Page 5 of Abandoned Oaths

Maybe.

Maybe not. That would have required him to stop and consider how I would feel about the news.

“Be at dinner.”

It wasn’t an invitation or even a request. It was an expectation. Sunday meant family dinner. Barring an assignment, no one ever missed. Even though my siblings started their own families and owned their own houses, Mom didn’t care.

I nodded, and he left me to finish training. I stepped off the machine and moved to the bench with my dumbbells.

Birth control wasn’t my only silent rebellion against the Pack’s expectations.

I, too, was a pitiful excuse for a wolf.

I also refuse to shift completely.

Everyone—even my family—believed I was defective. That I didn’t shift because I couldn’t, not because I wouldn’t.

The day I felt the magic fill me after my fourteenth birthday, I knew what I had to do. I’d already watched my oldest sisters, Raquel and Celestina, get married off when they turned eighteen and end up pregnant within a year.

I didn’t want that life, so I came up with a plan.

Be useless.

At least, as a breeder.

Become invaluable in some other way.

The only option was to become what the Pack wanted just as much as more wolf pups.

Killers.

Weapons.

Lethal soldiers to protect the Pack and its interests.

So I fought with every ounce of strength to resist the shift. Controlling the power took a year of slow torture alone in my room, but I learned to allow only a few features through. I could extend and retract my teeth and claws.

I didn’t need to hide my heightened hearing, smell, and sight, but I downplayed my strength. Only using it in training and on missions to make myself faster and stronger than humanly possible.

At fifteen, for the first time in my sorry life, I found what I always craved.

Control.

Blending in was a specialty of mine by fourth grade. Going unnoticed at home was nearly as easy as at school. Being the middle child in a big family had its advantages as well as curses.

I rarely ever got new clothes growing up, instead inheriting my older sisters’ outdated, too-short hand-me-downs. Not even my growth spurt in seventh grade that pushed me past my sisters changed my mom’s mind. If they were good enough for Raquel and Celestia, they were good enough for me.

Finally, at nearly sixteen, I picked up jobs and could buy my own clothes.

Being the forgotten child at school required zero effort. I was another Velez, like most of the students, and the next of Juan’s kids passing through.

Being invisible was one of the most important traits of an assassin. Even last night, as amazing as I looked, I doubted anyone would recall me if questioned.

Average height, average curves, pretty without being a knockout. All of which I could play up or down with the help of the right outfit and makeup. I could be whatever I needed to be. Another face in the crowd. Or pull everyone’s attention.

Exactly as I wanted.

If only I could actually make myself disappear around my family.

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