Deleted Scene 2

A scrapped Chapter 81. A Mother’s Choices Part II that would’ve taken place around 77. The Ren Family. It was a long-winded conversation with too much dialogue between Wisteria and Kiran. The characters mentioned were never relevant.
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Wisteria attached a small bag to a collar she wore around her throat to safeguard a letter for the journey from her home to the Sun. It was sized to her wolf form’s neck, so when she Shifted to her human form, it was large enough to be tied at her waist like a belt.
The secret of the Amaranth legacy depended on the twelve-year-old envelope, and it now felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
Wisteria’s gaze looked over Allium’s shoulder. The two Alphas had their backs to them, pretending to mind their own business, but it was all too easy to eavesdrop from just a few feet away.
Keeping her only daughter in her embrace, she murmured, “Let’s go inside.”
She and Rush guided Allium to the bed; they all climbed onto the ridiculously sized bed and nestled together in soft sobs.
Until someone knocked on the door. “It’s him,” Allium whispered almost inaudibly.
“Hide this,” Wisteria whispered back, handing the small bag to her mate, who shoved it under the mountain of pillows, both of them ignoring Allium’s questioning look.
Wisteria’s negative emotions were torn almost evenly between Kiran Cyrus and Seff. But when she answered the door and she set her gaze on the gold god for the first time so close, all her rage honed in on him. Through a series of consequences falling like a set of dominos, the one who knocked the first one over was the Sun Alpha.
He oozed charm, but she wasn’t fooled at all. Nor was she surprised, unfortunately, by his death threat. She was protecting her daughter as well as Seff, protecting her best friend’s secret. It seemed like a second set of dominos was flicked over by him: the one that started over one hundred years ago.
Wisteria’s adrenaline gave her too much courage. But it wasn’t rushed.
“If you kill me, Kiran Cyrus, then you will never see the Amaranth records.”
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The gold god slammed the door to an empty room across the hall from Allium’s. Wisteria wandered in and took the lavish furnishings with subdued admiration. She clutched the bag by its drawstrings with its envelope tightly between her fingers.
“You have my undivided attention and thin patience for a brief time, Wisteria Ren,” Kiran growled.
When she turned, he was looming over her with jaw clenched. He was incredibly attractive and even more wrathful. She couldn’t be afraid.
She pulled the bag open and held the envelope in both hands. Being over a decade old, it was yellowed and a bit bent, and heavy with something that could only be a key. She met his gaze with defiance. “The secret to keep Seff safe from you forever.”
His eyes flashed like an agitated flame. “What?”
It was a part of Linden’s plan for Wisteria to reveal all. She never specified when or how but had entrusted her friend to decide. Now was her only chance. “It was all written down.”
Kiran seemed to loom taller. She continued with the weight of the gravity of this long-awaited moment, “Zinnia kept a secret diary and it was passed down, daughter to daughter for decades. In it, she spoke of you, your soulmate connection…her whole life’s story. In the remnants of its pages, her parents wrote how it was your fault she was dead. On the last page was a note that said, ‘see volume two.’ A new journal was born, which was filled with her daughters’ memoirs. After that: a third journal was started by Calla, Zinnia’s granddaughter.
“It was filled with her life, as well as her journey with Selene, her fated soulmate. After her, each generation feared their daughter would be the next reincarnation doomed to fall in love with one of you again. For fifty years, that moment never came. Until Seff.
“Linden confided all of this to me fifteen years ago when she realized who her pup’s features reminded her of: their predecessors Zinnia and Calla Amaranth.”
Now it was impossible to read Kiran’s expression. Nor was she able to discern his tone. “That origin is bullshit. I would have known if Zinnia kept a diary. We lived in a cabin by ourselves for five years.”
Wisteria shrugged. “Somehow she did. And hid it expertly well from you. As to how it came back to her parents’ custody, that is written: they went to that cabin, grateful to find that you didn’t destroy it, and found it hidden under a floorboard.”
For a moment, hurt flashed in the depths of his eyes. Yes, it felt like a betrayal of trust. “Then Calla knew—”
Wisteria shook her head. “If she knew she was a doppelgänger, she never wrote it down. And she knew claimed to experience her former life’s memories.”
A hesitation. Then he said in a low voice, “You realize, Magnolia Omega, that I do not wish this information to reach Seff’s ears.”
“Why?” Wisteria challenged. “I’ve read the Amaranth records—their speculations. They wondered, if one reincarnation was to encounter a certain object or person, even hears a significant word, can it trigger the memories of the past wolf? If you loved Zinnia so much, wouldn’t you want Seff to remember?”
“You clearly don’t want Seff to remember. Why are you baiting me?”
“I’m trying to keep us all alive.”
“Brave of you. Question: how do you know how much I loved my soulmate?”
Wisteria spoke bluntly. “It’s not hard to overlook love. The records are extensive. They are really just a collection of journals and diaries, musings, and some are not just from the Magnolia.” Kiran narrowed his eyes and Wisteria felt a rush of power, knowing something that even the Sun Alpha didn’t. “Like the Sky pack.”
Kiran’s mind worked faster than most. In seconds he figured out that it was his own offspring who carried on a beautiful and tragic love story. “Who?” he demanded.
“Sema Zilan,” Wisteria said, “your daughter from a litter of four. You were only eighteen when your first pups were born. She lived to be eighty-five years old thanks to your gift of immortality. In her diary she describes how she and her brothers and her mother followed you where and when they could. Even at a young age Sema was inspired by your love for Zinnia. I read her writings. She said she’d never seen such a beautiful thing as the look on her father’s face when you looked at Zinnia.”
Kiran was bitter. “I would have known if my children were spying on me.”
“It seems you were blind to the world while in love.”
He didn’t dispute that love, but he couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that somewhere, it was immortalized in writing.
“Your love story can be carried on forever, Kiran,” Wisteria continued, “a reminder of how strong your love was. Would you destroy that?”
He was madly searching for an argument. Was he really that prideful?
“Why would I want a constant reminder of her? To rub in my face what I lost?”
She felt like she was arguing with a surly adolescent. “Isn’t that why you are apparently pursuing Seff?”
“The past haunts my mind,” he deflected. “I don’t need my eyes assaulted by biased words of my dead daughter.”
“Did you say goodbye?”
As heartless as he was, he could not forget that he was a father. One parent to another, he said, “Yes.”
“But she never told you any of this.”
“Obviously not.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Kiran.”
He scowled at her condolence. “If I felt sorry, I would see my damn grandchildren. Let me guess, they passed down the secret on as well?”
“Of course they did. In fact, Linden was good friends with one of your own descendants in the Sky pack.”
“I will demolish the Sky and the Magnolia. Thank you, Wisteria Ren, for a new purpose.”
“That’s your answer to truth? Killing your history, your legacy?”
“A damned tangled web of nosy, secretive females telling my love story behind my back is a display of disloyalty.”
“You stupid male.”
“Excuse me?”
“I know you see value and sense in these records. You just want to have the last word because of your insufferable pride.”
“Do you want me to kill you, Wisteria, for insulting me?”
“You want me to say you won? Fine. You win. I’ll keep every record hidden, never to be seen, even Seff.”
“I want them destroyed.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know where they are.”
*“What?”*
“Linden let me see and read most of them, but she hid them somewhere not even her mate knew.”
“Who else knows of their existence? I will eliminate all of them, starting with you.”
“Stop threatening to kill me, already, it’s tiresome.”
“Gods above, what do you fucking want, she-wolf?!”
“Let it all untouched. Let Seff live a blissfully ignorant life without you—and Selene. Wait… You want her to remember Zinnia…but not Calla. Because if she remembers both, she will have to decide who to love and who to hate. If she decides to love you, that means she would also love Selene. And you would force her to choose. Kiran, if that impossible situation were to ever happen, you would destroy her completely.”
“Don’t you think I already know that?!”
“Then you all need to *let go*. Spare yourselves the pain and move on. If it takes this much effort, what is the benefit?”
“You might as well say she’ll never love me again.”
“She’ll never love Selene either, then.”
“I’m sorry, Wisteria, you’re too great a liability.”