Chapter 2: The Truth on the Rooftop
The phone stopped ringing.
The silence it left was heavier than the city below. Adam’s hand, which had been gripping Jaxson’s jaw, fell away. He stared at the darkened screen as if it had burned him.
“Answer me.” Adam’s voice was a hollowed-out thing, stripped of all its earlier command.
Jaxson’s mouth was dry as dust. The words were there, the confession he’d rehearsed in a thousand sleepless nights, but they came out cracked and small. “His name is Leo. He’s three. He’s… he’s yours.”
Adam didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. The only sign he’d even heard was a minute twitch in the muscle along his jaw, a tiny fracture in the stone. His silver eyes, glinting in the lantern light, lifted from the phone to Jaxson’s face. They weren’t furious anymore. They were lost.
“Mine,” he echoed. The word had no weight, like he was testing a language he didn’t know.
Then, the world snapped back into focus with a vicious clarity. Adam’s hand shot out, not to hurt, but to seize Jaxson’s wrist. His fingers pressed into the pulse point, hard. “You ran pregnant. You ran marked and pregnant. Alone.” The disbelief morphed, swiftly, into a dawning horror. “Anything could have happened. To you. To him.”
“I know.” Jaxson’s eyes burned. “I didn’t… I didn’t plan it. I found out a month after. I was scared.”
“Of me?” The question was a whip-crack.
“Of this!” Jaxson flung his free arm out, gesturing at the frost-limned garden, the penthouse, the empire it represented. “Of your world. Your family. Your expectations. I was a nobody, Adam. A barista you hooked up with at a club. What were they going to do? Throw me a shower? Or pay me off to disappear? I chose to disappear on my own terms.”
Adam flinched, a real, physical recoil. He released Jaxson’s wrist. For a second, he looked stripped bare, the powerful alpha heir gone, leaving just a man gutted by a truth he couldn’t refute.
“You thought so little of me,” he said, quietly. “You thought I’d discard my own child.”
“I thought they’d make you!” Jaxson shot back, the old defiance flaring. “I did what I thought was best to protect him. To protect us.”
Adam’s gaze swept over him—the worn sweater, the too-thin frame, the fresh bite on his neck still gleaming. His eyes lingered on Jaxson’s stomach, as if he could see through time to the curve that was never there under his hands. A profound, aching sadness passed over his features.
Then it was gone, sealed away behind a mask of terrifying resolve. The alpha was back, but his energy had shifted. The possessive fury was now channeled, laser-focused.
“Where is he right now?” Adam’s voice was calm. Deadly calm.
“With my neighbor. Mrs. Chen. She watches him when I work nights.”
“We’re going. Now.”
“Adam, you can’t just—”
“Watch me.” He took Jaxson’s phone from his slack hand, his thumb brushing the screen to light up Leo’s picture again. His throat worked as he swallowed. “You will take me to my son. Or I will find the address linked to this number myself. Your choice.”
There was no choice. Jaxson saw it. The unyielding will in Adam’s posture, the primal claim in his scent, now spiked with a new, frantic note—paternal instinct. He’d lost this battle four years ago by running. He wouldn’t lose it now by refusing.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”
The ride down in the private elevator was suffocating. Adam stood silently, his reflection a grim statue in the polished brass. He hadn’t returned the phone. He just kept staring at the picture, his thumb stroking the boy’s digital cheek.
A black town car was idling at the service entrance, the driver snapping to attention as they emerged. Adam gave an address in a neighborhood he never would have known existed—a jumble of letters and numbers Jaxson had stammered out. He didn’t ask again.
The city blurred past the tinted windows, shifting from glittering towers to narrower streets, older brick, fluorescent signs in languages Adam probably couldn’t read. Jaxson watched his own ghost in the window, feeling the phantom ache between his legs, the sting of the new bite. His body was a traitorous map of all his mistakes.
Adam spoke only once during the twenty-minute drive. “Does he know about me?”
Jaxson curled into himself. “He knows he has a dad somewhere. I told him… when he asked. I said you were important and busy and lived far away. It was all I could think to say.”
Adam said nothing. The silence was worse than any outburst.
The car stopped in front of a six-story walk-up, the brick stained with decades of exhaust. A flickering streetlight cast long shadows. Adam was out of the car before it fully settled, staring up at the building with an expression of sheer incredulity. This was where his heir had been living.
“Which one?” he asked, his voice tight.
“5B.”
Adam didn’t wait. He took the cracked concrete steps two at a time, his long stride eating the distance. Jaxson scrambled after him, his heart in his throat. By the time he reached the fifth-floor landing, Adam was already standing before the scuffed door of 5B, his fist raised to knock. He paused, his shoulders tense. For a fleeting second, Jaxson saw the nerves—the raw, human fear—before Adam closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and knocked.
The door opened a few inches, secured by a chain. Mrs. Chen’s wary eye appeared, then widened when she saw Jaxson. “Jax! You’re early. Everything okay?” Her gaze flicked to Adam, taking in the obviously expensive coat, the dominating presence that crowded her narrow hallway, and her concern deepened.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Chen,” Jaxson said, forcing calm. “This is… this is Adam. Leo’s father. He’s here to see him.”
The older woman’s eyebrows shot up. She looked at Adam again, then at Jaxson’s pale, strained face. Without a word, she closed the door, slid the chain, and opened it fully.
The apartment was warm, smelling of ginger, incense, and the unmistakable scent of child—crayons, yogurt, innocence. It was small, painfully tidy, but filled with love. A battered sofa, books stacked neatly, a tiny pair of sneakers by the door.
From the short hallway, a little voice called, “Mama?”
And then he appeared.
Leo padded out in dinosaur pajamas, rubbing one eye with a fist, his honey-blonde hair a sleep-tousled mess. He held a stuffed wolf in a death-grip under his arm. His sea-green eyes, so like Jaxson’s, found his mother first, and a sleepy smile appeared.
Then he saw the stranger.
He stopped, his small body going very still. He didn’t hide. He just looked, curious and solemn.
Adam made a sound. A choked, involuntary thing from deep in his chest. He took one step forward, then froze, as if realizing his sheer size might be frightening. He slowly sank into a crouch, bringing himself down to Leo’s level. The action was so carefully controlled, so deliberate, it was more vulnerable than any gesture Jaxson had ever seen from him.
Adam’s silver eyes drank in the sight—the curve of the boy’s cheek, the shape of his brows, the curious tilt of his head. His own features, softened and reborn.
“Hi,” Adam said, and his voice was rough, scraped raw. He cleared his throat, tried again. “Hi, Leo.”
Leo glanced at Jaxson, seeking confirmation. Jaxson managed a shaky nod, tears threatening to spill over.
“Hi,” Leo whispered back, taking a half-step closer. “You’re big.”
A laugh, sharp and surprised, escaped Adam. It sounded like it hurt. “Yeah. I am.”
“Do you know my mama?” Leo asked, logic simple and direct.
Adam’s gaze flicked to Jaxson, a storm of memory and pain and wonder in that one look. “Yes,” he said, returning his full attention to his son. “I know your mama. Very well. I… I’ve been wanting to meet you for a very, very long time.”
Leo considered this. He took another step, within arm’s reach now. He studied Adam’s face with intense concentration. “You have my eyes,” the little boy announced, not accusingly, but with the gravity of a scientist stating a fact.
It was the wrong color, of course. But he meant the shape. The intensity.
Adam’s breath hitched. He nodded, unable to speak.
Leo reached out then, not for Adam, but for the wool of his dark coat. He pinched it between his fingers, feeling the texture. Then his eyes landed on the stuffed wolf under his own arm, and he held it up. “This is Wolfie. He’s brave.”
Adam stared at the toy. Something inside him fractured completely. “He is,” Adam managed, his voice thick. “The bravest.”
And then, because he was three, and the mystery of the large man was momentarily exhausted, Leo turned and shuffled back to Jaxson, lifting his arms to be picked up. Jaxson scooped him up, holding him close, burying his nose in his son’s hair. Over that soft head, his eyes met Adam’s.
Adam rose slowly from his crouch. He looked from Leo’s small form clinging to Jaxson, to the cramped apartment, to the worn sofa. The calculated CEO, the pack alpha, was gone. In his place stood a man whose entire world had just been violently, beautifully rearranged.
He looked at Jaxson, and his expression was unreadable, a chaos of fury and awe and a desperate, yearning love.
“Get his things,” Adam said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “You’re both coming home with me. Tonight.”