Chapter Eighty-Six
Havermouth, Present Time
“Kill me?” Aislen suggested.
“Yes.”
“Well, then, problem solved,” she walked to the kitchen door. “Your pesky, unwanted human mate is out of the equation, and the three of you can return to happily fucking each other and the occasional disposable human sex toy, siring an entire army of werewolf babies between the three of you. Have fun with that, and get the fuck out of my house."
“We’ll go,” Rhett’s look stilled Heath’s protest. “We’ll go, Aislen, because we all need time to cool down. But this is not the end, not for us, and not for you, and you know that.”
“We’re not going to stand by and let you be hurt,” Cameron told her, as he took the glasses and wine bottles to the kitchen bench. “But you need to let things settle down in town, Aislen, and stay in the house, out of trouble.”
“Not going to happen,” she replied. “And why start protecting me now? You never have before. In fact, the only people in this town that I need protecting from, are in this kitchen with me right now.”
“You haven’t changed at all,” Heath observed with a rueful smile. “Sometimes… I almost admire your fire. When I don’t want to strangle you.”
“Point made by Mr. Gale. Stay away from me. We are toxic together,” she told them. “And give me the fucking house keys,” she held out her hand. Heath surrendered them, and she looked at the little ring for a moment. “These aren’t the only set, are they?” She lifted her eyes to his.
His smile was roguishly charming and more than a little intoxicated. “No.”
She fought the curve of her own lips in response. “Go away.”
“For now,” he cupped her cheek. “You don’t hate me as much as you pretend that you do.”
“No,” she agreed wryly. “Nowhere near as much. Which is why you need to leave now, please, Heath.”
“Okay,” he leaned forward and rested his cheek against hers. “For now. Come on Rhett,” he slung his arm around Rhett’s shoulders. “You were the one that decided the conversation was finished, so let’s go home and fuck.”
Rhett looked over his shoulder before allowing Heath to take him down the narrow hall towards the front door.
Cameron hesitated. “Aislen,” he said pleadingly. “Stay in the house where it’s safe and let things calm down. We can sort this out between the four of us. We can find a way to make this work. We can mend things… But only if you’re alive to mend them with.”
“Cameron,” she laid the palm of her hand on his heart. “You’d better go.”
“Kiss me first,” his voice was soft. She lifted onto her tiptoes and brushed her lips over his, the lightest and sweetest of kisses, before sinking back onto her heels. He held her eyes for a long moment before nodding. “Be careful with the vampire. They are known to get carried away and accidentally kill their blood slaves.”
“Talen’s not like that,” she replied confidently. “He would never hurt me.”
“Unlike us,” he said as he left, and she felt her heart twist with pain. She heard the front door close and then an engine start.
“Damn it,” she whispered. “Stupid, bloody heart.”
She turned on the water at the sink and began to wash the wine glasses, her head and heart aching in a complex tangle of emotion. Nothing they said had been a surprise, she admitted to herself, except for the fact that Rhett had a son. Everything else, she had known, deep down inside, pieced together from snatches of thoughts here and there.
The Triquetra had tried to bully, shame, and train Aislen into submission so that the pack would accept her, a human, and not consider her a risk to their safety. They had been stupid, arrogant, teenage boys, just as she had been a resentful, petulant, teenage girl, and between them, they had fucked it well and truly up.
Rhett had a son.
She broke a wine glass in the sink and cried out in reaction, before cursing and plucking the pieces of glass out of the water. Her tears dripped off her chin, not even rippling the flow of water down the drain.
Secrets, so many secrets, she thought, as she placed the broken glass into the bin. Secrets that haunted lives, her thoughts continued, thinking of Diana Boyston and Lillian Ridgeway. Secrets that festered under the surface like painful boils.
Well, she decided, the Secret Keeper would lance those boils.
She went into the bedroom and pried up the floorboard, before reaching in and retrieving the paperwork that her father had hidden in there. She took it back into the kitchen with her and laid it out onto the table. She didn’t understand much of what she was looking at, she admitted. The Zeus Forest Works files contained copies of invoices and work schedules, photos of trucks coming and going… Talen would know what it meant, but that would also mean being upfront with him.
“Fuck,” she groaned, resting her forehead on her hands and digging her fingers into her hair. The Secret Keeper was exposing the secrets of Havermouth whilst keeping her own. That wouldn’t do at all. She would learn from her mistakes with the Triquetra and tell her vampire daddy the truth.
She bundled up the Zeus Forest Works paperwork to the side and looked through the others. Her father had compiled a spreadsheet of girls’ names, the parents’ details, the date or dates of assaults, and the names of the perpetrators. Heath, Rhett, and Cameron featured heavily in the year leading up to her arrival to Havermouth, and then her name appeared with question marks.
Charlotte McKenzie appeared below her name, with the Triquetra’s names listed, and a note that gave a date and “stillborn boy.”
The Triquetra did not appear again, though the list continued with new names added every year – no doubt as werewolves turned eighteen and became increasingly sexually active with the human girls of Havermouth.
Aislen returned to Charlotte McKenzie. The name was vaguely familiar. The other sex toy? Stillborn boy. “We abduct them, usually,” Rhett had said of werewolf-sired children born to human girls.
“Poor Charlotte,” Aislen whispered. The pack had stolen Charlotte’s baby from her at birth and told the mother that the baby was stillborn. She remembered the sad faced young girl on the porch watching as the Triquetra’s cars pulled away. Used, and discarded. “I’m so sorry.”
As well as the spreadsheet, there were copies of police statements and written testimonies by the girl’s parents, clipped together with a photo of the girl in question.
“Very thorough and official, dad,” Aislen observed. “But I wonder if these girls gave permission for their photos and stories to be shared?” She came upon her own face and felt ill. As she pulled the section of paper free, the photo beneath hers caught her attention. She recognized the girl, but could not place the face. “Heather Arren.”
Chris’s daughter, the girl who had tried to commit suicide. Aislen looked her up in the spreadsheet. Heather was two years older than Aislen, and the assault had occurred at the local university, the year after Aislen had left.
“Where do I know you from?” Aislen asked her. “We wouldn’t have been in school together. Maybe I saw you around town? Or maybe it’s just because your father is a bit creepy.”
She placed Heather back into the file and picked up the paper with her own photo attached. There was not much there. Her photo, her details written at the top, and bullet points outlining their arrival in Havermouth, the death of Alfred Boyston, the discovery of Penny James, Aislen’s declining grades and attendance at school, the rumour about the Triquetra’s whore, and the date Aislen left Havermouth.
Patrick had written three lines at the bottom of the page: “These three boys were predators with a long list of victims. Aislen fits the profile of a victim in her behaviour. Was she a victim?”
Aislen sighed and unclipped her photo before tearing the page to shreds. She now had more to say.
Dear Havermouth,
How is it that a sexually active boy is a stud,
But a sexually active girl is a whore?
Her name and reputation become mud,
Whilst him, you continue to adore?
When Havermouth turns a blind eye
To the actions of your son,
Havermouth’s daughters die
Just so he can have some fun.
I do not need to name
Those on both sides of this shame
But let’s play a little game
And you tell me who is to blame?
The Secret Keeper