“What?” it’s like every cell in my body stops as a deathly silence fills the air, shock stilling my thoughts, my lungs ceasing to move, and you can hear a pin drop as his words sink in slowly—so fucking slow.
Juan executed my family. They didn’t die in battle.
That’s a lie. It can’t be true because they weren’t the only pack never to return. The entire Whyte line, among others, all died protecting our kind. For God's sake, it was a war, and we had many casualties. Did Juan kill them all, too?
The doc has to be playing me, lying to mess with my head for some kind of ulterior motive, and I’m falling for it. Perhaps I was wrong to trust him, and this is all a ploy to break me down and get intel he thinks I may have ... but how would he know her name? Maybe it’s a test to see if I’m strong enough to turn, despite being in this isolation tank.
I take a much-needed breath as I begin to suffocate under the pressure of my mounting emotions, realizing I wasn’t inhaling or letting it go. I take a moment to let it sink in, my head spinning as my brain tries to dissect and make sense of each word and how it comes together with what he just said. I don’t know how to react; cry, rage, scream, laugh? I sit here like a numb deadweight staring at him as though he just told me the world is ending and we’re to wait here to die. Momentarily devoid of feeling as shock fills the void.
It has a different effect on my body, though, and I think I might throw up for a second. I wretch, my body lurching, and as it all spins out of control, I have to lift my heels to the edge of the bed so I can prop my head between my knees to ground myself. Swallowing down the rush of salvia that clogs my throat and breathing through the waves of nausea.
“I’m sorry ... my memory is not what it was, but the gist is that Juan was eliminating the possibility of a prophecy coming to fruition ... a white wolf Queen, rising from the shadows to reign the people in a victorious and united future. Juan believed your mother would dethrone him after she proved herself a worthy warrior on the battlefield and led many a victorious attack on your enemy by uniting the packs. Your kind was losing the war, and she turned it around ... your mother. She was gifted, special, and more powerful than he could ever dream of being. The kind of specimen I could only dream of being able to study.” He sounds concerned, regretful, apologetic, all at once, but it’s all meaningless noise, and I just keep coming back to it, over and over.
Juan ... he killed them all. My whole family. All those that mattered to me. My past ten years have been a lie, and I suffered, not because they failed, but because he took them from me. This can’t be true, especially not if she was so powerful.
“Then how did he ... if she was ….” The words die on my tongue, hastily uttered in a breath as my brain tries to rationalize the details, as warm salty tears roll down my cheeks, and I sit absorbing a history I never knew as the pieces are laid out before me. I am confused by the conflicting statement of what I’ve always been told, and a fire of rage is building inside me slowly to overcome the icy cold that has spread through my nerve endings. It’s like a drip, drip, as it’s fed and allowed to grow slowly. It warms my belly and spreads across my pelvis and down my limbs, something growing inside me so all-consuming that I almost welcome its warm, fluid expansion to my cold, empty soul. My brain just cannot seem to filter and arrange it to make sense.
“Your father was her weak point. Just a peaceful land-dwelling wolf he murdered to get to her. Your kind’s devastating ability to kill both mates with one blow, and sadly an uneven pairing as that was her only downfall. It’s a rather sad travesty that even your strongest is only as strong as the mate bonded to them in the end and highlights the importance of why they shun the impure. He then ordered his sub-pack to hunt down and kill everyone from the pack she was residing with in case they linked in the last moments and knew of his treason. He had to tidy up loose ends, you see. He had to cover his tracks, and only his ‘loyal’ knew what he’d done and aided him.”
I inhale sharply, my heart constricting as tears bite my eyes and the words wound my soul. Sliced open and ravaged with a more devastating truth than the one I lived for ten years.
None of the Whyte pack returned from war, as they were apparently cursed as warriors and fell at the first battle. They are not strong enough, fast enough, and unable to hold their own because they are weak land workers and not warriors at all.
All lies.
All slaughtered by Juan and his trusted sub-pack, his elders, his closest. Those he now wears like a shroud to lead from behind on the mountain. Which meant Sierra saw it all too, as his Luna; she was by his side at all times and followed him into battle. None of them jumped to defend her because they were just as guilty as her mate.
My mother, father, brother, and grandparents are all gone at Juan’s hand, and I cannot contain the fury growing within me as my mind puts the pieces together, and it all adds up. The return of the wolves saw everything change, and they ripped children like me away from guardian families who had vowed to care for us and pushed us into that home, except for me. Vampires slaughtered my guardians, the last of the Whytes, in the middle of the night. I now wonder if that was a lie, too.
We went from being cared for, cherished by wolves who opened their homes to us, all while our families fought, to being almost outlawed in a way. By Santo wolves who spread the word that the war was nearly lost because of our bloodlines. They told them not to respect us as the remaining legacy of fallen heroes but to leave us to fade out and kill an impure invasion on future generations. They started the second they returned, pushing all of us into that dark side of the mountain and maintaining we were cursed.
Why didn’t he just kill me, too?
Words fail me, and I stare at the doc as I lift my head, catching the wariness in his eye as he sees my expression and hesitates about moving away a little.
My heart is pounding, my breathing shallow, and a twisting knife of pain devours me as it sinks in and courses through every cell of my body that Juan did the most unthinkable thing of all: broke our laws and killed his own. Killed mine and my own! For what fucking reason!!
A prophecy about a rising wolf? A story? A fable that hadn’t even come to fruition. He thought he could overpower the Fates, take what he wanted, and push things in his way?
It’s almost as if the doc can feel my questioning, or maybe it’s my silent, deathly manner as I sit up stock straight and lower my chin to glare hatefully across his shoulder at the Luna beyond. It’s not a look at her; it’s at everything I’m now finding out and can’t control. He betrayed her, just as he betrayed his entire people. My family. He betrayed his own son.
“Sierra was meant to be his answer—a hybrid witch and wolf. He thought that searching out this white queen and mating her would assure him the power he longs for. Sierra is a black wolf, though, something he overlooked as a minor detail, and when their tale did not push them into the path of the story he thought was rightfully his, he took matters into his own hands.
The rising of your mother made him insane. Upon returning from the wars, they wiped the books free of any hint of a prophecy, forbidding the Shamans from teaching it to the young. He rewrote history to hide it. He pushed all traces of what he did into a coma to silence her for her treason.” His voice is tight, tension hitching, and I can taste his nervousness as he backs away, shuffling out of my way to give me a clear view of the lifeless soul I’m fixated on.
My whole being poised like I’m on the verge of lashing out and ripping this room to shreds, such is the crazy hate and anger coursing through me, and I clutch the bed viciously to hold myself in check. I am torn between mounting fury and heartbreaking, crippling devastation. If I could turn, I would already be ripping this facility apart with the intensity of everything I feel inside me. A storm raging to be set free, yet my heart aches to the point I think it may stop beating under the force of pressure. An agony incomparable to anything, and my entire truth crumbles like ash around the ruins of my fire.
“He knew Sierra was a mixed breed. He knows he destroyed something decided by the Fates. Does he think he has that power? That worth?” I snarl; my voice is unrecognizable as this feeds my desire to combust in a tornado of destruction. I never knew I could harbor so much longing to find one man, hunt him down, and enjoy ripping him limb from limb. Slowly and painfully.
I can almost taste it, that want to have it. The bloodlust is coursing through me in hot waves as I visualize that narcissistic asshole and what I’m going to do to him when he gets within an inch of me. Body bristling and goose bumping, my heart rate rising, and my lungs quickening to accommodate my rapid breathing.
“Yes. It was by design that he sought her out and traveled far to find her. Sweeping her off her feet and mating to her so he could possess her for eternity. He thought he could fulfill and control the prophecy and further his desire to rule. She was a relatively isolated wolf, naïve, unloved, her pack rejecting her because of her roots, and she fell straight into the arms of the first genuine love shown to her. She was known as a witch, and you know they’re as much a wolf’s enemy as the vampires, which made her a cursed and fearful species. She told me she fell madly in love and didn’t find out about his ulterior motive until she had been his for many months and already bound by the mate bond.” He looks towards her, a sad, distant glaze to his glassy eyes as he remembers their conversations and the regret of not believing her when he should have.
“So, how did she end up here? If she had powers ... witches are strong. You said she tried to stop him, so why couldn’t she?” I’m devilishly low-toned, controlled, the growl coming through in my voice, leaning to anger to avoid the pain inside me, and I can feel my inner wolf tossing and turning with the frustrating need to be set free. It’s sharpening its claws and begging to be uncaged.
“She betrayed him by sacrificing her own life to protect a child who can regain the balance of things. Sierra is a seer and a witch. Yes, she has powers unlike any wolf, but they are not strong like a warrior. They are useful for protection on a small scale, and she has abilities to control certain aspects of others. She’s a healer, not a fighter, and she did what she thought could make a difference.”
“Meaning?” I turn to him fully and lock onto him, seeing him swallow hard. His mistrust of my current behavior is written all over him. At this moment, he’s afraid of me, and he’s nervously spewing words to try to diffuse it or to keep me focused on anything other than turning on him. Even without my wolf sense, I can smell the terror coming in waves from him. It’s not intentional, but these feelings are bigger than me, and I have no will to reel them in right now. It is fractured and seeping, and I don’t know how to stop it from pouring out and pooling around me like a dense smog.
“She got to you before Juan did. Ran and left the pack on their return to your lands. She bound her blood to you, so you became linked to her and completely protected from being slain, too, thus meaning he could never kill you. And if he tried to isolate and imprison you, his pack would have asked why. What did a child do? All these years, this story haunted me as nothing more than the imagining of a fractured mind, torn by the horror and atrocities she witnessed, and yet here you stand—the child of Marina. Just like she said you would. Alora, I am so sorry. Please, you must understand that had I known there was any truth in it, I would never … ” His absolute honest despair comes through in torn rawness, but it’s not my concern right now. I can’t feel anything for his sorrow or his heartache, while there’s only chaos and a need to avenge them all.
“Why can’t I remember that? If she bound to me, then why don’t I see her in my memory?” I snap, interrupting his apologies, too caught up in my pain and misery and needing to hurt something, to care about him and his regrets. It doesn’t change the now or how I got here.
“She bound your memory, your gifts, and that of her son to protect you all, for she feared Juan would even see challenge to his position in his child, should he have inherited her gifts too. As I said, she has certain abilities. She said the time would come when she would give back to you that which she took. I assume she means those. Not just yours, but Colton’s too.” He falters, his voice trembling, wringing his hands in nervousness, and I jump up and stalk past him to push my hands against the glass. My head is torn with the addition of even more to this story.
Colton has other gifts too? Bound? And me ... is she the reason I can’t seem to grasp my skills and gain any control because I’m always fighting some kind of spell that keeps them dormant?
How is that helpful? Especially now, when she’s like a corpse, sleeping through the years and can’t do anything to help physically.
My body is aching to turn and trying to revert to wolf, but this damn building is strong and keeping it in check, no matter how hard it wails and howls within me. I bang the glass, the torture of it getting too much, and watch the shudder traveling from my palm and spreading out the whole expanse of the invisible wall. It does nothing to ease the inner war.
“Bound my gifts? My memories? How could she ... that’s impossible. I have gifts. I’m still learning, but they’re not tied down completely. Colton has his gifts too, and he’s more than capable of using them. His Alpha strength, his speed, his dominance. He can command with a tone. It can’t be true. No one has ever documented a witch binding a wolf’s natural gifts.” It’s a rebuff of what he’s saying as I mentally try to dismiss them as lies, focused entirely on her and willing her to get up and tell me this herself—lying there like a weak, powerless fool who let her mate destroy everything in our lives.
Get up, Sierra! Get the fuck up!! You owe me this truth yourself, from your own mouth!!!
It’s anger at her, but it’s born out of fear, churning up to douse the inferno of molten rage. That all of this is too much and bigger than me. I don’t want this burden of weight or this story to be mine. I want to go back to the mountain, to the home, to disappear into the shadows and be a girl no one noticed again. I was safe and ignorant, and it didn’t hurt like this. It wasn’t some precipice of danger and had me teetering on the edge and looking down into the abyss, knowing I’m never going to be safe or okay ever again. It’s all too much, and I’m only a child. Eighteen, barely grown. I don’t want this!
“No, my dear. Colton will also carry the gifts of his mother. Our research has repeatedly proven that hybrids have a mixture, every time—just like you. His non-wolf side is in there but bound up tight. And you, you cannot harness your full potential if she has bound you. The gifts are maybe strong enough to show at times, but she was a capable witch. I don’t doubt her spells serve the purpose she intended. Her spells brought her a child when her body failed to carry Juan’s seed. If she can overcome that, she can bind a child in protection until she’s ready to release you.” He whispers it, such is his fear of me, of being heard telling me, of these people, of Juan, and I glance his way to find him almost pressed into the corner and watching me in wide-eyed apprehension. He, too, knows that there is no coming back from this now that he’s opened Pandora’s box.
“Then how do I get her to do that if she’s over there sleeping her life away?” I fix him with a stare, sniffing back watery tears I hadn’t noticed were pouring down my cheeks, my heart numbing out and my mind moving into a state of shock. Calming me but making that sense of hopelessness grow.
“I don’t know. This facility has a guard count of nineteen. Even though none of you can use your gifts within, I’m sure you will be no match to nineteen strong men—armed ones—even if you are somewhat terrifying when mad.” It’s a nervous half-laugh as he tries to lighten the tension. It dies on his lips as I continue to stare at him and lower my hands from the glass as I try to steady my breathing, so it’s less erratic and self-soothe, wiping my face with the back of my hands to pull myself together.
“You need to let me out. I need to find that son of a bitch and show him what my mother failed to do. You don’t mess with my family! I can’t stay here. I can’t be here when he comes now.” I snarl again, a spike of anger returning, knowing my emotions cloud my judgment and are all over the place, but I don’t care. I was just told that everything they led me to believe my entire childhood was a lie, and my bloodline wasn’t diluted and weak. My mother was a prophesied warrior destined to lead her people.
And Juan murdered her.
He killed all of them. Every single person I loved, cared for, and knew as my pack. A clan of Whyte wolves. To silence us.
That sniveling, slimy, power-mad freak slew them all. He’s going to rue the day he chose to leave me alive. Now it all makes sense; why they threw me with the other orphans and shunned us as a whole. That was our punishment for him being unable to get at me the way he wanted. That was how he figured he could keep me down and separate from the people, so I would have no chance of rising and leading them against him. And if I did, he could put it down to me being hateful and holding a grudge for ten years as an outcast and nothing more than an impure taste for revenge at her failings. So clever.
He made sure I was alone and didn’t care if he smeared many innocents in the process. None of the rejects deserved to be thrown out there with me. They were just a cover to enhance and strengthen his lies. He convinced the packs that our fallen heroes were cursed blood to conceal his actions against my people further. No one would ask questions or defend us if their Alpha was telling them we were the failed diluted lineage of weak wolves. He’s deluded, cruel, and so consumed with his own need to rule that we were all pawns and had no real value. He’s no Alpha. He doesn’t care about the people, and he never did. He just wants to rule them in whatever way he can.
It must have wholly enraged him to near madness when the Fates imprinted me on his son, despite his multi-level plan's measures and precautions, and it’s all falling into place. He knew they didn’t saddle Colton with a useless Luna. He was afraid that in a position of being absorbed into the pack, and as future Luna to my Alpha mate, I would still find a way to rise and dethrone everything he’s worked for. Juan was afraid that I would outshine him and tear his power from under his feet with very little effort at all, much like my mother.
Colton was my way in, and he does what he does to that boy
to stop him from ever finding his strength. He manipulated him emotionally; he used Colton’s devotion, loyalty to his father, and compassion and love for his people’s needs to get in his head. The fact that he tore his mother away has always kept him to heel and lingers in the back of Colton’s mind. He was afraid I would leave our people alone like she did, leave him when he still needed me. He was scared I wouldn’t be strong enough, that he wouldn’t be able to keep me safe like he couldn’t keep his mom safe, and he couldn’t accept the Fates’ decision.
Colton was protecting me, believing the lies and the manipulation same as everyone else and seeing no other way. He’s young, unsure about his worth and power, and he listened to someone meant to guide him for the best. His faith in his father’s intentions is not a flaw, just naïvety that comes from a good soul. His father has been playing him since the day he was born, and his mother had to conceal who he really is for fear his natural gifts would make him the target of his father’s hunger for power.
My heart breaks at how angry I’ve been at him when seeing it from this angle makes so much sense. Colton is nothing like his father, and he doesn’t know that his father has no intention of ever relinquishing his position to his son until death takes him.
I’m going to be the last thing Juan sees, no matter what it does to me in the process. I’ll get out of here, and I will level the balance. I’ll kill that son of a bitch. Even if Colton tries to stop me because his own heart won’t be able to let someone destroy his father, no matter what he did. I’m going to rip that mountain apart and shred every single wolf who knew or had a part in the demise of my bloodline. Even if Colton never forgives me.
“Dear girl, calm down and be smart about this. Your Fates wouldn’t have brought you here just to leave again and start a one-woman war. You came for Sierra ….” The doc’s words die on his lips as the beep of the elevator interrupts, and he flashes a look that way, panic overtaking his expression as he jumps up and shoos me away from the glass at a pretty impressive speed for a human. It’s so rapid he makes me jump back from the wall in reaction.
“Get on the bed and lie down. NOW!” He snaps it at me, losing that feeble, weak cower he had going on, and I listen, despite my turbulent mood. His haste and urgency moving me.
I turn, take a few steps, and jump on the bed as the doors make that whooshing opening noise of the elevator and approaching footsteps. He comes to me quickly, yanking up my arm as I lay down and pushing the stethoscope from his neck under the edge of my medical gown neckline.
“Heart’s racing, my dear; you should practice counting to ten and take deep, relaxing breaths. That kind of anxiety is not good for the heart. You’re in a safe place, have no fears.” He’s facing me, his voice joyfully fake, but his eyes dart to the side as someone approaches the glass, and I try to focus all my attention on acting normal.
“I’ve been looking for you. You’re needed upstairs right now. Leave this mutt alone; you have an actual job to do. Some of your fresh samples have been delivered in iceboxes. I’m sure you don’t want to leave them to go bad.” It’s Deacon, my most favorite person in the whole wide world, and with the pulsing rage I have going on, I tense and try to sit up, instincts taking over and ready to take him on more than ever. The doc slams his hand on my chest and aggressively flattens me down.
“Just a moment!” He grits it through his teeth, eyeballing me wildly and mouthing the word NO. That scowling frown of a paternal telling off, and he keeps me under control. He gets a narrow-eyed snarl in response, but I obey and lie back down. I watch as he moves out of my line of sight and exposes Deacon on the outside of the glass.
“Now! We haven’t got all day!” Deacon snaps at him, obviously not happy when the doc questions his authority. I glare directly at the jerk, catching his eye and making a point of staring right through him. He takes it with no expression and stares right back at me, not breaking contact.
“Of course. Miss Alora, please eat and dress as it will make you far more comfortable and ready for my return to continue our tests. We have so much still left to do.” He throws me an odd look, and I glance his way for a second, impulsively nodding before he turns and heads out, leaving me with a strong sense that was a hint.
I watch him walk out, and as he gets to the door, he turns and nods at the trolley and the bag as though reconfirming it, and I frown, unsure what he intends to do, but obedience seems like a good idea.