ISOBEL

The sheets felt like they weighed a thousand pounds.

I lay there staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the plaster for the third time that morning. The heat season had passed more than seven hours ago, and my body still ached from the suppressants. The pills left a bitter taste that clung to the back of my throat no matter how much water I drank. Because I could not bring myself to participate in something such as the heat when my mother had just perished.

I had even offered Joseph my blessing for him to go to one of those pleasure houses. I told him to do whatever he wanted. Take an Omega if it would help. I didn’t care what he did with his body during heat season because mine was mine alone, and I refused to let some stupid biology dictate my choices.

But he had chosen to take suppressants instead.

Solidarity, he called it.

I called it pointless.

The ache in my joints reminded me why I hated those pills, but the alternative was worse. I would not spend the day and night in mindless rutting with a man whose attention I’d grown bored with years ago.

Plus...My currently dead mother held more priority than anything.

Priority... The thought sat in my mind like a stone dropped into still water. It should have created ripples, some kind of emotional response, but there was nothing. All I could say I felt and that stuck was the flat acknowledgment of fact.

She was dead, and I felt nothing.

That probably made me a terrible daughter. Mother would have agreed. She’d spent most of my adult life telling me exactly how terrible I was, how weak, how disappointing. All because I’d chosen Joseph over the match she’d arranged. All because I’d dared to have a spine.

The irony was that I’d tried so hard not to become her.

Hazel was proof of that. I’d worked to build something healthy with my daughter, something that didn’t involve emotional manipulation and conditional love. I wanted her to feel safe coming to me, to trust that I wouldn’t cut her off for making her own choices.

But Hazel had steadily grown into someone I barely recognized.

She bit off more than she could chew, made decisions without thinking them through, then panicked when the consequences came knocking. I’d had to clean up mess after mess because of her poor choices.

My sweet girl had a talent for creating problems she expected others to solve.

I pushed myself upright, ignoring the way my head spun. The suppressants always left me dizzy for days afterward. My feet found the floor, and I shuffled toward the bathroom.

It didn’t matter anymore.

Mother was dead, and she’d been a burden on all of us. My older brother certainly thought so. He’d left Northern Ridge Nocturne the moment he was of age, took a position overseas, and never looked back. Despite the fact that he was heir apparent to Father’s title, he stayed far away from the responsibility, from the territory, from all of it.

He hadn’t even come back when news of Mother death came out.

That told me everything I needed to know about how much he mourned her.

Even father had been cold when he delivered the news. His voice on the phone had held no grief, just a clinical recitation of facts. Your mother is dead. The funeral arrangements are being handled. We’ll speak soon.

He was probably already looking for a new wife.

Mother’s jealousy had been legendary. Any woman who looked at Father twice found her life systematically destroyed. Lives lost, reputations ruined, families threatened. Mother had been creative in her cruelty, and Father had let her do it because it was mostly easier than fighting.

Now she was gone, and he was free.

I wondered how long it would take before rumors started circulating about Father’s new conquest. A week? A month? Knowing him, he’d probably already picked someone out.

The bathroom mirror showed me a woman who looked older than her years, with dark circles under my eyes, skin pale from stress, and hair that needed washing. I reached for my toothbrush.

My phone vibrated in the bedroom.

I considered ignoring it. Nothing good ever came from morning calls. But curiosity won out, and I walked back to check the screen.

It was... Father.

My stomach tightened. He never called ever so that could only mean that this was important or something was wrong.

I picked up. "Hello, Father."

"Hello." His voice sounded rough, like he’d been awake all night. "How are you holding up?"

"I’m fine." The lie came automatically. "Is this about the funeral arrangements?"

"I already said I would handle that."

"She’s my mother."

The words hung in the air between us. Father said nothing, and I filled the silence.

"Now that the heat has passed, I’ll come to Nocturne and—"

"What I called you for is a darkness that has been sitting at the back of my mind for a while." he cut in.

I frowned. "What?"

"I know you must have wondered what made your mother take such a drastic choice."

A bitter laugh escaped before I could stop it. "What could justify it?"

"You must know Athena." Father’s voice went quiet. "The ghost that dared not be named when your mother was close."

My hand tightened on the phone. "Was that not the random Omega you had an affair with once upon a time? What does that have to do with anything?"

"It was revealed to me quite recently that Athena and I..." He paused, and I heard him take a breath. "I fathered a child with her. A secret that was kept hidden, and that child was named Muna."

The room tilted.

I gripped the edge of the bed to steady myself. Did he say Muna? There was no way I heard him right.

"What did you say?" I asked.

Then my mind went places. There were a thousand other Munas. Surely...

"Yes." Father’s voice came through, steady now, and worst of all, matter-of-fact. "It is that Muna. Your husband’s late second wife."

There was no fucking way. What kind of prank was this? It was the most unfunny shit I had ever heard.

"Isobel? Are you there."

My hand tightened on the phone until the case creaked. "She... was not a wife. If anything, she was a forsaken mistress."

"Now is not the time for this, Isobel. But you should know what that makes her daughter... Your stepchild."

"Father, you cannot be seriously calling about that now. My mother just died and is not even six feet under."

"That makes her daughter Fia my grandchild."

I hated that he said it because it gave it legitimacy.

No.

No, that couldn’t be right.

"I despised your mother when all of that came out." Father continued, and I could hear something dark in his tone. "She had been responsible for their disappearance after hiding and keeping it a secret for so many years. She knew I had a child... a grandchild... my blood was out there and she..." He stopped, as if he continued, he would say something that would actually hurt. "After that, I wanted her out of my life. A rejection was going to happen, and your mother would not take that."

I shuddered.

The implications crashed over me like a wave. Fia wasn’t just Joseph’s Omega daughter of questionable birth. She was my half-niece. My father’s grandchild. She also had a legitimate claim to Northern Ridge Nocturne through blood, and that changed everything.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"You know why."

My throat felt tight. "You plan to legitimize her with Nocturne."