Chapter 141

Lucian’s POV

I stormed into the Alpha headquarters building, looking for Jasper, ready to go to war. With my hands curled into fists, I thought I might start throwing punches before I would even be able to speak.

My wolf was even angrier, prowling back and forth in my mind, scratching at my consciousness, asking to be brought to the surface.

“We have to talk to him first,” I reminded my wolf in my mind. “Depending on what he says, then we can start with punching.”

The words somewhat satisfied my wolf, who chuffed at me and nothing else. He was still furious with me about losing Aria to begin with. In a way, I was glad he was giving me the cold shoulder. I deserved it and so much worse. I needed to be punished somehow for my negligent treatment of her.

I found Jasper sitting behind his desk in his office. These past few years, he’d really taken initiative in his career. I had thought that he was putting the playboy lifestyle behind him and was actually trying to make something of himself now.

Perhaps that was a foolish notion. Perhaps he was only pursuing this life as an escape from his responsibilities. Maybe the kids had been a mistake. Maybe he’d been running since then.

Well, he was done running now. He was going to take responsibility for those kids if I had to force him to. Those kids deserved a good father, not a deadbeat who ran away from them.

Had Jasper even met them? Did he have any kind of relationship with them?

A growl escaped my throat as I walked through Jasper’s office door.

He looked up from his computer at the noise. The typical smile on his face slipped away the moment he saw me and my tense, ready-to-fight posture, as well as my no nonsense attitude.

“Cousin,” he said, caution in his voice and in the slow way he turned his chair to face me more fully.

I didn’t waste time beating around the bush. “I know Aria is Dr. A.”

Jasper leaned back in his chair. “Finally pieced that together, did you? Or did she have to tell you?”

The mockery stung and I winced slightly.

Jasper had always been far too observant, so of course he picked up on the action.

“She had to tell you, didn’t she?” Jasper scoffed with disbelief. “You claim to be in love with this woman, you were married to her for crying out loud, and yet you still couldn’t see her for who she truly is. Want to know how long it took me to know the truth after meeting Dr. A?”

I braced myself.

“Like, maybe two minutes,” he said. “Probably less but I was being cautious.” He shook his head. “You are a disgrace, Lucian.”

That might be so, but I wasn’t here to discuss my failings. This meeting was about his own inability to step up.

“Those kids need a father,” I said, allowing some of my anger to show in my voice.

Confusion crossed his face. “Yeah?”

I squared my shoulders, ready to fight over this. “Why haven’t you filled that role? Why do you let Aria shoulder the entire burden alone?”

“Me?” Jasper said, the word falling out of his mouth, coated with a thick layer of disbelief. “And what do you expect I should have done?”

“Been there for those kids,” I said.

Jasper, in his own rising anger, pushed himself up to his feet. His office chair, with wheels on the bottom, rolled backwards from the force of his movement, bumping into the wall behind him.

“All I have ever done is try to better myself so that Aria might want me. I’d prepared since she left for my proposal, thinking I could finally make her mine and be the kind of father that those kids deserve,” Jasper said. “But she refused me, Lucian. Because she’s in love with someone else. Someone who has his head shoved too far up his own ass that he cannot see anything for how it really is.”

“You should have went with her to Moonglow,” I insisted.

“She would have refused me,” he said. “She’d already rejected me.”

“But those kids needed you –”

“They need their father,” Jasper said. “Their real one.”

His words hit me hard, and I finally realized what he was trying to say. “You aren’t the father.”

“I wish I was,” Jasper admitted. “But no. Aria and I were never together in that way. Any relationship we ever had was friendship or pretend.”

“Pretend?”

“She wanted you to back off, Lucian. I was perfect for that. I really didn’t mind. In fact, it was mostly my idea. Of course, then I actually caught feelings… but even then, it didn’t matter. Her heart is locked onto someone else and has been for years.”

That someone must have been the unwilling true father of the child. I remembered now, a discussion with Dr. A all those years ago, about the father of her children, a man who even during the pregnancy was absent from her life.

Jasper could have been lying. He was once a very convincing liar, who could spew bullshit as easily as truth at any given moment.

But when he had lied in the past, he had been cool and collected, ever in charge and smirking like life was all some big game.

Nowadays, he tended to be more serious. At least right now, he was filled with his own passion and fury, his hurt over the situation clear, as well as his annoyance at me, and his devotion for Aria.

He was a natural born liar, but right now, I was impossibly certain he was telling the truth.

“Do you know who the father is?” I asked him. I didn’t expect a straight answer, but I hoped…

“I have a pretty good idea,” he said, staring at me flatly.

“Will you tell me who it is?”

Frowning, Jasper shook his head. “If you can’t figure it out for yourself, then you really don’t deserve to know.”

Aria’s POV

I said goodbye to Cathy and the kids, then went back to work. In between moments of focus, while I waited for the machines to work or for the results to print out, I thought of what it would be like to finally live my truth.

If the world knew Aria was Dr. A, I wouldn’t need my disguise anymore.

“It works in Moonglow,” Luna reminded me. “No one questions you.”

“That’s because they’ve never known me as anything else there. Aria and Dr. A have always been the same person. I don’t know what it will be like here. So many people know me as one or the other…”

Luna chuffed slightly, in my mind. “Lucian knows now, as do Piper, Cathy, the pups, Jasper, and Lucian’s parents. Since when do we care what anyone else thinks?”

In my life before and after being a homemaker for Lucian, I had been fiercely independent, relying on myself to make things happen and see things through.

I liked the identity I had in Moonglow, not having to be so careful all the time, not worrying I might slip and reveal myself. If there was a medical emergency somewhere where I was Aria, I could easily step in to help without needing to delay to hide myself first.

I wanted that freedom while I was here too.

Maybe it was time to come clean and finally reveal the truth to my old pack.

Let them think what they want, but let me live my life as my full self.

Let them know that Aria and Dr. A are the same.