Chapter 103: An Alpha’s daughter
An Alpha’s daughter? Ayla?
Soren pressed his ear to the door.
He had gone to see Damon first.... his son.
He had been sitting up in bed, drinking broth, the color already returned to his cheeks. Master Aldric had pulled Soren aside in the corridor.
"I have never seen anything like it, my lord. She was ethereal... the light that came from her."
Soren had marched immediately to Ayla’s room, hell bent on knowing what the hell she had done when he saw the guards escorting them to the Alpha’s study. He had followed right behind them.
"Brenna, explain this." Alpha Kieran’s voice thundered through the wood.
"My lord, I do not know what the priestess means." Brenna’s voice was high and frantic. "Ayla is Beta Soren’s daughter, I swear it."
"Miranda. Is it possible that you have made a mistake somehow? Perhaps Ayla is something else entirely and not the Omega Dualis. You did say the last time it happened was with the Omega queen and we all know how that turned out." Alpha Kieran said.
Soren listened hard for Miranda.
"I am not wrong, my lord. Brenna is lying."
"I am not!"
Soren pushed the door open without knocking. All eyes turned to him.
Ayla stood near the hearth, her face pale, her eyes darting between the Alpha and her mother. Brenna was wringing her hands, her composure crumbling.
"My King." he bowed low. "I heard about Damon’s recovery."
"Yes" Alpha Kieran gestured to Ayla. "It is all thanks to your daughter, Soren. She... oh, you should have been there."
Soren turned to look at Ayla.
His gaze was cold as he pinned her with a single look that said: What the hell are you up to?
"Miranda here believes Ayla is descended from an Alpha bloodline,"
Soren chuckled at this.
"That is highly impossible." he said. "I may not have acknowledged her as mine but Brenna and I..." He paused, letting the implication settle. "Unless you think I am from an Alpha bloodline, Miranda" he huffed.
The priestess’ eyes narrowed at this.
"My lord" she turned to Alpha Kieran. "I will not ask this if it was not important but did you and Brenna at any point..." she let the rest of her words hang.
There was silence at this.
"I do not think this is a conversation we should be having in front of them." Soren cut in, turning to Alpha Kieran. "I will have the guards return them to their rooms while we have this conversation privately."
"No" Alpha Kieran stopped him. "Have the guards return Ayla to her room but Brenna stays. She is as much a part of this conversation as you and I are."
Soren’s jaw tightened. "As you wish, my King."
He gestured to the guards at the door. They moved forward, flanking Ayla.
She looked at her mother.
"Mom..."
"It is all right, Ayla." Brenna’s voice cracked. "Go."
The guards ushered her out, and the door closed behind them with a heavy thud.
"I believe Brenna and I did have sex in the past." Alpha Kieran announced. "Around the time she was involved with you, Soren."
"I am well aware of this, Kieran"
The Alpha’s eyebrows rose. "You are?"
"Yes." Soren met his gaze evenly. "I am."
"And you were okay with that?"
Brenna was my mistress. I do not hold it against you for sleeping with her.She meant nothing to me and we pleased each other well enough." Soren said whilst eyeing Brenna.
She flinched as if he had struck her.
"Are you saying," Alpha Kieran said slowly, turning back to the priestess, "that Ayla could be my child?"
"That is not possible." Soren’s voice cut through the room before Miranda could answer.
The priestess turned to him. "You sound very sure."
"That is because I am sure." Soren stepped forward, his hands clasped behind his back. "Remember, Kieran, that you left for some weeks to hunt around the death anniversary of Isolde. That was around the time Brenna fell pregnant with Ayla. Am I wrong?"
"No, I do not believe you are." Alpha Kieran agreed. "Which makes it unlikely that I am Ayla’s father."
"And if I may be blunt, Brenna is not exactly a pious woman. She has jumped into more beds than I can count since she and I parted ways."
"That is not true." Brenna finally spoke.
She turned to Alpha Kieran.
"I have no idea how this is even remotely possible," she said. "I was with Soren during that time. I truly believed he was Ayla’s father."
"Then you should know," Alpha Kieran rose to his feet. "I am going to ask you one last time, Brenna. Who is Ayla’s father?"
Brenna dropped to her knees.
"I don’t..." her voice cracked.
And then her eyes widened in realization. Her head snapped up,
"The hunting grove," she whispered.
Alpha Kieran went still.
"What?"
"The night you mourned Isolde." Brenna’s voice grew stronger, the words tumbling out now as the memory of that night took shape. "You went to the hunting grove and I followed you."
"You were drunk," Brenna continued, her eyes fixed on the Alpha. "You were sitting beneath the old oak, and you were crying. I had never seen you cry before. I sat beside you. We talked about Isolde... about how the pack expected you to move on but you could not."
She drew a shaky breath.
"We stayed there all night. Under the stars. You held me, and I held you, and then... we were both so drunk that I did not remember it until now and I did not think it would... that that night would even..."
The silence that followed was absolute. Alpha Kieran stared at her.
"I will be damned," he finally said.
He turned away and walked back to his desk, sinking back to his chair with rigid shoulders.
"She is my daughter," Alpha Kieran said.
He raised his head to look at the priestess then at Soren.
"Ayla is my daughter."