Marco remained in the driveway, as if he suspected I might try to assassinate my mother, and he needed to stand by as her bodyguard. If he cared about his aunt, then I could respect him for that, even if he was being an ass to me.
“No,” I agreed.
Runt-ness hadn’t been my problem.
“You look like you’ve kept yourself reasonably fit.” Mom looked me up and down. “If diminished. Your magic is barely noticeable.”
“I know. I’m sure you know why.”
The whole pack seemed to know far more about me than I would have wished.
She tilted her head as she regarded me. “I don’t exactly. You never came back and explained. I originally heard from your half-brother in Lake Forest Park that you’d married a human and were having children.”
“Yeah. It—deciding to take an alchemical potion that sublimates my werewolf urges—was because of Raoul.”
“I know your grief after his passing was why you left, but…”
“He didn’t pass, Mother. I lost my temper andkilledhim.”
The blunt words stirred the old memories again. A hunt gone poorly that had led to a heated argument that had turned into a fight under the moon, our jaws snapping, our muscles surging, our fangs sinking through fur and into vulnerable flesh. After all these years, the memory of that night remained sharp, though it sometimes felt as if it had been a dream—a nightmare. If Raoul had been an enemy, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but we’d been lovers, passionate youths who hadn’t cared that we were from rival packs. We’d always thought we would find a way to be together, that we would become mates and hunt side-by-side forever.
“Thus causing him to pass.” Mom shrugged indifferently, as if that moment hadn’t destroyed me and altered the course of my entire life. “If he couldn’t fend you off when your temper wasraised, he didn’t deserve to be an alpha and pack leader. Another would have killed him, if not you.”
“Hediddeserve it, and he… could have fended me off if he’d truly wanted it, if he’d been willing to kill me.”
“You underestimate the power you had then. Even if he loved you, his survival instincts would have kicked in. If he’d been able to best you, he would have.”
I shook my head. She hadn’t known Raoul, not the way I had. He’d been strong, fit, and in line to lead the Crushers one day, but he’d also been a lover and a poet. In his human form, he’d composed music and written lyrics. Unlike me, he’d never lost his sanity in his wolf form, never let his wild instincts get the best of him.
“He did love me,” I said quietly, looking out a back window toward the dark woods. “That’s why it was such a betrayal that I let myself attack him.”
“It was the battle lust.” Mom shrugged again. “We all have it. He shouldn’t have roused your temper during a hunt. We are not humans, my daughter. I see now, as I saw then, that you believed you were in the wrong, but you were guided by your wolf instincts. To establish dominance or keep the peace in the pack, alpha males and females may turn on threats, even mates, at any time. Our blood guides us to show our strength, to make sure the pack knows not to threaten us. I drove your half-siblings’ father out when he didn’t continue to be suitable.”
Sometimes, I wondered if that was what happened tomyfather too, but I couldn’t remember him at all. She’d told me before that he had been a lone wolf passing through, an intriguing one-night stand. Whether that was the truth or not, I didn’t know.
“We must keep those who make the pack strong,” Mom continued, “not those who are liabilities. That is the way of the wolf.”
“We live as humansmostof the time, Mother. In the world ofhumans, it’s a crime to kill another person, a crime punishable by death.”
She made a disgusted noise and chopped the air with her arm. “Being forced to live in their world does not mean we can be bound by their culture and laws. We have our own ways. And their world is killing us, their ever-expanding population encroaching on nature and destroying the Earth’s magic.Ourmagic. We can’t even become the bipedfuris—the in-between form—and add new blood to the pack anymore. It’s been centuries since I’ve heard of one of us succeeding in that and in using a bite to turn a man or woman, to bring a new werewolf into a pack. When you left to mate with a human and havehumanchildren… Luna, those boys should have been werewolves. The world doesn’tneedany more humans. That you didn’t mate with your own kind, especially when you were so powerful…”
I didn’t argue because I understood her disappointment. I couldn’t regret the birth of my sons, nor could I imagine having stayed with the pack, but I knew why she was upset.
“I always hoped if I gave you time and space, you would one day return, that the call of the moon would bring you back. I didn’t expect…” Her eyes bored into my back as I continued to look out the window. “These potions… Whatexactlyhave you doneto yourself? Your magic doesn’t seem quite as dead as Augustus said, but I can sense, as I said, you are diminished.”
I made myself turn and face her. “Like I said, the potion sublimates the wolf and the urge to turn.”
“Yes, but are the effects permanent?”
“No, I have to take it every month, ideally before the full moon. I’m…” I glanced toward the woods again, the silver light filtering through the branches. “I’m due.”
“So it’s not irrevocable.” Hope flickered in her eyes. “If you stopped consuming it, you could return to us.”
“That’s technically true.”
“Then you must. The pack, the forest, thehuntis your destiny.”
I shook my head. I’d chosen my destiny years ago. Of course, with the boys gone—the boysgrown—there was less binding me to my current path, but I would hate to die in a hunt or a fight for dominance with another werewolf—Augustus’s face flashed in my mind—and have Austin and Cameron lose me. Just because they’d started new lives didn’t mean they would never need advice from their mother again.