Twice Tempted: Between Two Alphas (Mia and Cameron) novel Chapter 42

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?”

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.”

“So the future is what… set? Then what is the point of anything?!?”

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.”