Chapter 66: The Past: Part 2

“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 honest despair comes through in torn rawness, but it’s not my concern. I can’t feel anything for his sorrow or 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.

I can’t 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 a 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.

Instead, she’s 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, such is his fear of me, of being heard telling me, of these people, of Juan.

I glance his way to find him almost pressed into the corner, watching me in wide-eyed apprehension. He, too, knows 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.

It is 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.”

He gives 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.

I 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 returns, 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 his inability 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 further conceal his actions against my people.

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 him 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 the 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 naivety 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 overtakes 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 at me, losing that feeble, weak cower he had going on, and I listen, despite my turbulent mood. His haste and urgency move 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 lie down, and pushes 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 through his teeth, eyeballing me wildly and mouthing the word NO. He displays the scowling frown of a paternal telling-off and 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 unhappy 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.

I glance his way for a second, impulsively nodding.

Then 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 cart and the bag as though reconfirming it, and I frown, unsure what he intends to do, but obedience seems like a good idea.