ASHER'S POV
The banner is slipping from my sweaty hands.
I've been standing in this airport for three hours, and my arms are shaking so badly that the words WELCOME HOME, EZRA keep wobbling. The woman at the flower shop probably thinks I'm insane—who buys ninety-nine roses at six in the morning? But everything has to be perfect. This is my only chance.
My wolf is pacing inside my mind, restless and desperate. Mate. Mate is coming. Finally.
"Shut up," I mutter under my breath. An old lady walking past gives me a weird look. Great. Now I'm the crazy guy talking to himself in the airport.
But I can't help it. I haven't felt this alive—this terrified—in five years.
Five years of waking up in the middle of the night, reaching for someone who wasn't there. Five years of my wolf howling in my chest, mourning what I destroyed. Five years of lying in my enormous empty bed, staring at the ceiling, and wondering if Ezra ever thinks about me.
Probably not. Why would he? I made sure of that.
"It's over, Ezra. Clean break. No drama."
Even now, I can still see his face. The way his eyes went wide and wet. The way his Omega scent turned sour with distress. The way he just stood there in front of everyone while they laughed, waiting for me to say it was a joke.
I never did.
I let him walk away, and I told myself it was for the best. That my mother was right—he wasn't suitable for a Thornwell. That I was being mature and responsible.
I was a coward.
My phone buzzes. Marcus, my assistant and the only person who knows I'm here.
"You sure about this? He might punch you."
"I deserve worse," I type back.
The arrival board updates. Ezra's flight has landed. My heart kicks into overdrive.
This is real. He's here. After five years of tracking his career from a distance—reading every article about his consulting success, watching his company grow, searching for any mention of him like a stalker—I'm finally going to see him again.
And I'm going to beg.
I don't care if it's pathetic. I don't care if every Alpha in the city finds out that Asher Thornwell is groveling for an Omega. None of that matters anymore. The only thing that matters is that I fix the worst mistake of my entire life.
My hands tighten on the banner. The roses smell too sweet, making me slightly sick. Or maybe that's just fear.
What if he really has forgotten me? What if he's happy now, living his best life, and I'm just a bad memory he's moved past? What if I'm about to ruin his peace by showing up and reminding him of the worst day of his life?
Too bad, my wolf snarls. He's ours. We're not letting go again.
People start streaming out of the arrival gate. Business travelers with their rolling bags. Families hugging and crying. A group of college kids laughing about something.
No Ezra.
My chest gets tighter. What if he saw me and left through a different exit? What if—
Then I smell him.
That's the thing about fated mates—even after five years, even across a crowded airport, I know his scent. Honey and vanilla and something uniquely Ezra that makes my wolf stand up and pay attention.
He's here.
I scan the crowd frantically, and then I see him. Walking out with the late passengers, looking down at—
My brain short-circuits.
He's holding hands with two children.
Small kids, maybe four or five years old. A boy and a girl with matching honey-gold curls that are exactly like Ezra's hair. They're chattering excitedly, bouncing on their toes, and Ezra is smiling down at them with so much love it physically hurts to see.
He had kids. Ezra has children.
The thought hits me like a truck. Of course he moved on. Of course he found someone else, someone better, someone who didn't throw him away like garbage. Of course he—
The little girl turns her head, laughing at something her brother said.
Silver eyes.
Bright, unmistakable Thornwell silver eyes.
My roses hit the floor. The sound of ninety-nine stems scattering across tile doesn't even register. All I can see are those eyes. Those my family's eyes that have been passed down for six generations.
The boy turns too, and he has them as well. Perfect silver, like liquid mercury, like moonlight, like—
Like mine.
"No," I whisper, but my wolf is roaring. MINE. CUBS. OURS.
My hands are shaking so hard I drop the banner. It crumples at my feet, but I can't look away from those children. From their silver eyes and Ezra's golden hair and the way they hold his hands with complete trust.
Math crashes through my panic. Four or five years old. Ezra left five years ago. Which means—
Oh god.
Oh god.
He was pregnant. When I broke up with him in front of everyone, when I called our relationship "fun" and told him to go away, when I chose my mother's approval over him—he was carrying my children.
And I never knew.
My legs nearly give out. I grab a nearby pillar for support, my breath coming in short gasps. An Alpha in distress is rare enough that people are starting to stare, but I don't care.
I have children.
Ezra raises his head, probably smelling my distressed Alpha pheromones even across the terminal. Our eyes meet for the first time in five years.
He's still beautiful. But you're right—he's different. There's no softness in his expression anymore, no warmth. He looks at me the way you'd look at a stranger. Or worse—the way you'd look at someone who hurt you so badly you learned to feel nothing.
"Ezra," I try to say, but his name comes out as barely a whisper.
He sees the banner on the ground. The scattered roses. He sees me falling apart in the middle of the airport like I'm dying, which I am, because everything I thought I knew just exploded.
I have children. Twins. A boy and a girl who have my eyes and his hair and I missed everything.
First steps. First words. First birthdays. Four years—or is it five?—of their lives that I can never get back.
Ezra's jaw tightens. He bends down and says something to the children I can't hear. They look at me with curious, bright eyes—my eyes—and I think I might actually be sick right here in the middle of the airport.
He straightens up, holding the twins' hands protectively. Then he walks toward me, and every step feels like a countdown to my execution.
When he's close enough that I can see the gold flecks in his amber eyes, when I can smell his scent properly and my wolf is going absolutely insane with mate mate MATE—he stops.
"Asher," he says flatly. My name sounds like a curse.
"Ezra." My voice cracks. "I—the children—are they—"
The little girl tugs his hand. "Daddy, why does that man smell like us?"
Daddy. He's their daddy. Of course he is.
But if they smell like me, that means—
"Are they mine?" The question bursts out before I can stop it. "Ezra, please, are those my children?"
Every Alpha within twenty feet is staring now. They heard the child. They can probably smell the family resemblance in our mixed scents. This is about to become the scandal of the decade.
Ezra's eyes go cold. So cold that I actually step back.
"That's none of your business," he says, and his voice could freeze fire.
"None of my—" I can't breathe. "Ezra, if they're mine, if you were pregnant when I—oh god, if I sent you away when you were carrying our—"
"Stop." The command in his voice makes my Alpha instincts want to submit, which should be impossible. Omegas don't have command voice. "You don't get to fall apart now. You don't get to care now."
"I've always cared—"
"You called me FUN!" His voice rises, making the twins flinch. He immediately lowers it, but the fury remains. "You stood in front of everyone we knew and told me I was a mistake you were correcting. You want to know about these children? Fine. They're mine. I raised them. I fed them. I stayed up all night when they were sick. ME. Not you."
"Because I didn't know!" Desperation makes me reach for him, but he jerks back like I'm poison. "Ezra, if I had known—"
"You would've what? Come running? Apologized?" His laugh is bitter. "You couldn't even love me without shame. What makes you think you could love them?"
The accusation stabs straight through my chest. "That's not fair."
"Fair?" Something dangerous flashes in his eyes. "You want to talk about fair?"
A new scent cuts through the tension—another Alpha, powerful and angry. I turn to see a man approaching. Tall, platinum-blond hair, protective stance.
He walks right up to Ezra's side, and the twins immediately release their father's hands to hug this stranger's legs.
"Papa Kai!" they say together, bright and happy.
Papa.
Papa.
My entire world tilts sideways.
"Sorry I'm late," the stranger—Kai—says to Ezra, completely ignoring me. "Traffic was hell."
He bends down and scoops up both children like they weigh nothing. Like he's done it a thousand times before. They snuggle into his arms naturally, trustingly.
The boy yawns. "Papa Kai, can we get ice cream?"
"After dinner, Lucas. You know the rules."
He knows their names. He knows their schedules. He's their Papa.
"Who," I manage to force out through my closing throat, "are you?"
Kai finally looks at me. His eyes are dismissive, like I'm an annoying insect.
"I'm Kai Volkov. Ezra's partner." He adjusts his hold on the twins—my twins—and adds with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes, "And the only father these children have ever known."
The airport spins. Everything I thought I understood about the last five minutes just shattered again.
Ezra has a partner. The twins call another man Papa. I didn't just miss four years—I missed everything.
"We're leaving," Ezra says coldly. He takes the little girl—my daughter—from Kai's arms.
"Ezra, wait—" I reach out desperately.
But he's already walking away. Kai follows, carrying my son, and all three of them disappear into the crowd without looking back.
I'm left standing alone in an airport, surrounded by scattered roses and ruins.
And one question burns through everything else:
Did I just meet my children for the first time, only to watch another man walk away with my entire family?