Page 1 of Old Secrets

ONE

The work might win at the rate it insisted on piling up.

A mountain of paperwork, some dating twenty to thirty years before my birth, took over the RV’s table and threatened to spill to the floor. An amused Jake lounged on the couch and observed me face off against my foe. In his effort to combat the scorching heat and humidity of a Georgia summer, he’d removed his shirt. A rather enticing gleam of sweat proved difficult for me to ignore. If I wanted to get down to the bottom of the crime group after my dead head and why, I had to conquer the pages in front of me.

I needed to stop delaying my work to enjoy Jake and his bare chest.

The work might win at the rate it insisted on piling up.

Some were my adoption records, most of which had been flagged as forged. It’d taken the Inquisition and the black market working together to learn that very little of my documented life was real. The Inquisition suspected a kidnapping. The black market agreed, but they gave the idea of me being kidnapped as a baby a rather strange twist.

They suspected someone had taken me in an effort to hide me, likely from those behind the Greenwich case. Everyone associated with the files had died, and there was no information on my biological family. Nobody knew anything, not in China nor Tibet.

I questioned why everyone believed those behind the Greenwich case might want an infant from Tibet—or more accurately, why they might want something from my Tibetan parents.

I also questioned why I appeared to be American rather than Tibetan. My DNA didn’t lie, however.

There was nothing American about me.

Someone of good standing with China had inquired, and upon learning the background of the situation, China had given the Inquisition everything they knew about my situation.

On paper, I existed. My family did not. According to officials in China and Tibet, the town associated with my place of birth had been wiped out due to a natural disaster ten years before I’d been supposedly born, which had revealed my documents were a clever forgery.

My supposed birthplace’s remote location had helped with the trick, but it had been a trick all the same, one designed to get me safely into the United States, where I’d been granted citizenship as an infant.

The United States, upon learning of the forgery and with a little prodding from the Inquisition, had issued me a new birth certificate and natural citizenship. China offered the same.

Both nations had opted to maintain the names on the original form at my request.

As long as my parents had names on a sheet of paper, they existed somewhere. I’d been given a promise that if I found out they had different names, I could change my official records to match—if I wanted.

The fox in me wanted to scream over yet another abandonment. I withheld judgment. The Inquisition and the black market both made good points, and until I discovered the true story about my birth and life in the United States, I wouldn’t judge my mother and father.

Instead, I would cling to the thin hope I had a chance to experience what it was like to have parents who truly cared about me and wanted me to thrive and live.

Pa had.

Ma hadn’t.

The pile contained more about Ma’s story, too—and what had driven her to murder her baby and go on to try to kill me. Each fragmented piece of the puzzle added to my heartache. When everything came together, I feared the final story, one that told a tragedy of a father who’d suspected but couldn’t prove the fate of his child and of a mother so obsessed with perfection and religious adherence she would slaughter her children to preserve her soul’s sanctity.

I tried not to think about the matter of souls much. I couldn’t imagine anywhere other than some dark and terrible hell for a woman who’d destroyed her family over an infant’s illness and my refusal to become her version of perfection.

In a way, I resented that time did its work. I struggled to believe that last summer had slid into fall, we’d spent winter driving Mellisa and Amelia insane with our posturing, winter had faded to spring, and spring had once again bloomed into summer. According to Mellisa, we both had a way to go before either one of us counted as mentally and emotionally healthy, but I’d made good strides on the physical front.

Jake couldn’t count my ribs anymore. He tended to act like he still walked on thin ice, which annoyed me. The realization I’d recovered faster than he did kept me quiet and patient.

I’d come to terms with my ma’s betrayal in record time, focusing my efforts on learning about my past.

Jake struggled to find a balance between me, his future, and his parents, which slid further and further into the past category. The weekly calls had degraded to monthly, and it’d been three months since he’d considered initiating contact with his mother.

I gave it a few weeks before he decided to take the next step and find us a new pack, one where Mellisa and Amelia would enjoy unconditional welcome. In the year since we’d left from Baltimore, I’d grown more sensitive to the work he did to protect the women from the brewing resentment within the pack.

I considered the paperwork, my husband, and the problem of the wolves he needed as much as I did. My fox had come to understand she could thrive with only Jake, and she sought out the comforting presence of his wolf often. She’d also learned to distrust certain wolves, although she adored others.

Jake’s father may as well have hung the moon in her sky, second only to Jake. Jake’s mother, on the other hand, reduced her to chitters of fury, which she sometimes expressed as screams of frustration in my head.

Some decisions were easier to make than others. Until we dealt with the past, how could we seek out a new and better future? I turned from the papers and regarded my husband and mate through narrowed eyes.