Chapter 149: Miraculous

"Why would he do that?" I whispered softly, casting my eyes around the room. I could hardly process what I was hearing. Five years ago, Magnus hadn’t understood my relentless drive to help those in need—and now he was carrying that exact torch himself.

"Who knows?" Rolan offered a soft shrug. "He’s a reserved man; he doesn’t lay out his motives for anyone. But over the five years you were gone, he accomplished an unbelievable amount. The homeless initiatives aren’t even his biggest breakthrough."

He smiled, deliberately letting the intrigue hang in the air, while curiosity burned inside me.

"What else has he done...?"

"Jane..."

My head snapped toward the entrance, and the sight waiting there made my heart squeeze tight. Annie. She stood framed in the doorway, a soft baby wrap secured against her chest with a tiny infant resting inside.

I surged up from my seat, and in a few quick strides, we met halfway, wrapping each other in a careful, emotional embrace.

"I missed you so much," I murmured into her shoulder before pulling back to look down at the sleeping baby girl, whose little face was scrunching up at the noise of the room.

"She’s gorgeous."

"Takes right after her mother," Annie giggled softly.

We made our way back to the table, and she took a seat right beside Matthias. Over the years, Annie and I had rarely been able to contact each other. It had all started a year after my official ’death,’ when Maven—Annie’s older brother—reached out to Askold.

I knew Askold had pulled strings for him using his underworld connections in the lower city’s prison system. But as it turned out, Maven had discovered I was alive after chancing upon me during a business trip down there. He had begged for a chance to bring Annie to see me, explaining that she had fallen into a deep, consuming depression following my reported death.

Crushed by guilt, I had agreed and spent days desperately convincing my brother to risk the arrangement.

When Annie was brought to us and saw me standing there alive, she had fainted on the spot. We spent a whole week together. I laid out the entire truth and introduced her to baby Matthias.

Eventually, she had to return to the Upper District. We kept our communication to a strict minimum to avoid raising suspicion with her husband, who hovered over her and their daughter like a protective hawk.

After she had left back then, I finally managed to pry the truth out of Askold regarding the exact favor he had done for her brother—and the answer had made my blood run cold.

As it turned out, Annie’s true mate had been a notoriously cruel, aging criminal. He was an utterly ruthless male who had committed unspeakable atrocities against his own family, earning him a lengthy prison sentence.

Desperate to spare their beloved daughter from such a horrific fate, Annie’s parents had stood by while her older brother put out a hit on the male. The criminal was executed in his cell just hours after stepping foot into the prison block.

Only then did I finally comprehend why Annie had looked at baby Matthias with such heartbreaking sorrow during her visit. Without a true mate, she would never be able to bear a child of her own.

Adoption was always an option, of course, and any child taken in would be showered with endless love, but the ancient nature of the mate bond was a force unto itself.

I knew Annie was currently married to an Alpha—the dean of our university. During her visit, she had spun a wonderful, fairytale-like story about how they fell in love, but she had carefully avoided mentioning the absence of a mate bond between them.

Which made the photo I received months later all the more miraculous: a picture of Annie holding a newborn baby in her arms. I hadn’t pressed her for details back then, terrified of opening old wounds if the truth was painful.

But now, seeing the child in person and witnessing just how extraordinarily she resembled Annie, doubts began to creep into my mind. The baby looked far too much like her mother to be anything other than her flesh and blood.

"Anyway, as I was saying, your true mate has accomplished so much," Rolan resumed, leaning in over the table. "And his greatest breakthrough of all is undoubtedly the Hope Center..."

Before he could finish, Annie unceremoniously reached out, took my glass of apple juice, and took a sip. Offering a dignified nod, she gently stroked her sleeping daughter’s back.

"It’s a specialized medical center that enables non-mated pairs to conceive their own biological children," Annie said, a proud shimmer in her voice. "The therapy is long and incredibly grueling, of course. There’s no guarantee it will work, but as you can see, our miracle happened. About four other couples successfully completed the treatment alongside us, and now we all have our own wonderful babies."

I refrained from bringing up how she had once kept her lack of a true mate bond a secret from me, or that she was only speaking of it so openly now. Perhaps back then she simply hadn’t been ready to lay that vulnerability bare. I chose to let it rest.

My mind reeled as I tried to process everything Magnus had built during my years away. I had never seen an altruistic bone in his body before, yet there was no other way to describe his actions. It was pure, transformative aid—unwavering support for those who needed it most, for the vulnerable who had nowhere else to turn. The homeless, the desperate wolves without a true mate who faced a lifetime of childlessness with no choice but adoption.

It was nothing short of miraculous. Yet Magnus had never been a benevolent savior. Why had he poured so much of himself into all of this?

Questions multiplied in my head at a terrifying pace, coiling into one another without yielding a single logical answer.

We remained at the table for another hour until Matthias began to grow fussy, complaining that he was exhausted. It was no lie—he was already rubbing his sleepy eyes with tiny fists. Moments later, he scrambled onto my lap, tucked his head against my chest, and drifted into a quiet doze.

We lowered our voices so as not to disturb him. A short while later, I caught sight of a massive black SUV pulling up to the curb outside the panoramic windows.

Magnus stepped out.

Despite the thick glass separating the bustling crowd inside and us, his gaze locked onto mine instantly with frightening precision—the instinct of an Alpha finding his mate. He moved toward the entrance with measured, effortless grace and stepped into the café.

Who are you really, Magnus Rainn? I wondered silently, watching him approach. And what other hidden depths lie behind that dark, unyielding soul?