Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty
KAIDEN STIRLING
“Good morning Daddy,” Harper said with her signature adorable. smile and I kissed her cheek. “How’s my favourite princess doing?” I asked and she frowned a little. “What’s wrong?” I asked immediately, concerned at how her smile had dropped.
“You said I’m your favourite princess,” she complained and rubbed my head to show her that I was confused. She rolled her eyes and I wondered how the four-year-old had learnt that.
Probably from her mother. Or it was just how naturally sassy she was.
“I’m the only princess,” she said, lifting her chin and looking at me through her eyelashes. It took me a second before I understood what she was on about. I couldn’t help the soft laughter that left my mouth.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” I took her hand and kissed it. She went red in the face and tipped her chin even higher.
When she had greeted me ‘good morning’, Lhad begun to wonder what was good about the morning, because between Freda ordering me out of her house and me berating and hating myself all night for the s**d decision I had made in my life, I had expected anything but a good morning.
The only good thing about my morning was Harper. She was the
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only good thing in my life at this point. She was my daughter…
And there was a possibility that she had a brother. The thought made my heart race wildly in my chest.
Someone tapped my hand and I was jerked out of my thought reverie. It was Harper and she looked a little upset. “You weren’t listening to me,” she sulked and immediately started to apologize.
“I’m sorry princess. What was that? What were you saying?” I kissed her tiny hand and she went on to tell me about what she was excited to learn in kindergarten for the day, how much she liked her friend, Gracie, and how much she loved the colour blue.
She was a bit of an oddball. But I loved her.
The table was peacefully silent and Harper and I were enjoying our meal… Until Safiya walked in.
She helped herself to some pancakes and then sat at the table. I silently watched as she spritzed blueberry syrup all over her pancakes until the syrup was dripping down all sides of the six pancakes that were stacked on top of each other.
She didn’t look good. She looked stressed, tired and sad. And I felt horrible. She was pregnant, and yet she was hurting herself. Why was she doing this to herself?
I wanted to reach out to hug her, to let her know that she would be fine… Eventually. But I did not want her to mistake my kindness for affection. I had no feelings for her anymore.
They had all died and evaporated a year after her sister had left because I had started to see the kind of person she was.
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She was not a bad person. No, she was far from that. She was just attention-seeking, obsessive, desperate and the kind of woman who would want things to go her way at all costs.
That was where she had lost me. And I had wanted to break things off with her. But she had been pregnant.
I wanted to find her sister, Freda and patch things up with her, start from the beginning and see if she would give me a chance.
But I doubted she would want that, especially if her sister was pregnant with my child. Even if I had pushed her (Safiya) away and given after Freda, Freda would have hated me for
abandoning her sister, no matter how jealous she would have been of our relationship.
It was a conundrum. A total dilemma. And it was all my fault.
I had endured her for almost six years and I was at my wit’s end now. That was the point we were at. The one where I could not take it anymore.
“Where were you last night?” Safiya finally spoke, dropping her fork and looking at me like she had been dying to ask those words. I looked at her face softly. She was gorgeous. But that beauty had been married this morning the look of stress and tears. She had been crying.
Oh, dear goddess.
Here we f***g go. Yay…
“What are you talking about?” I asked with nonchalance, eating a bite of my pancake and then cutting up a piece for Harper. She was eating a strawberry and she smiled at me with the fruit
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in her mouth.
My tone seemed to infuriate her, because the next second, she was slamming her fist against the table, causing her cutleries to drop in the process and almost scaring Harper out of her seat.
“You know what I’m talking about! Where were you?!” She yelled
at me.
My wolf furiously growled in my head and I grit my teeth to calm. the anger that was building in me at her disrespect and outright foolishness.
What made her think it was okay to do that in front of Harper?
H**k**d to the side and found a maid standing at my far right. L nodded towards her and then looked at Harper. She immediately got the message and walked towards us, lifting Harper in her arms and taking her in the direction of the stairs and up to the bedroom.
Once the maid was out of earshot, I glared at Safiya furiously. My wolf must have been able to push through because she seemed to shrink back with fear.
I hated having to scare her. I hated it, but she was making life difficult for herself, Harper and I.
“If you do that again… Yell at me, or scare Harper, you’ll have yourself to blame.” I threatened and left the table because threats were the only things that seemed to get into her thick skull.
She started to s**b as I left the table. I knew this wasn’t right for her, or me, or any of us. But I needed her to stop causing more
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problems for me. I already had more than enough on the ground.