Using treats as payment explained the sucker wrappers, but committing what her father would consider seditious for candy rang false.

Emily’s chin hit her chest, and she sniffled. “They made it stop hurting. When I shift.”

“Sweetie.” Dell gathered the child in her arms and rocked her. “The pain is the price we pay for the wolf.”

She curled around Dell. “Then I don’t want to be a wolf.”

“Yes, you do.” A knowing smile skewed Dell’s mouth. “I’ve seen you hunt. You’re magic on four feet, the fastest pup in the pack.”

Emily tipped a tear-stained face up at her. “I am pretty quick. I catch a lot of meat so Dad doesn’t have to.”

Dell smoothed the hairs from Emily’s forehead. “Have you talked to your dad about this?”

“No.” Horror rounded her eyes. “It would make his heart hurt, like when he says I remind him so much of Mom, and I don’t like how sad he is when he remembers her.”

The idea of Bessemer nursing an old wound might have delighted me hours earlier, but it seemed to signal the end of the world when seen through Emily’s eyes. Graeson told me once there were dynamics within the pack I didn’t understand. Bessemer’s gentleness with Emily and her adoration of him sat like lead in my gut. What was he like when fae weren’t on his lands? How were things when beta and alpha were in harmony? Would my leaving gentle the punishments? Would Graeson bowing down heal the wounds his presence inflicted or tear the pack wide open?

“What about Aisha?” Dell asked gently. “Have you talked to her?”

“She’s not my mom,” Emily growled. “I don’t have to tell her anything I don’t want to. Dad said so.”

Another mystery solved. Aisha was the evil stepmother. How long had she held that position that Emily resented her? Would she feel differently if Imogen took her place? I thought wargs mated for life was on the tip of my tongue, but one glimpse of Emily’s moist cheeks wired my jaw shut.

Now that the seed had been planted, it was all too easy to cast Bessemer in the role of the widower made bitter by grief. He was alpha, strong enough to survive the loss of a mate, especially when they had a child, but at what cost had he endured? And did he realize his attempts to mother Emily by surrogate were poisoning his pack by spawning avarice among the women to be the one who warmed his bed, who thawed his cold heart?

And I thought Graeson was complicated.

Blindly hating Bessemer was so much easier yesterday. Today…right now…I was being shown a different perspective, and I didn’t like what I saw. That maybe—as helpful as Graeson tried to be—he was part of the problem. A big part.