Page 75 of Wolf's Forbidden Curse

“Alright then.” He put the mug down and finally looked me in the eye. “Now that we got that out of the way, I would like to know exactly why it was that my ex-girlfriend drugged and kidnapped you. If you don’t want to talk about it, or if you’re involved in some stuff that you would rather not tell me, I understand. But I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t deeply curious. It’s honestly driving me a bit insane.”

“As it should be,” I sympathized. “I can’t imagine how confusing this all must be for you. I’m surprised you went this long without asking me.”

“I just wanted to give you some space.”

“Which was very nice of you.” I smiled. “But I’m ready to talk if you’re ready to listen. I have to warn you, though—this is a long story, and there are going to be some pretty shocking twists and turns.”

He got a little more comfortable in his chair and held his mug in both hands. “Okay, go ahead. I’m ready.”

It took some convincing to get Al to come around to believing in the existence of werewolves and shifters. I told him there was a psychic he could visit down the street who would give him more information, but eventually, all the details of my story came together a little too perfectly. He couldn’t deny that it all made a certain kind of sense. Why else would Missy try to kidnap me and sell me on the black market?

Still, I knew he was probably going to need to see some visual proof at some point. I would ask Rory to shift for him when he got back, assuming Al seemed up for it. I also told him the truth about my family and where my parents were hiding out. Those details were necessary to divulge once I started telling him how I was turned into a werewolf in the first place.

At least that stuff he understood and didn’t pry too much when he could tell I was getting a little emotional about missing my sisters.

“Have you spoken to either of them since you got back to the States?” he asked, sipping from his mug, which I was pretty sure was empty at this point.

I shook my head. “No. Dorothy has no way of contacting me, and Diana doesn’t know that I’m back.”

“Do you know where she is? Diana, I mean.”

“Maybe. I have it on some semi-reliable authority that my younger sister is still living back in our hometown. At least she was not too long ago. I got a hit on her name from some article about a local bookstore in Silverleaf. But in order to confirm my suspicion, I will have to go out there and see for myself. Things have been so crazy lately, I completely forgot about my plan to go track her down.”

“What’s holding you back now?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, why haven’t you packed up your stuff and headed across the country in the last week?” Al said. “You were saying you’ve been feeling a lot better for days now. Is there some reason you are sticking around here when you think she might be back home?”

I shrugged. “One or two, maybe.”

He waited for me to elaborate.

“I just don’t know what I’m going to be walking into, that’s all. Dorothy and I chose to go with our parents when they ran from the law, which meant we had to leave our baby sister behind. Yes, it was her choice to stay, but I still felt like we were somehow betraying her. I don’t know how she feels about the whole situation now, but I wouldn’t blame her for holding a grudge.”

“You’re never going to know if you don’t go and talk to her…”

“Yeah, well… maybe I’m better off not knowing.”

“You don’t believe that.”

After a few seconds of contemplation, I nodded. “You’re right. I don’t. I’m just scared. But I’m going to go find her. There’s no doubt in my mind that she and I need to have a conversation, and if there’s even a chance—however slight—that she might want to have me back in her life, it would be really good to have at least one sister that I could talk to.” I smiled. “Although I don’t think I will tell her about being a werewolf right off the bat. That revelation could probably be put on the back burner for a while.”

“I don’t know,” Al said with a laugh. “It could be one hell of an icebreaker.” He fixed me with a look that could only be described as paternal. “Does Rory know about this?”

“Yes. He said he would come with me to the West Coast whenever I felt ready to see her. Apparently, there’s a shifter community in that area as well, so he said he actually might know a couple of friends who live out there. Which is nice, because if the conversation with my sister goes south, I might not have anywhere to stay. Or if being back in Silverleaf is too difficult for me.”

“Bad memories?”

“Yeah. Some good ones. But a lot of bad ones.”

“I understand.”

I frowned at him. “You know something, your ability to understand a lot of the stuff I’ve been going through lately is a little uncanny. Almost as if you’ve got some stuff from your past that is maybe not so easy to talk about…”

He smirked. “I figure someone told you about my daughter?”

“We don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want to. I only made that comment so that you knew this line of communication goes both ways. If you’ve got stuff you want to get off your chest, I’m here to listen.”

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