifted to defiance. She tilted her head, eyes narrowing. “Really looks like you don’t need me any longer, Kyle,” she shot at me, the rawness of her words turning my blood to ice.

I was thrust back to the infirmary and to the words I’d hurled at Maria: “I don’t need her any longer. Her presence is more of a hindrance than a help.” The cold echo of my voice haunted me as my wolf growled in protest, demanding to show her the truth behind my denial. After all, hadn’t I missed her every waking moment of every day since she’d left? And, clearly, as my dreams overflowed with thoughts of her, even my subconscious had missed her.

But Maria’s warning lingered in my mind, grounding my resolve even amidst the chaos I felt. I couldn’t let her stay. I needed her to leave, to escape before my wolf won the battle.

“I don’t need you any longer,” I spat, my voice unyielding. “It was a moment of madness. Nothing more, Leah. I don’t care about you.”

Something flickered across her face, a fleeting spark of hurt swiftly eclipsed by defiance. “So, you bringing me under your roof in the first place had nothing to do with our mate bond?”

I swallowed hard, my heart thumping in a chaotic rhythm as she named it— “mate bond.” Mate. My wolf stirred with a deep, ravenous appreciation for the term.

I refused to let her bait me. “I brought you under my roof in spite of that,” I insisted, my words tasting bitter, tainted by the shadows that buried the truth within me. “I needed to prove that you weren’t a threat, that’s all.”

She shook her head, her silky waves stirring and making me ache to reach out and brush them. “You didn’t let go of me on the way back from the Blood Moon quarters. You dragged me back here, refusing to let go until I was inside.” Her hard expression broke for a moment, shifting with something tender.

The intensity of her gaze cracked the shell around my tightly controlled emotions. I felt the tension in my body flicker, a spark igniting what I had tried to bury. “I only held onto you because you disobeyed me,” I protested, but my harsh tone had lost its edge. My words felt rote, with no belief behind them.

She tilted her chin up to me more. That spark of defiance I’d tried to temper was still burning as brightly as ever. Her voice was softer but still questioning as she said, “You didn’t assign me tasks outside of the house for a week when we got back from the Blood Moon quarters.” She pushed, her voice soft yet unyielding, leaving no room for escape.

I felt the dam break. The long-repressed desire surged uncontrollably, forcing its way through the cracks of my resolve. “What do you want me to tell you, Leah?” I rasped, the rawness tearing through me. “That I can’t bear the thought of you being in harm’s way? That I’d destroy anyone who hurt you? That when you fainted, the terror of losing you is the most afraid I’ve ever been?” My breath came in ragged gasps, the weight of my confession hanging between us like a third being, sucking up all the air from the room and suffocating the pair of us.

Leah’s mouth fell open, visibly stunned.

Finally, I’ve left even Leah’s smart mouth speechless.

As I made the mistake of thinking about her mouth, my gaze dipped to it. I remembered how sumptuous and soft it had been. Then, just like when the bones in my body broke with the shift, my wolf’s need for everything about Leah cracked. My mouth crashed to hers, capturing the essence of wildflowers that had haunted me. My lips devoured hers, telling her there was no stopping this time. She was mine .