Eva told me I needed a better name than the thing, but I didn’t have one. The thing was what made the piece work. Sometimes it was just a clicking in my brain showing me what needed to happen. Other times I would see something and envision how it needed to change. I’d even had times where I made a mistake on the canvas, but the mistake was what I needed to reveal where the piece really wanted to go.

I knew my art wasn’t sentient, but man, it felt like it sometimes.

My phone buzzing made me look up. Somehow it was already three o’clock. I hadn’t even noticed it getting so late. I grabbed it with paint-stained hands and saw a text from Rylan.

So you don’t get blindsided. Just in case, sorry. (And exciting news to tell you at home!)

The first part was ominous.

I clicked the link, and my stomach plummeted to the floor. No wonder he sent it to me. The article was pictures of both Eva and I. Me, my most recent photo with Ben at the club, and Eva a picture from when she’d met her pack. A photographer snapped a photo of them when they were still in the phase where they couldn’t get enough of each other. She was pinned against a wall, kissing Liam while Tyler’s mouth was on her neck. The other two weren’t even there.

And the headline:

WHAT WOULD ELIAS WILLIAMS THINK OF HIS DAUGHTERS?

Fuck me, Eva was going to lose her shit. I texted the article to Jasmine before flipping back to it. It wasn’t a piece of any substance. All flash and mirrors. They were trying to be provocative, and the most damning thing was in the headline, but it was still a shitty thing to do.

I thought about what Eva said at lunch. Would he be over the moon about the Nautilus pack? Everything in me was desperate for the answer to be yes, but it wasn’t like I could ask him.

Well…

I could, but it meant doing something I’d avoided. But maybe it was time I faced it.

I cleaned my brushes and found Wes sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee. “Wes?”

He looked up.

“Can you take me to the cemetery?”

Wes studied me carefully, in the Alpha way I now knew well. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I am.”

He nodded slowly. “Let’s go.”

I understood the hesitation. Eva went regularly to visit our dad’s grave, and I didn’t. It was too hard seeing his name carved out like that. He’d been so full of life, and a white marble headstone felt too stark and cold to have anything to do with the father I knew.