AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For a moment, she looks stumped. But then she nudges me in the side. “Lucky bitch. Looks like you’ve got a secret admirer.” She points at the ruby. “From the size of that thing, I’m thinking he’s loaded, too.”
If only.
Though my inner wolf is suddenly whining deep inside of me, I purposely pull a pleased expression. Happy, Gem. You’re happy that some unknown person has given you such a pretty ruby that has no sinister meaning after all.
Uh huh.
Sure.
“Hey, Hailey?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m just gonna run and put this in the back. Don’t want to drop this before I can even get a chance to say thanks to whoever got it for me.”
My human co-worker is an open book. I can already tell she’s about to push that exact topic, as if she’s dying to know who’d give me an expensive hunk of rock like this in a simple white envelope after trusting it to strangers.
She’s dying to know.
I wish Ididn’t.
Hailey opens her mouth again. It’s gonna be another question. I’m freaking sure of it.
I don’t wait around to hear it. Assuming she doesn’t mind that I need a few seconds to myself, I spin on my heel, loping toward the backroom door with enough speed that, even if she hadn’t already discovered I wasn’t a human like she was, she’d probably guess.
Ryker wouldn’t give me a ruby—because he doesn’t know that Iwould see a rock like this and think it was something other than a pretty gemstone.
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that Gemma Swann is just a name my panicked mom picked specifically for me when we were on the run from my psycho sperm donor. She wanted to hide me and—as she put it—give me a second chance at a future where I didn’t have to be Jack Walker’s daughter.
Gemma was her second choice for my name when she was pregnant. Swann because it was the most gentle, non-threatening name she could think of in the spur of the moment.
But that’s not my birth name.
I glare accusingly at the red stone nestled in my palm.
Ruby. Before I was Gemma, my name was Ruby.
And there are only a handful of shifters in the whole damn world who know that.
Me. My mom. My dad.
And… Jack Walker.
Shit.
Shitshitshit.
I exhale roughly, pacing around the backroom as my head spins wildly in thought.
So hedoesknow. My bio-dad. As I squeeze my fingers around the gemstone in my grip, I have to accept that it wasn’t a lucky guess after all. When Shane said that there were rumors that the Lakeview Pack was harboring a female alpha, that Wicked Wolf Walker was looking for a strong wolf to tame his wayward daughter, I was hoping that he wasn’t sure. That he was guessing.
My name’s different. For twenty-five years, I’ve been Gemma Swann, the adopted daughter of Paul Booker and Janelle Walker. As far as anyone knew otherwise, the pup that my bio-dad had with my mom drowned during my mom’s escape from his brutal, abusive clutches. After that, she found an abandoned omega pup who definitelywasn’tthe daughter she lost, and she raised her with my adopted dad’s love and support.
Ruby Walker doesn’t exist. Only Gemma Swann does.
And that bastard is toying with me, letting me know thatheknows that we’re one and the same.
Fuckingwonderful.
