"Blake," I said, because whispering in the tense silence that descended on the boardroom was pointless. "Blake, we invited him. Both of us. I want to hear him out. Please."

Blake didn't look at me, he looked at Steinar.

If only we were in private, I would have said please a dozen times, and Blake would have rattled off a list of issues he had with this situation. I could read every one of them in the scowl that twisted his normally stoic features as plain as day.

Steinar is a fraud. He would break your heart with his lies and false hopes. This is not good for you, Este, and it's not good for the pack.

My brain agreed with this imaginary Blake, but after losing my mom so young and lacking any other family, I had to hear anything, from any source, however questionable, about her.

I kneaded my hands in my laps, missing holding Blake's hand. I really could have used the comfort of his touch right now. I needed to know he understood, even if he didn't approve. "I must hear him out."

My gaze fixed on him, searching for the smallest hint of acceptance, but Blake was unreadable.

A minute must have passed. Finally, he furrowed his brows and looked at his Betas. "The rogue is my guest and under my protection, but I won't permit him to use our hospitality to insult us under our own roof."

My breath hitched in my throat when the crease deepened between Blake's brows. Goddess, he was going to throw Steinar out, and I would never find out what information he had about my mother. "B-blake, please..."

He glanced at me and his frown softened, his jowls relaxed. I always loved it when tenderness smoothed his features like that. The splinter in my heart stopped throbbing. Blake wouldn't fail me. He simply couldn't. He loved me too much to deny me anything.

"This meeting is adjourned. Give Mie any outstanding items for next week's agenda on your way out. My Luna and I will discuss private matters with the rogue," Blake said. His jaw tensed again, in response to the murmurs that met his announcement. "In private."

This was enough to squash the dissent.

Dirk Steinar stood next to the wall, while the Betas left. His arms folded across his chest, and his blue eyes never stopped crinkling in a hidden smile, even when Conan spat between his feet.

I envied the rogue his cool. Personally, I wanted to howl.

Conan's gleeful expression promised the next Council's agenda to include a vote for discontinuing the hear-them-out policy with the rogues. Judging by the other Betas' grim expressions, even Monica's—who supported me unquestionably since I saved her life—Steinar was the only experiment they were willing to endure.

Once the Betas had filed out, Blake pointed to the door on the right, hiding the break room Mie used to set up meals for the longer conferences.

"I'll be there if you need me, Este. Talk to him, but..." he glared at Steinar as if he could preemptively eviscerate him, "trust nothing he says. His type is a pathological liar."

"Ouch." Steinar waved his hand in front of his face as if to chase away some fumes once the door clicked shut behind Blake. "Nothing is more suffocating than testosterone and hierarchy."

"Are you forgetting that you're speaking to the pack's Luna?" I asked him.

"I forget nothing." Steinar came to sit on the tabletop, as if he was in his kitchen. "Only, you are far more complacent than I had expected from the rumors and your interest in the rogues and Omegas."

"Truth be told, I hoped for a repentant sinner."

"Pah. They're tedious." Steinar hummed behind his mask and scarf. "Are you really what you seem? A dutiful Luna who might as well have been bred, born and raised by this pack?"

"Believe it." I shrugged. "There are worse things than fitting in."

Like the stonewalling, the humans subjected me to through no fault of mine. Or the attacks I suffered from my rival to keep me from assuming my rightful place.

I liked who I was, and was about to tell Steinar that, when he crumpled the paper with Blake's offer of a reward and tossed it into the wastebasket. "So this was only an idle curiosity."

"I wouldn't call it idle. I want to know where I come from, even though I like who I am now." A smile flitted to my lips. Normally, I wouldn't rub anyone's nose in my happiness, but this man...his every word irked me. He had a talent for it, and he proved it with the very next thing that came out of his mouth.

"How ironic was that my reading saved Vesper from the very fate you so gratefully accepted," Steinar said. "A Luna mated to an Alpha! Big stinking deal."

Vesper was my mother's name, and Steinar would have picked it from Blake's ad. Yet, he claimed to have met her, read her fortune and set her on a lonely path of a rogue. Worst of all, he sounded proud of doing it.

I pushed back a myriad of questions and accusations swarming my mind to ask the most important thing. "Which pack did she come from?"

"Pack? Oh, California. Funny how it is, hah?"

"Yes, funny," I whispered through numb lips.

If my mother was a Luna of the Californian pack, then the Alpha she dumped was the father of my rival Scarlett Beaumont. I defeated her, but she hated me at first sight, well before Blake revealed our fated mates' bond. It was as if she knew of the strife between our parents.

Did she? Did she inherit her father's grudge?

There was an even worse possibility, and my stomach turned just thinking about it.

Were we...sisters? Goddess, I was going to retch...but...no! No... no, because Scarlett is three years older than me. Older, not younger. The Alpha Beaumont would have mated long after Mom had already left the Californian pack...Oh, thank Goddess! Thank Goddess. Thank Goddess.

"V-very, very funny..." I giggled with relief.

Steinar studied my face, but he couldn't have guessed what caused my panic, so he gathered and shuffled his deck, except for the Fool. That card he left where it fell.

"My predictions always come true, Luna Celeste. It's a gift." He offered the stack to me, so I automatically picked a card, which he flipped next to the Fool—it was the Emperor.

My heart sank. If the Fool was Harold's card, and the cards promised him an Alpha rank in the future, would it be at the expense of my yet to be born children? Or did it mean that Blake and I would never have children? Or—a heavy weight crushed my chest at this last possibility—did it foretell Blake's untimely demise?

Beset by fears, I realized too late that Steinar went dead silent. I glanced up—amusement flickered in his blue eyes. Only for a moment, yet I was sure he was manipulating me. Suckering someone to pull a specific card was magic tricks 101. Maybe the Fool should be my card, not Harold's! Maybe Blake was right. Maybe it was a terrible idea to talk to this man. Or at the very least, I should stick to what I needed from him, not give him ammunition to fleece me in the future. "Do you know anything else about my mother?"

"Not as happy and secure as she professes to be," Steinar mused, rubbing his chin. "Interesting."

Goddess give me strength! "My mother. Do you know anything else about her or her death?"

"You want to hear more about Vesper?" Steinar sent the cards flying in a semicircle which disappeared into his wide sleeve. "When she sought me out, she was secretly exhausted from your Goddess railroading her into being a Luna. I showed her the truth. She only needed to reach out and take what she actually wanted to do in life, and that freedom was worth far more than the dumb alphabet soup she lived in. You can relate, am I right or am I right?"

So damn proud of what he'd done, when his stupid prediction left my mother defenseless and me—alone after her death. Alone and abandoned, and so small...so damn small.

"You killed her, you jerk." Tears stung my eyes.

Steinar caught my hands, his blue eyes wide, and the brim of his hat brushing my hair. "Hush, hush...I didn't hurt her. If you don't believe a single word I say, believe that."

My tears only flowed faster. I yanked my hands out of his and jumped back. "You killed her!"

The door of the break room blasted open. Blake couldn't hear our conversation, but my yelp and my tears were enough to set him off. He roared at Steinar, "Get out! Now! Never come here again!"

With a speed that was incredible even for a werewolf, Steinar slid along the table, putting its polished breadth between them.

"Whoa! Look at him, Este! The only thing that reconciled me with your choices was that he was slower than the usual Alpha-types to attack a problem with his fists, but this...this is so typical!"

If he hoped to diffuse Blake's anger, this was the worst thing to say, even if Steinar hadn't dropped the private nickname Blake had for me oh-so-casually. So intimately, as if he'd earned the right to call me Este. As if we shared some bond...

Blake hopped on the table and advanced on Steinar, kicking the coasters and pens to the floor as he went. The growl roiled in his throat. His upper lip rolled up, showing off his sharp canines.

Steinar crouched defensively, but it took more than an enraged Alpha to shut him up. "You could have been at the University now, Este, instead of servicing this ignoramus."

"I'm doing my degree on-line," I snapped. My heart pumped so fast, I didn't have the time to be surprised by Steinar knowing about my academic aspirations; or that he, a veritable stranger, cared about them; or my impulse to justify my decisions to him. "I sacrificed nothing!"

"Out!" Blake cracked his neck and lunged at Steinar from the tabletop, flying in an impressive arc.

Steinar retreated with an even more impressive speed.

"Liar! Liar! Liar!" he yelled at me, while he backpedaled. "The idiot didn't even marry you!"

I scoffed. "We're fated mates! The Goddess blessed us—"

Eyes blazing with fury, Blake lunged at Steinar again, in a blur of limbs.

This time Steinar didn't retreat, but blocked Blake's punch. Their hands connected with a thud, then a grunt of surprise escaped Blake. He didn't expect a resistance this powerful. Frankly, neither did I.

The two men grappled by the wall, with Blake pushing Steinar to the door, and the rogue miraculously holding his ground against his Alpha opponent. Over Blake's shoulder, Steinar glanced at me. If gazes could cut, I'd be bleeding, because it was as sharp as any razor.

"Fated mates is something that matters to him," Steinar shouted, gasping for breath. The struggle was draining his strength, but he kept yelling. 'Or to your mother! But you... you were raised among the humans, you're a rogue at heart, and a daughter of rogues, so no matter how often you tell yourself you believe his commitment—"

My legs carried me to the two combatants with no conscious thought.

"No! No!" I wasn't sure if I was protesting being called a rogue or my purported uncertainty about my relationship with Blake. Most likely, it was both. I just wanted Steinar to shut the hell up. I was so tired of him and his disruptions.

Blake sensed my resentment and his body bulged with the first wave of his shift.

"Oh, please...what would this prove?" Steinar rolled his eyes. "That you aren't paranoid about her love, because you're the biggest and the baddest wolf in this room? Phooey. I can shift, she can shift, we all can shift...."

Blake howled, his lupine heart taking over the control of his body, and his shift unstoppable.

Against all odds, Steinar didn't struggle to escape the emerging Alpha werewolf. Nor did he shift, because he never did what other werewolves would do. He stepped in closer, a fragile human next to the towering werewolf in his prime, and jerked his arms down, breaking Blake's grip with some tricky move. At the end of it, he back flipped, pushing off Blake's barrel chest with his feet, like a swimmer from the boards in a pool.

Even in the middle of his acrobatics, Steinar kept shouting. "This is what you're missing, you hairy fool! Marry her before it's too late!"

With this relationship advice, he landed safely, five feet away.

Any sensible being would have used the second they won to flee in terror. Dirk Steinar was many things, but sensible wasn't among them.

The insufferable man turned to me, scorching me with his blue gaze again.

"I saw the aurora in the night sky announcing your ascension from Alaska. Alaska, Este! Alaska! And here you are...playing a Luna to some backwater Alpha. You are meant to do more! Be more! More, more, more!"

Blake growled. "I'll drag you through Grauberg by the scruff of your neck like a mongrel cur you are!"

"Oh my! It speaks!" Steinar must have arched his brows, so his hat lifted a little with his exaggerated surprise. The light from the windows slanted across his face at a different angle.

Goddess! That's why his eyes were so familiar! How didn't I see it before? Goddess help me...

Once I recognized Steinar, all the suppressed hatred, all the resentment, all the angst accumulated in my soul rose from the bottom. It flooded my chest with acid, then bathed my throat with bile. I gagged on it. Goddess knew, I wanted Blake to act upon his threat. Steinar deserved the thrashing and more for all the ill he'd caused me.

My hands curled into the fists and the impulse to shift and tear him piece by piece myself shook me. I clenched my fists even tighter, trying to think over the haze of conflicting emotions.

If I let this happen, and then the truth came out...which it would, given Steinar's taunts...I couldn't do this to Blake. My fated mate was a starkly honorable man. If Steinar started screaming his damning revelations all over Grauberg, while we chased him out of town, two hulks against a seemingly harmless man, who also happened to be...what he was...

Yeah, Blake would be devastated.

I stepped into the gap between the two men and windmilled my arms at my beloved. "Blake! Blake! Stop!"

Blake's huge muzzle pointed at me, leathery nostrils flaring and froth coating his sharp teeth. "Este?"

Fresh tears spilled in a veil, smudging my heart's dearest sight into a huge gray blob. "Blake, he is my father."