Chapter 118 Denial

Nobody in the room moved.

"That’s not possible." Luna Margaret pinched the inside of her own arm hard enough to make her eyes water.

Nothing changed. The woman was still up there, sitting at the head of the table, signing her name while Killian Sterling waited for the pen.

It was Eira.

Luna Margaret had looked at that face across her dinner table for four years. She’d sent it into the kitchen on Thanksgiving. She’d told it the fish was overcooked. She’d handed it a basket of laundry on a Sunday afternoon and gone back to her show.

"Eira. Lead engineer."

She shook her head like something had gotten into it.

"It’s supposed to be Serena. Serena is the lead engineer."

"Then where is she?" Isabella was up on the edge of the couch now, close enough to the screen to see the name cards. "Mom, she’s not even in the room."

Luna Margaret turned on her husband.

"Roger. You’ve got the wrong channel."

"It’s the wrong channel," Isabella said. "Dad. Check it."

Alpha Roger didn’t touch the remote.

"I don’t believe it," Isabella said. "I’m sorry, I don’t. Eira’s whole life was taking care of people. She doesn’t have hobbies. She doesn’t have opinions. You’re telling me she’s some kind of genius?"

"It’s ridiculous." Luna Margaret’s mouth pulled tight. "Serena has the degrees. Serena has Dr. Winthrop behind her. That girl files paperwork in a building."

The ceremony was already over.

It didn’t matter what they believed. By the time Alpha Roger looked down at his phone, it was on every news app he had. Same photo on all of them. Eira and Killian Sterling, hands together, the federal seal behind them.

He kept scrolling. Industry accounts congratulating her by name. Two former directors of the program. A senator. Someone had already dug up her doctorate and posted it.

Twelve years at Stanford and after. Papers he couldn’t understand a word of.

Nobody had made her up. She’d been there the entire time.

She was the one who could have carried Alpha Sebastian’s name into that building. She was the one who could have put Hale Group in that photograph.

And Alpha Roger had signed the divorce paperwork through a lawyer without telling his son a thing about it, to clear the road for Serena Winthrop.

"We’re done," he said.

Luna Margaret looked at him.

He hit his own knee with the flat of his hand. "We are done."

Luna Margaret’s face went hard, because she knew exactly what he meant, and she wasn’t going to sit there and hear it.

"Done how?" She made her voice bright. "So she’s accomplished. Good for her. She’s still a girl who grew up in a group home. No family. No name. No one to call. Serena has all of it. Serena is still the right fit for our son."

Alpha Roger didn’t answer her.

He pulled up Alpha Sebastian’s number and called. It rang out and went to voicemail. He called again and it went straight through this time, which meant the phone was off.

Then he called Serena. Off.

"Where is your brother?" he said.

"They probably left early." Isabella dropped back into the cushions. "He lost. He’s upset. Serena went after him. Obviously."

Alpha Roger set the phone face down on his knee.

Alpha Sebastian had lost bids before. He came home loud. He came home three hours late with his tie in his pocket, and he called his father from the car the whole way to explain whose fault it was.

He had never once turned his phone off.

"Call him," Alpha Roger said. "From your phone. He might pick up for you."

Luna Margaret dialed. It didn’t even ring. Straight to the recording.

She held the phone out toward him like he could do something about it.

Alpha Roger stood up and pulled his shirt straight. His hands weren’t quite steady.

"I’m going out."

"Out where? Roger."

He took his keys off the table and went.

The door shut. Luna Margaret stayed where she was with her phone in her lap and the TV still running.

"Did we do the wrong thing?" she said. Quietly, mostly to herself.

Isabella, who had no idea her brother’s marriage was already legally over, rolled her eyes.

"Mom, come on. She lied. Four years, in our house."

"She never actually said she wasn’t—"

"She let us think it. Same difference." Isabella pulled her knees up. "She sat right there and let us talk. Every Sunday. You know how that looks now? She was laughing at us."

Luna Margaret took hold of that with both hands, because it beat the alternative.

"Not once. Four years and she never said one word." Her voice found some footing. "Because we were never family to her. That’s why."

"Thank you."

"That’s exactly why."

"And she’s about to clean up." Isabella flicked a hand at the screen. "Patents, bonuses, whatever they pay those people."

Luna Margaret’s face moved.

She hadn’t gotten there yet. If they’d still been married, Alpha Sebastian would’ve shared in whatever success came next.

Now it was hers, free and clear.

"Mom." Isabella made a face. "You really think she’d have shared? She’s the cheapest human being I have ever met. Four years, and what did she ever do for me? She brought me soup when I got my wisdom teeth out. Two hundred bucks of soup, and she told me the price."

"She did not."

"She told me where she got it, which is the same thing." Isabella held up two fingers. "Serena took me to Napa with her girlfriends. Serena got me into the Rosewood thing in April. Serena texts me back in like four minutes. That’s what somebody looks like when they actually want in."

Luna Margaret didn’t answer, but she was nodding.

Alpha Roger liked Serena for what she could do for Alpha Sebastian. Luna Margaret liked her because she was polished, because she knew who to talk to in a room.

Isabella liked her because Isabella had been embarrassed by Eira since the first Sunday she walked in with a grocery bag.

And really, what was Eira now? A scientist. Great. Nobody’s putting a scientist on a magazine. Not one woman in Luna Margaret’s tennis group could pick that name out of a lineup. You can hand a girl every award in this country and it still won’t get anybody a Saturday table at Selby’s.

"If she’d stayed," Luna Margaret said slowly, "what were we getting out of it? A line to drop at dinner. That’s it. And she’d have been impossible to live with. You know she would. She’d have had me feeling like an idiot in my own kitchen."

"So we dodged a bullet." Isabella shrugged. "Honestly? Good riddance."

They went back and forth another few minutes and talked each other most of the way down.