Jane’s POVOwen slapped a hand over Ares’s mouth. “Mommy,” he said, overly loudly, glaring at his brother, “what’s going on?”Shame crawled up my spine. What the fuck had I been doing? I hated Hunter, I hadn’t forgiven him – and yet I’d been so desperate for him that I hadn’t even thought to lock the damn door.My cheeks burned as I slipped off of him. “Boys, can you give me a minute?”Hunter yanked the duvet off the bed and used it to cover us both. For a split second – a tiny, single, infinitesimal second – I felt like we were their parents. Both of us, acting together as a team. Sure, it was the worst of circumstances – but for that second, it was kind of… nice.I’d never had a teammate in this. It had always been my boys and I against the world. I’d had to shoulder that responsibility entirely by
Jane’s POVI put my hand over her arm and leant in close, my eyes darting around the grounds to make sure we weren’t being overheard. “What did you hear?”She shook her head; she too was looking around, and the tension swelling around us made the tiny hairs on my forearms stand up. The warm, early autumn air suddenly turned chilled. “Let’s find somewhere we won’t be overheard,” she whispered.I nodded, then pursed my lips as I thought through our options. “We can’t go back to my rooms. The boys are there, and,” my face flamed red, “it’s prone to interruptions.”“We could go back to mine?” she suggested. “S is working, and it’s so secluded by the woods that, now the excitement of us becoming mates has died down, we don’t get many visitors.” She eyed my blush, having only just noticed it. “Are you okay, girl?”That only made it grow darker. I couldn't get thoughts of Hunter out of my head. I could still feel his electric touch, the heat of his body pressing against mine...I forced them
Jane’s POV“She – I – wait – Amy – she – what?” I blinked at Rose. Everything looked fuzzy and warped. My hands and feet went numb and the rest of me froze solid.How could she know?And, more importantly – if she knew, what was she playing at? She’d had so many chances to hurt me, kill me, drug me, and…Oh my god, had she drugged me? That night, in the bar? The same night I’d come back and I’d felt such powerful lust towards Colin?I dropped my head into my hands and groaned. “Oh my god.”“Girl, you’re spiralling,” said Rose, hopping off her stool and hugging me. I leant into her embrace as splinters of ice cracked through my body. I felt like I was being torn apart from within.“What did she say?” I asked eventually, my voice hollow.Rose pulled back and sat
Hunter’s POV‘You really think this is going to work?’ I asked Reg.He nodded firmly. ‘Trust me.’Rolling my eyes at him, I thought to myself that I’d be wiser to trust Pinocchio when his nose was elongated. But I did it anyway. I didn’t have much choice.If this was what I needed to do to win Jane back, then I would do it. I lifted my hand and knocked on the door, calling out the boys’ fake names for good measure.“I’m here for Ramil and Cargan Bree.”If I knew Jane as well as I thought I did, then I knew she’d heard my knock and was, most likely, already up and stood waiting, with her sons already ready to go. She was the most prepared woman I’d ever met; that was why I liked to throw curveballs her way. Seeing how she deflected them was always interesting.Or at least it had been, until she’d put a stop to seeing me altogether. That defensive tactic hadn’t been my favourite.This was my way back in. It had to be.She’d already slipped up yesterday. I couldn’t stop thinking about it
Hunter’s POVI felt like I had something big and sharp and unbearably painful lodged in my throat. Ares had shifted into his wolf form now and was proudly strutting about but the image of that birthmark was burned onto my retinas and it obliterated everything else I could really see.Ares had the birthmark that every Burns boy had. Nobody had ever been able to explain it beyond a weird genetic quirk, but every single one of us, from our bloodline, had that birthmark on their butt.So why did Ares have it?It didn’t make any sense to me.Unless…But no.The timings didn’t make sense. Jane and I… my memories were hazy. Truly hazy, not like when I’d been pretending to have lost my memory in the desert. Had Jane and I had sex back then? I didn’t remember ever having sex with her; I just remembered being drawn to her in a way I couldn’t explain, but nothing more. Reg, of course, loved her, had been mad for her, but that didn’t add up to a kid that could potentially be mine.Or did it?Reg
Jane’s POVHunter marched straight into my bedroom and grabbed my shoulders. He yanked me to him; his nostrils were flared and his eyes were wide.Dread swept through me barely a second before he spoke.“Jane, are they my kids?”My world careened off its axis. I was quick to hide my shock and quick to recover. Instead of frowning – or gasping – I arched an eyebrow at him. “Who are you talking about? Actually, what are you talking about?”His whole body shook. “Don’t – don’t do that. I want the truth, Jane. Tell me the truth.”I lifted my chin. “I don’t know what you mean.”“Yes,” he snarled, gripping me even tighter, “you do. Are they my kids?” he asked again.How on earth had he worked it out? I trusted my boys completely; they wouldn’t have told him. We’d all been so careful to keep the secret. He had no reason to think Ares and Owen were anything to do with him.What had happened during their first training session?Before I could answer, the two of them rushed in. “Alpha Hunter,
Hunter’s POVI couldn’t let them go.They were my boys. Mine.I stared blankly at Jane, her firm, “No,” ringing in my ears and making my head pulse with pain. “No?” I repeated, pressing my thumbs to my temples and digging them in hard. A second ago, my mind had been full of excited plans – and now it was like every part of me had frozen solid. “What do you mean, no?”Jane frowned at me and took a slow step back. “Hunter, you can’t just start taking us out for dinner and acting like a parent. Things haven’t changed that much. We’re not a couple. You still have Amy, and Ava, and Obie. You have your family; I have mine.”“But Ares and Owen are my family,” I argued. “They’re my children.”It all made sense now. Why I’d felt so drawn to them, why I’d found them so cute compared to the other nose-picking little brats. Werewolves had an innate sense for these sorts of things, and I’d clearly been ignoring mine for far too long.‘I’m a daddy wolf?’ said Reg, like he was coming out of a stupo
Jane’s POVI stood in my bedroom, my hands braced on the windowsill, until I’d managed to halfway process everything that had just happened.Then I thought the words, ‘Hunter knows Ares and Owen are his sons,’ and I started to spiral all over again.I sank down until I hit the floor, my back sliding down the wall. I buried my head in my hands and took some deep breaths. I didn’t even have Ina to talk to anymore, not in the same way; without her, my worries consumed me.Distantly, I was aware that I was supposed to be at work. I couldn’t let myself fall apart now. Wasn’t that just the story of my life?After checking on Ares and Owen and getting them off to pack school, I drifted over to the hospital in a daze. My mind stopped forming full sentences at some point and just provided me with a series of images, mostly Hunter’s facial expression shifting, almost infinitesimally, just enough that I could feel his hurt and anger reverberating through me.It made me hate him all the more. Or