A Twist of Fate: True Mates Generations Book 1

by Montgomery, Alicia

  * * *

  After a lazy morning spent in bed, they drove out to the town to have lunch and then pick up some supplies for dinner at the general store. “Ooh, I’m going to need some snacks, too!” Astrid declared as they passed a bakery. “Oh my God, that smells amazing.”

  When she left the bakery armed with two paper bags, he gave her a curious look.

  “You owe me for kidnapping me in my sweats,” she said. To which he replied with a laugh and a kiss on the nose.

  Although Zac had kept the mansion as it had been when he was growing up, he explained to Astrid that he did add a few modern conveniences, including the hot tub that he had installed on the balcony of the master bedroom. As soon as they came back, they took a dip.

  “Oohhhh,” she sighed as she eased down into the hot water. “This feels so good.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve made you too sore,” he said.

  She splashed some water at his face. “The look on your face says you’re not sorry at all.” He laughed and then pulled her to his lap.

  She relaxed against him and looked out to the spectacular view of the Hudson river and the valley. The trees, except for the evergreen ones, were bare and the hills covered in snow. There was that hush quiet atmosphere that could only happen in the winter time. “It’s beautiful out here,” she said. “I can see why you wanted to keep this place.”

  “I spent a lot of time here as a child.” He rested his chin on her shoulder. “All Christmases, of course, and a couple summers.”

  “You … you were close with Vasili?”

  “Yes.”

  He seemed to only answer in single syllables when she asked about his great-grandfather, so she decided to move away from the subject for now. “Are there people who look out for the place while you’re away?”

  “Yeah, I have a management company come in and do the cleaning and maintenance. This is actually only the second time I’ve come here since I bought it.”

  “It must have taken an army of servants to run this place during your great-grandfather’s time,” she said.

  “Not really. There were some maids and a cook, plus we had Garret.”

  “What’s a Garret?”

  His lips turned up into a fond smile. “Vasili’s most trusted servant,” he said. “He was an old-school butler who served my great-grandfather for decades. He was stern and ran this house like a captain on a navy boat. But he was also very kind and great at a lot things like sewing and baking.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” There was that sad expression on his face again. “He died not long after my grandfather.”

  “I’m so sorry, Zac.” She turned to face him, straddling his lap. “About Vasili and Garret.”

  “He lived to a hundred years old,” he said. “He was a stubborn old man. Both of them were. But it was just their time.”

  She reached up to cup his face. “That doesn’t make it hurt any less. It’s okay to still be sad, you know, after all this time. Just because you’re a guy, doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to mourn and be sad when you think of him.”

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I know.”

  “Besides,” she said. “You must have had a lot of great memories with him and Garret.”

  “Definitely.” His face lit up. “There was this one Christmas, I was probably five or six. I was definitely old enough to remember for sure. Anyway, Vasili had hired someone to play Santa on Christmas morning for me and my siblings, but he didn’t show up. Not wanting to disappoint any of us, Garret volunteered to play Santa.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “I didn’t witness this, of course, but my mother told me the story. Santa actors provide their own suits, right? They didn’t know how to get one on Christmas Eve. So, he and Garret stayed up all night trying to put together a last-minute Santa outfit. They borrowed one of my mother’s robes and then sewed cotton balls all around it for the fur and for the fake beard. They found some old belts in the attic that belonged to my great-grandmother.”

  “That must have been a sight,” she laughed.

  “Yeah. But it was the best Santa I’d ever seen.” There was a flash of joy in his eyes, which then quickly turned dark, and his body suddenly went rigid.

  A sadness wrapped around her, and it was like she could feel the pain in his heart. “He must have loved you.” She stroked her fingers through his hair as she looked straight into his eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m making you sad.”

  “No, don’t be sorry.” His breath hitched and he cast his eyes downward. “It’s nice … remembering the good times. I just haven’t had time to think of them lately. Not when all I can think about is how he’s gone.”

  “But he’s not truly gone.” Sliding her hand down, she placed her palm over his heart. “He’s right here. He’s here in all of you. Your siblings, your parents, and everyone that remembers him. He’ll also live on because of you and what you did to keep the house in your family.”

  He paused, then lifted his head up. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  “I did? What about?”

  “I’m not sure yet. But when I do, I’ll let you know. Now.” The intensity in his ice blue eyes made heat shoot through her body. “I think it’s time we get down to the real reason I kidnapped you.”

  “Kidnapped me? You mean, to your gorgeous mansion and your hot tub?” She let out a laugh. “You’re free to kidnap me any time. In fact, if you have an apartment in Paris, you can kidnap me—”

  He silenced her with his lips, pressing his mouth to hers and sending a shockwave through her body. She moaned aloud when his fingers slipped between her thighs underneath the roiling hot water, caressing her and making her body shudder. “Yes,” she sighed when his mouth moved lower, tracing a scorching path down to the valley between her breasts. I could get used to this, she thought as his head dipped below the water.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Zac never hated Sunday night more than he did now. He didn’t want the weekend to end and have to face reality on Monday morning. He tried to convince Astrid to stay one more night, but she wouldn’t relent.

  “I can’t show up in the morning fresh from a weekend getaway,” she had said. Besides, although she was free to come and go as she pleased in her own time, the trainees did have a curfew on Sunday nights.

  And so, he relented, packing up the car on Sunday afternoon so they could be back in New York by evening. He was, at least, able to coax her to come up to his room for dinner. And by dinner, he meant more sex and an enormous room service order that took two bellmen to deliver.

  She had to be back in her room by midnight, so at around eleven o’clock, they said their goodbyes. While she declined his offer of a ride, she did let him call her an Uber. They also made plans to meet at the ramen restaurant on Fortieth and Lexington for dinner the following night.

  On Monday morning, he went back to work and it took all his willpower not to stop by the sixteenth floor just to see Astrid. As he tried to concentrate on his emails, his thoughts kept going back to the glorious weekend they had.

  The whole week he was away from her had been torture, not to mention the fact that he still didn’t know what the hell was going on. What were they to each other? He’d made up conversations in his mind, trying to bring up the subject, but when he finally was in front of her, he never even brought it up. It was like he couldn’t think of anything, and everything else seemed trivial. His inner wolf seemed to know something, but what, he couldn’t tell. All he knew was that the animal was happier and content around her.

  Besides, he wanted to keep Astrid to himself for a while longer. Having to come out and give themselves a label seemed to cheapen what they had. Whatever it was, he didn’t have a name for it.

  Then, there was the subject of his father. There was that niggling feeling in his brain that something wasn’t quite right. He racked his brain, trying to figure out a way to talk to
Nick and tell him about Astrid. What should he say? Or expect his father’s reaction to be?

  Of course, he didn’t expect the man himself to show up at his office at that moment.

  “Dad?” He looked up from his computer as Nick strode into the room, an inscrutable look on his face. He closed the door behind him and locked it.

  “No need to stand up,” Nick said. “I’ll be quick.”

  He frowned, but sat back down. “What can I do for you, Dad?”

  Nick marched to the front of his desk and crossed his arms over his desk, his gaze looking straight down at him. “Explain to me what you’ve been doing with that girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “You know who I mean.” Nick’s jaw tensed as he took something out of his pocket. He touched the screen and then pointed the screen at him. It was video surveillance footage from the elevator lobby on the sixteenth floor. It showed him the night after Vail, when he dragged Astrid back to her room. The video switched to the morning after, when he was leaving.

  Zac tamped down the anger threatening to explode from him. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. Besides, are you spying on me?”

  “Spying? I’m doing my job, as the head of the security team, as Beta, and as your father.” His face was completely red now. “Are you sleeping with her?”

  He shot to his feet. “That’s none of your damn business!”

  “Goddammit, Zac!” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Why her? Out of all the people you’d choose to fuck, why her? Is it just the sex?”

  “I would choose your next words carefully,” Zac warned in a soft, but deadly voice.

  Nick’s expression faltered. “So, it’s not just sex.” He rubbed a hand down his face. “I would almost prefer if it was.”

  “Dad,” he said through gritted teeth. “Why do you hate her so much? So what if she’s not one of the ruling families or she’s not well-connected? Is it because Meredith works for you and used to be one of the Lone Wolves?”

  “Christ!” Nick slammed his hands down on the desk. “It’s not Meredith that I have a problem with. It’s that Goddamn warlock! I wish to God he’d never …”

  “Daric? Dad, that’s preposterous. The war between the magical beings and Lycans is over. And Daric is one of the most trusted members of the clan.”

  “Yes, but you don’t know the truth.” Nick sighed. “Sit down.”

  “I will not—”

  “Sit down, Zachary.”

  The graveness in his father’s voice made him sit. “Explain.”

  Nick took a long, deep breath. “A long time ago, we—meaning Grant, Frankie, Daric, Meredith, your mother and I—made a decision to keep certain details regarding our war with the mages out of the official records of our history. One of those details involved Daric.”

  “What is it?”

  “Daric wasn’t just some warlock who came out of nowhere to help the Lycans. He was one of them.”

  “Them?”

  “He worked for the mages.”

  “What?” Coldness froze the blood in his veins and his head felt light. “I don’t understand.”

  “We had captured him in one of the earlier battles and turned him to our side. But before that, he was the master mage Stefan’s right-hand man. At one point, he kidnapped your mother.”

  “He what?” Oh no.

  “They made it seem like Cady betrayed us and then kidnapped her. They wanted your mother because of her powerful witch heritage. Stefan had a plan. Daric and she would start breeding a new generation of witches.”

  “Breeding—” The bile rising in his throat made him stop. “Did they …”

  “No, thank God. We stopped them in time.”

  Zac gripped the edge of the table. His mind was reeling, and all he could think about was his poor mother. Being kidnapped and having her kidnapper—“Why did you keep this from me?”

  “Because at that time, we all thought it was best,” Nick said. “That we just forget about the past and move forward. Daric had pledged to us. It turns out he was being coerced into serving Stefan because the master mage had kidnapped his mother.”

  “So, he didn’t want to help Stefan?”

  “No,” Nick conceded. “But I know if my own mother had been held prisoner, I would have done everything I could to keep her safe.”

  Zac felt all the blood from his face drain. He couldn’t believe it. Did Astrid know?

  “So, you see why you can’t see her anymore,” Nick said. He stood up and buttoned up his suit. “I’m going to your mother’s office. See you later, Son.”

  The sound of the door slamming shut felt ominous and final. Processing this whole thing seemed impossible. His emotions were churning and he didn’t know what to do.

  Astrid. His mother. Daric. If this was all true—and why would his father lie?—then this was all going to be a big mess. He was loyal to his family of course, but Astrid … he just couldn’t imagine not being with her. But then again, his poor mother. What would she think? How would she feel? He couldn’t break her heart like that. Family. Blood. Loyalty. Vasili Vrost and Nick had taught him that nothing else mattered.

  He stood up and closed his computer, then walked out the door, stopping by the desk of the Lycan assistant assigned to him. “Jane,” he said to the young woman. “Cancel all my meetings for today. I won’t be coming back.” He didn’t bother for her reply as he headed straight for the elevators.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Astrid checked her phone for what seemed like the millionth time that night. She was pretty sure she and Zac had agreed on seven-thirty for dinner at the ramen place, but thirty minutes after she’d arrived, he still wasn’t here. The hostess said she couldn’t seat her without everyone in their party there, even if it was just two people.

  So, she waited. It was getting so crowded inside that she was pushed out to the storm door and soon found herself outside in the freezing rain. Pulling the hood of her jacket over her head, she glanced at the phone in her hand again. Zac was now an hour late.

  Did something come up? Was he tied up in a meeting? Or maybe she got the address wrong. How many ramen restaurants were there on Lexington Avenue?

  “Astrid.”

  The heaviness in her chest lifted when she heard his voice. She whipped around so fast, her hood drew back. “Zac!” She wrapped her arms around him. “Oh, Zac. Are you okay? Did something happen?” He remained stiff with his hands at his sides. “Baby, you’re all wet. Did you walk all the way here?”

  “I’ve been walking all day.”

  She raised her head to stare up at his face. His expression was tense and his mouth was pulled into a thin line. “Why?”

  “I just—” He removed her arms from him and set them at her sides. “We need to talk, Astrid.”

  “Of course. Let’s go inside.” She tried to take his hand, but he pulled it away. “Zac?”

  “No. I mean, we can talk out here.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “Please, Astrid. I can’t.” He turned his back to her.

  What the hell was going on? She sidestepped to face him. “Zac. Talk to me.”

  His eyes turned hard, like shards of blue steel. “My father found out about us.”

  It was bound to happen, she supposed. “What did he say?”

  “He wasn’t happy.”

  “Oh.” Of course not. She knew Nick would have never approved of her for his golden boy after all. Wasn’t that what she’d feared all along?

  “Did you know what your father was, before he came to pledge to the New York clan?”

  The question came out of left field and left her stunned for a few seconds. “My father? What does he have to do with any of this?”

  “My father told me that Daric worked with the mages before he switched sides.”

  Her knees buckled, but she caught herself before she fell forward. “No. That’s not true.”

  “Why would he lie?” Zac accused.

  “I di
dn’t know! I swear, Zac, I—”

  “They lied to us,” he said. “They lied to all of us.”

  “Then why are you mad at me?” she asked.

  “I’m not mad at you, Astrid,” he said. “But … you need to ask your father about it. And what he tried to do to my mother.”

  “What he tried to—Zac, please!” She grabbed at his sleeves. “Just tell me what’s going on?” It felt like she had stepped into another dimension, or a play where she didn’t know her lines. Her world was turning upside down right before her very eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Astrid. I just … I can’t do this. Not to her.”

  “Zac, I’m sure we could—please! Don’t go. You said … you said I was yours. And that you would never—”

  He pulled her hands off him. “Goodbye, Astrid.”

  No! Her mind screamed the words. Her wolf was howling in pain, the sound so deafening she couldn’t hear anything else. Not the rain as it fell harder, soaking her through her jacket. Not the cabs as the honked their horns when they passed by. Not even the people who stopped and asked her if she was okay.

  No, she couldn’t hear any of them as she watched Zac walk away from her like she meant nothing to him.

  * * *

  The temperatures in New York city didn’t dip low enough to turn the rain into snow, so the city was pounded with freezing rain for most of the night. Astrid wasn’t sure how long she walked in the cold, but she could hardly keep track of the time. Her body was numb and she allowed her legs to lead the way. Perhaps something or someone was watching out for her, because she found herself at a familiar brownstone building on the Upper West Side. She trudged up the stoop and knocked on the door.

  A few moments later, the door flew open. “Astrid?” Deedee exclaimed as she held her robe tighter around her. “What are you doing—oh my Lord, it’s freezing out there! Come in now!” She pulled Astrid inside her home. “Did you walk all the way here? Astrid … Astrid, are you okay?”