Twice Tempted: Between Two Alphas (Mia and Cameron)

Chapter Forty-Two

It's the same thing Dr. Glass told me and it sends shivers down my spine.

"Mia!?" It's my dad.

His boots crunch over the glass as he comes into the room.

He grabs my one foot and then the other. "What happened?"

The kids see this as a 'get out of jail' opportunity and they launch themselves into his arms. He drops my foot like it's on fire and catches Aaron. Jacelyn's climbing his neck like some kind of squirrel. I drop back on the bed and cover my eyes again.

"Hey kids, why don't you head back downstairs? Your Aunt Claire is looking for you and she's pretty frantic that you took off when you were supposed to be napping."

"Note to self, Dad," I tell him. "The kids haven't taken naps since they were two."

"Good to know."

He walks them to the door and sets both kids down in the hallway. He puts his hands around his mouth and hollers "Claire!"

Even without wolf hearing, I catch her cry of relief.

"Go on now," he tells them.

They take off running. They caught a break here and they aren't about to test my patience at the moment.

The crunch of glass comes again.

The bed sinks as my dad sits down beside me again. He pats my knee. "You okay?"

Define okay...

Nope. Definitely not.

"Mia?" he's worried now.

I drag my arm away from my eyes. "Honestly, dad? No. Not really."

He nods. Then he lifts my foot and sets it in his lap. He gently pulls out the shards of glass. "The last time I got to bandage one of your wounds, you were eleven, and you'd fallen trying to chase Cameron up a tree." He doesn't look at me as he says it.

I remember that.

He grunts.

"It's a map," he says quietly.

"What?"

"On the back of this painting. Your mom made it for me. It wasn't long after she had you. She painted it, spent days. 'One was art and the other was her heart,' she said."

I lean over the bed to see the canvas amid the shattered glass. All I see is a painting of that Cherry Blossom tree. The one she painted beside the lake, the one she planted with my dad." "That tree wasn't more than a sapling, when we planted it. And damn if every branch didn't grow just as she depicted it."

Because she saw it.

The other side was the map then. And her 'heart.' Which I guess made sense since she loved her gift more than she ever could've loved me.

"Did she stay long, after I was born?" I don't remember her.

He frowns and runs his thumb along the arch of my other foot, checking he didn't miss any pieces. "No," he admits quietly. "Just long enough to wean you."

I swallow past the lump in my throat. "It must've been hard."

He nods.

I'm a single parent. I don't think there is a harder job in this world.

"I know I was a handful." My eyes burn. "I'm sorry, dad."

He glances at me sharply. "Losing her was hard. Having you... you were my everything."

My voice is tight. "Then how could you let me go? Why didn't you fight for me?"

His eyes glisten with tears. "Because she told me that it would happen-that I had to let it happen." There's blood on his hands from removing the glass and he rubs it between his fingers. "I can't tell you how hard that was. From the moment you took up with Cam, I knew our days were numbered. That he would love you, reject you, and I would lose you. And there was nothing I could do about it."

I shudder.

My dad uses his forearm to wipe his eyes. "Seeing you on that mountaintop...I hated myself. What kind of man was I-what kind of father would let a man hurt his daughter like that and do nothing?"

I'm in shock.

"Adriana was clear. It was the first vision she ever had. Right after you were born. She never told me anything else, never spoke about her gift again or anything else she had seen. The only thing she'd said to me was that you had to leave... to be reborn. For your true role to be revealed."

"Please," I interrupt him. "I can't handle any more prophecies."

He rises from the bed and crosses to the painting where it lies on the floor. He leaves bloody fingerprints on it when he grabs it and shakes off the rest of the glass. Then he lays it out on the bed, with the landscape portrait side up.

"The back is the map... and a message from your mother."

"Dad, I don't want to see it. I am not getting dragged into this shit."

He nods. "I understand. I denied her too and said I wanted no part of it." He sighs. "You'll learn, as I did... we don't have to believe any of it. But that won't stop us from seeing it."

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He walks away, resigned.

"Dad, she had another baby. That girl... who came here and tried to kill me. She's my half-sister."

He pauses. When he glances back over his shoulder at me, he looks old and broken. "I always knew I loved your mother more than she loved me, Mia." His small smile is so sad. "I'm sorry for what Ashley did to to you."