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“I told Liam that Oscar died, and I was upset enough to make him believe me. He wasn’t pleased. Told me he’d hoped Oscar would be an Omega like Ophelia. He has no heart. That’s when I knew. Not when he took Ophelia. I was still in shock then. I tried to tempt him with thoughts of making another baby, and I searched his study while he was sleeping. I knew he must have records somewhere. I spent a week in his bed, and at the end of that week, I found what I was looking for.”
She pauses, before she goes on.
“It was a red, leatherbound journal. A ledger, of sorts. I didn’t fully understand what I was looking at until I started to realize it was coded. He used initials for the children, and numbers for the people he sold them to. The number next to Ophelia’s name was new. It hadn’t been used before. I didn’t recognize the other names, but I realized I wouldn’t know them because Ophelia was the first one in Limestone Ridge. He sold kids where he was before that. Their entries were eight years prior to the date next to Ophelia’s name.”
“What did you do?” I ask, knowing the story can’t possibly end well.
“I was too angry to keep quiet and find a smart way to get the information,” she admits. “Once I saw that ledger, once I worked out what it was… I went and got a knife, and I woke him up stabbing the point into his throat. I asked him where Ophelia was, and he broke my wrist. The knife dropped out of my hand. I saw in his eyes he didn’t want to kill me. I was too valuable. He thought I might produce another Omega. I couldn’t let another child go through whatever Ophelia was going through. I couldn’t live with knowing he’d hurt her. I ran away from him. Jumped out of his attic window. He couldn’t catch me in time to stop me.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
“Fate has a funny way of working out,” she says. “I found Oscar in his shifted form when I went to check on him after that. He’d snuck out the house and he was trying to find his way back home to me. I possessed him when I realized I could. I didn’t know it would make him blackout. I brought him back to the couple’s home. I did that night after night until he stopped trying to come back home. It happened for a long time, and then one day he just forgot. He didn’t know where he was trying to go, and he ran back home himself, and he never came out again when he should have been in bed.”
“He’s had blackouts for a long time.”
“Yes,” she says. “I’m sorry about that. I did what I had to, and it caused him to disconnect from his wolf. I think I can fix that. If I can talk to him, like I’m talking to you now. Once he understands, he’ll stop having the blackouts. They went away when he met you, because he was happy. They only came back because he started to worry you weren’t going to stay.”
“Because he thinks you abandoned him when he was young.”
“I didn’t know I could try to reach him in his dreams. I only found out about that once I heard you talking about it. I tried to get in then, and the redhead was the most receptive, but I didn’t want to tell her about this. She’s a friend, she’s not his mate.” She looks down before she says, “I know you’re going to save Oscar tonight, and you probably don’t need my help to do that.”
I get the feeling she’s about to ask for something, and it’s not going to be an easy ask.
“Please, try to find that ledger and help his sister too. I never found out where he sent her. I don’t know what happened to her. I can’t find peace until I know both of my children are safe.”
“I’ll do everything in my power to find that ledger and help Ophelia.”
I know Oscar will feel exactly the same way, as soon as he knows he has a sister.
“Thank you,” she tells me. “Thank you so much.”
“We’re going now. If we bring this charm with us, can you show up if we need help to find the ledger in the Alpha’s study?”
“I’ll stay close,” she promises. “I’ll help when you need it.”
“Okay.” I look at Rachel. “How long until this burns out?”
Rachel shrugs. “I can pause the spell. Invoke it again when we need it. That should work.”
“Great. We’ll speak again soon,” I tell Oscar’s mom. “I’m glad I got to meet you and hear your story.”
“I’m glad Oscar met his true mate.”
I smile at her before I nod at Rachel.
She says the invocation word and the green tint fades away from my hands, disappearing back into the charm. When I look up, the ghost of Oscar’s mother is gone from sight.
“Well, that was a lot,” I confess, when Noah and Rachel wait for me to explain.
“It was Oscar’s mother?” Noah asks.
I nod. I hate the thought of telling Oscar everything she said or letting him hear it from her. It’s only the truth, and a lot of it will help him, but there’s more bad than there is good. That vile Alpha is his father, and his older sister was sold seventeen years ago.
“I thought she abandoned him,” Noah murmurs.
“She didn’t,” I tell him, “But we’ll let her tell him that.”
“Holy shit,” Noah says, his eyes lighting up with understanding. “Oscar was born there?”
