Chapter 3 Roberts POV

I really tried to be the best father I could be to a child that was not mine. The night the rugs attacked that did it for me. It seems that no matter how hard I tried to protect her I always found us getting into trouble.

Julia and I adopted Sydney almost 18 years ago now we were helping a neighboring pack, the Eclipse Pack. They were being attacked, us being the second strongest pack went to help them out.

Alpha Charles and Luna Caroline were frantically trying to hide their newborn pup. The Luna found me in all the chaos, her hands shaking as she pressed the tiny bundle into my arms and made me swear to protect her with my life. She told me the pup was special---rare, a gift from the Moon Goddess---and that no one could know who or what she truly was. Not yet.

Alpha Lucas Moon ordered me to take her back to Blood Moon territory and get her settled in safe with Julia. He told me to keep it quiet and only give Julia the basics until the battle was over.

After I filled my mate in, I left her with the pup and went back to the fight. The whole time my mind kept snapping back to the house--- to the locks, the hinges, the reinforced door I'd built with my own two hands for nights like that one. People talk about "security" like it's a number you can measure on a chart. It isn't. It's sweat and splintered wood and metal sunk deep into the frame. It's the difference between a door that holds and a door that gives.

The Alpha and Luna of that pack didn't survive the battle. We fought until most of the rogues were dead or driven off. Before we left, my Alpha ordered one of the injured rogues taken back to our territory and locked in the cells. When it was over, I returned home with our Alpha and Luna so we can make it official---so we could bring Sydney into the Blood Moon Pack and claim her as our daughter.

We didn't make a spectacle of it. The less attention, the better. Alpha Lucas cleared the main room of the packhouse and sent everyone away except the ones he trusted with his life---Luna Marie, Julia, Dr. Kyran Silver, along with Beta Drake and Gamma Chase. He drew a circle of salt and ash on the floor, not because it was magic, but because it was old tradition, something our ancestors swore kept lies out of the vow. The pup was so small she fit in the crook of my arm, warm and quiet, like she already knew to stay still.

Bespoke first, voice low and steady, calling the moon goddess as witness. He didn't announce what the pup was, only that she was under his protection and that she would be raised blood moon. Then he offered the pack bond the only way you can offer it to a child: dear promise and blood. He picked his thumb with a tip of a blade just enough to mark the skin, and pressed it to the baby's forehead in the shape of our crescent. Kyran murmured the old words, sealing the bond so the pack would recognize her as ours.

Then it was my turn. I hold her while Julia stood beside me, and Lucas made us swear the oath out loud: that we would shelter her, feed her, teach her our laws, and defend her as if she'd been born of our blood. The words tasted like iron in my mouth because I understood what we were agreeing to. Is anyone found out why she mattered, they wouldn't just come for her, they'd come for all of us. When Alpha Lucas finally said her name, Sydney, and declared her Varannon, something in the room eased, like the pack itself exhaled. The circle was wiped away, the doors opened and by the time the pack house filled with noise again, it was already done. To everyone else, she was simply ours.

Things were fine for a while---at least, that's what I told myself. So I'm taking you up in Sydney turned 12, a little changes started showing up in ways I couldn't ignore. Shifted from vibrant flu to a violate so deep and looked almost unreal. Her hair darkened from hail blonde two strawberry wand. In training, she moved differently---faster then she should have been, stronger than any Omega had a right to be. And washed her take down Rose twice or size, and instead of pride, the cold not formed in my gut. It felt like a warning, like the air right before a storm breaks, but no matter how I turned it over in my mind, I couldn't figure out what it was trying to tell me.

Then that dreadful night came and we fell under attack. In the middle of the chaos, one of the rogues I was fighting spat blood and laughed like he knew something I didn't. "We know the Golden Wolf is here," he said. "We can smell her. We can feel her power. " I remember the way my stomach dropped, the way the world narrowed to the sound of his voice. He leaned in, eyes wild, and whispered like it was a promise instead of a threat:"your pack will never be safe as long as she's here. The Rogue King Will get her, and she needs to die. You don't know when, but will come." After that, I barely heard anything else---only the roaring in my ears and the cold certainty spreading through my bones. I wasn't the same after that night. I stopped caring about being good, about being gentle, about what Julia thought of me. All I can see was the truth that Rogue had handed me: keeping that girl here didn't just endanger us---it put everyone in my pack in the crosshairs.

Julia kept telling me we needed to tell Sydney the truth---that she deserves to know that she was adopted, deserve to know where she came from and why danger seem to follow her. But every time Julia started, something in my snap tighter. I couldn't hear those words without thinking of that rogue's warning, well seeing my pack and flames and blood on the ground. Fear turn to anger, and anger turned into something earlier. I became harder, colder, more controlling. I stopped letting Sydney train, convinced that if I could keep her small---keep her from growing into whatever she was meant to be---I could keep the pack safe. Years past, and instead of regaining control, I lost more of myself. By then, I was living with two terrors at once what Sydney might become, and what Alpha Lucas would do if he ever found out what I'd become in this house.

Sydney's 18th birthday is coming up in a few weeks, and in our pack, every wolf--- from Alpha to Omega---is celebrated with a huge party. This year, though, the mating ball falls on the same day as Sydney's birthday, so the pack will be celebrating both. I have to keep myself under control, so no one gets suspicious. The last time, I almost went too far. I just have to wait until she graduates high school before I do what I think needs to be done.That girl has been nothing but trouble.