My Cheating Mate (Emma and Jeremy) novel Chapter 127

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Chapter 127

My Cheating Mate

Emma pov

The pack house was quiet in the pre-dawn stillness. Grace had finally fallen asleep after her 4 AM feeding, and I’d settled into the rocking chair by the window, watching the sky lighten with anticipattan.

Jeremy was coming home. The strike had been successful. The hunters were neutralized

It was over.

I kept telling myself that. Over and over, like a mantra. It’s over. We’re safe, Grace is safe. Jeremy survived. Everything is going to be okay now.

My phone sat in my hand, screen dark. I’d been checking it every few minutes since Jeremy’s message came through the mind- link. Waiting for him to call. To hear his voice. To confirm with my own ears that he was truly alive and heading back to us.

Grace stirred in the bassinet beside me, making those small sounds she made when she was dreaming. I reached over, gently touching her cheek with my fingertip. So soft. So perfect. So completely unaware of everything that had been done to keep her

safe.

“Your daddy is coming home,” I whispered. “He did it, little one. He kept his promise.”

The sky was turning pink at the edges now. Maybe twenty minutes until sunrise. Jeremy would be back within the hour if he drove straight through.

I leaned back in the rocking chair, letting exhaustion wash over me. The past week had been brutal-the Dr. Chen confrontation, the planning, the waiting, the fear. All of it compounded by the fact that I was still recovering from childbirth, still nursing, still healing from the injuries I’d sustained during the hunter attack on the hospital.

But it was over now. We could finally breathe.

My phone dinged.

I looked down, expecting Jeremy’s name on the screen. A text, maybe. Letting me know his ETA. Something warm and reassuring from my mate who was finally, truly coming home.

Instead, an unknown number.

The message loaded slowly-first the text, then an image attachment that took a moment to fully appear.

I read the text first.

*”She is a cute little dog.”*

The words didn’t register immediately. Didn’t make sense in context. I frowned, about to dismiss it as a wrong number, when the image finished loading.

My blood turned to ice.

It was a photo of me. Taken from a distance–maybe a hundred yards away-but crystal clear. I was in the pack house kitchen, nursing Grace at the table. Grace’s face was visible, her tiny features unmistakable even in the slightly grainy surveillance photo.

The timestamp on the image read 6:47 AM. Yesterday morning.

Someone had been watching us. Had been close enough to photograph me nursing my daughter inside what we thought was a secure facility. Had taken this photo while hunters were supposedly our only threat-while we were focused entirely on the

warehouse strike.

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My hands wete shaking so badly I nearly dropped the phone.

*She is a cute little dog

The message wasn’t about me. Itwas about Grace.

Someone was watching my daughter. Had been watching her. And they wanted me to know it.

I tried to breathe. Tried to think clearly through the terror that was flooding every cell in my body. Who sent this? The hunters were neutralized Jeremy’s team had confirmed it. Forty-seven hunters captured or killed. Their communications destroyed. Their weapon cache seized.

So who was this?

Another ping. A second message from the same unknown number.

*”Don’t tell anyone yet. If you do, the little dog won’t be so cute for much longer. We have eyes everywhere. Smile for the

camera.”*

My gaze flew to the window. To the tree line beyond the pack house. To every shadow, every angle where someone could be watching right now.

Nething. I couldn’t see anything. But that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

My wolf surged forward with maternal fury-screaming at me to shift, to hunt, to find whoever was threatening my daughter and tear them apart with my bare hands.

But the message was clear. Don’t tell anyone.

If I told Jeremy-if I told my father, Lord Castellan, anyone-they’d come after whoever sent this. And if that person had the capability to photograph me inside a secured pack facility without anyone noticing, they had the capability to hurt Grace before we could stop them.

I pressed my fist against my mouth, biting down on a scream.

Grace. My Grace. My perfect, innocent, one-week-old daughter who had done nothing to deserve this. Who had been born into a world of mercenaries and hunters and vampire debts and now-this.

*She is a cute little dog.*

The casual cruelty of the message made my stomach turn. Whoever had sent this wanted me frightened. Wanted me isolated. Wanted me to carry this fear alone while my mate celebrated victory.

–

a calculated move. Timed perfectly for when we believed we’d won. When our guard Because that’s exactly what this was would be lowest. When the emotional high of defeating the hunters would make us careless.

This wasn’t over. It had never been over.

My phone pinged again. A third message.

*”The warehouse was a nice little victory. Congratulations. But you didn’t think that was all of us, did you? We’ve been watching your family for months. Long before Dr. Chen. Long before Black River. We know everything about you, Emma Trent. Everything about your mate. Everything about that precious little pup.”*