When Preston saw that the woman on the bed was Taya, he was shocked.
Looks like he’d been wrong about her.
As soon as Roman fell from grace, Taya had hurried to attach herself to someone else with power.
She worked fast.
Preston hated being wrong about people. And the fact that she was human somehow made it worse. How was this nothing of a human woman able to wrap men around her finger so quickly?
After thinking about it for a while, he texted the picture to Griffon.
Someone needed to teach Taya a lesson, but Preston didn’t feel like it was his place to do so. After all, Griffon was the one who’d been involved with her, so Preston would leave it to him.
As Griffon returned home and saw the photo, darkness filled him and his wolf started to rise to the surface, itching to get out and…punish.
“When did you see this?” he texted to Preston.
Preston replied, “Just now. One of the guys sent it to me.”
Griffon didn’t respond.
His fingers tightened around his phone, his claws growing until they punctured the gla*s screen.
But he didn’t care.
Jackson looked at Taya lying in his hotel room bed. She looked… unconscious. And that made him feel a bit uneasy.
At his wolf’s urging, he reached out and nudged her arm. When she shifted and he realized she was just asleep, he heaved a sigh of relief.
Frowning, Jackson stood there, his bulky arms crossed over his chest, and looked at her for a while. Then, he tucked her in and turned off the lights before leaving.
After walking out of the presidential suite, he indifferently asked the a*sistant waiting at the door, “Do I really not have a past with her?”
Camille, his a*sistant, replied calmly, “Yes, didn’t old Alpha Sterling take you to the orphanage a few years ago to verify it with the director?”
After Jackson came home from the hospital, Taya came to see him.
He had just lost his memory then, so everything was strange and unknown. Talking about the past was painful for him because he couldn’t remember anything. It was like an open wound.
But Taya didn’t care how much she hurt him. She came to bother him every day. He couldn’t drive her away, no matter how hard he tried.
She went on and on, explaining herself to him, telling him about how she had to sell her body to save him. Telling him they were supposed to be mated…even though she could never be a Luna.
She swore up and down that everything she said was true, and she’d cried impa*sioned tears that affected his wolf.
He had no choice but to ask the Sterling pack leaders to take him back to the orphanage for an investigation.
The orphanage director told Jackson that Taya had wanted to climb up the social ladder since she was a child. When she hadn’t gotten her wolf at puberty, she wanted it even more. Likely, she wanted a guaranteed protector.
When Taya saw that he had become the new Alpha of the Sterling pack. She tried to take advantage of his amnesia to lie to him, to convince him that they were in love and he had promised to mate her.
Everyone Jackson had talked to that he and Taya were not familiar with each other at all and had no past.
All of this was just a lie Taya made up.
Jackson even went to the hospital to verify it with others. Aside from Harper, who insisted he was unfaithful, everyone’s statements were consistent with what the orphanage director had told him.
Harper being the only one to say any different made sense. Harper and Taya were best friends-considered each other sisters, even-and had spent their whole lives together in the orphanage. Of course, Harper would lie for her friend to ensure Taya was accepted by a pack and have a mate to protect her.
Jackson’s doubt gradually dissipated, but…
He looked back at Taya, sleeping soundly on the bed, and grimaced again. “Why do I always feel that something must have. happened between her and me? Why would I be so upset to hear that she had a heart issue…?”
Camille glanced at him and frowned. “She’s probably doing this to attract your attention again. She didn’t succeed before, and now that she has a chance to get close to you again, she can try again.”
Camille paused, then reminded him, “Alpha Sterling, you should be careful. Women are conniving and brilliant.”
Jackson remembered that five years ago, to help him regain his memory, Taya had deliberately pretended to be si ck in front of him. Camille’s words seemed more credible.
If Taya wasn’t pretending, why would she have stopped Eric from examining her?
Jackson’s temples throbbed, and it felt like his wolf was pacing around inside of him, angry and restless. Think about Taya gave him a headache, and he was desperate to shift and run as fast as he could, until he was completely drained of all thoughts, emotions, and energy.
It had been a long time since he had felt this way.
He didn’t want to think about any of this anymore and make his headache worse, and with everything going on with the Weston City project he didn’t have time to indulge in weakness.
He waved a hand and said to Camille, “Go get me another room.”
I woke up to unfamiliar surroundings.
After blinking a few times and remembering what happened last night, I realized I had fallen asleep in Jackson’s presidential suite. Luckily, Jackson seemed to be gone. The only other place he could be in here was the bathroom, but the door was open and no light was on in there.
I touched my chest, pressing lightly between my breasts and letting out a sigh of relief. There were no signs of being kicked.
It had been so long ago, but I’d feared Jackson would kick me. It had been horrib le when he did it before, and the trauma from it came rushing back last night.
But it was no wonder that I was afraid. After he’d kicked me in the chest years ago, Jackson left me on the side of the road to di e.
And I would have died if someone driving by hadn’t seen me and saved me in time.
I’d never understood why Silas, who had always been nice to me, always been my protector, would be so crue l, would leave me there to d ie.
It’d been a long time, and I’d let go of it and moved on, but I could never forget it. I’d just…pushed it aside so I could survive,
try to live while I could. It would never NOT be there, and sometimes it weighed on me.
Now that I’d seen Jackson again, it was fresh.
I shook my head and forced Jackson out of my mind. I sat up in the bed and picked up my phone.
Oh, no. I’d slept until 5:00 p. m.! My phone screen showed countless missed calls, but I’d been so exhausted and slept so hard that I hadn’t heard a single one.
I unlocked the phone to see who had called, and my eyes grew as big as saucers.
There were hundreds of missed calls from Greyson.
Not only had he called over and over, he’d also sent countless WhatsApp messages.
I wasn’t going to call him back. Instead, I opened WhatsApp to read his messages.
At first, he’d said, “Send me your location.”
Then, “Are you with another man?”
Then, “If you fu ck another man, I’ll ki ll you.”
Dear goddess, he was crazy. No way in he ll was I answering him back.
I exited out of Greyson’s messages, then saw that Lila had also messaged asking me to come into the office and hand over my work.
Quickly, I got up, freshened up, grabbed my bag, and left the presidential suite.
As soon as I got to the elevator, Jackson came out.