After Six Years The Alpha Begs For My Return Chapter 14
“Explain what?” I looked up at him. “How you acknowledged my adopted sister’s pregnancy while you were still bound to me by a marriage pact? Or how you had the elders register her as acting Luna and let her wear a mate’s signet ring for six years?”
Gideon’s face went pale. His lips parted, but before he could speak, Ophelia suddenly stood.
She came to stand before me, tears streaming down her face. “Avery, don’t blame Gideon. It was my fault. I was the one who approached him. If you want to hate someone, hate me. Don’t hate him…”
“Ophelia.” Gideon frowned, catching her wrist. “What are you talking about?”
“Let me finish!” She shook him off, her whole body trembling. “Avery, one month before you filed to dissolve the pact, Gideon drank liquor laced with wolfsbane. It dulled his sense of smell and his wolf awareness. He mistook me for you. It was my fault. I could have left, but I didn’t. I’d never measured up to you in anything. Just that one time… I wanted to fight for myself.”
The room went so quiet that only the steady drip of the IV line remained.
Liquor laced with wolfsbane could suppress a werewolf’s senses and healing. It was enough to explain why Gideon hadn’t recognized her scent that night.
It explained nothing about the six years that followed.
I sat by my mother’s bed, looked at Ophelia’s tear-streaked face, and suddenly found the whole thing absurd.
“Ophelia,” I said, “you’re saying he mistook you for someone else that night. Fine. But what about after? How did the child get registered as the Alpha’s heir? How did the Luna contract come about? And what about the six years you lived together? Are you telling me that for six whole years, he still couldn’t smell that you weren’t me?”
Her sobbing cut off. Her lips trembled, but no words came out.
Behind her, Gideon leaned back against the wall and slowly closed his eyes. His wolf pressure was low and chaotic, but it held no power over me anymore.
“Avery,” my mother said suddenly, “stop.”