Her head snapped around, her eyes narrowing. “I taught you strength and resiliency through adversary. I taught you how to live?—”

“You taught me how to survive. You taught me how to kill. You taught me that to be a leader is to be heartless.”

She stared at me. Then her eyes grew golden. “Ungrateful brat. How long have I put up with your dalliances? Even encouraged them so you’d find the strength to break your chains. You think I did not know about the pup and the Red? You think I did not know how you took your sisters under your protection? You think I did not know that you spoke sweet words in my ear, all the while doing everything in your power to spite me?”

I stepped back as her eyes grew so golden they were nearly yellow… and then they turned white. Had everything I known been a twisted lie from the start? Displeasure threaded through me. Was it all a manipulation? Did I finally do what she wanted of me after so long?

A part of me wished she had screamed and yelled, called me a cur of a son, and told me how horrid I was for betraying her. But she stood before me wanting such a betrayal? Her reaction cheapened my rebellion until I felt like nothing but a young, embarrassed boy berated by his mother for eating the laying hens.

A tiny hand rested on the crook of my arm. I glanced down. Alia turned her face up, her eyes bright with fury, but her voice the calm in the storm of my emotions. “There is only a drop of belladonna in a wine glass,” Alia whispered for my ears alone. “But it turns the entire glass into death.”

I stared into her eyes as my mother raged about how she had given all for me and how she had raised me to overcome all hurdles, including Command.

I lightly trailed my half-formed claws down Alia’s cheek. “You are correct,” I whispered through the fangs protruding from my lips. I did not even realize I had partially shifted.

I rotated to face my mother. “You gave me no choice,” I said, cutting through the tirade of her lies and half-truths.

“What choice did you need? You were a child, unable?—”

“Unable to choose. Unable to even understand what was expected of me. And you watched as I was trained in the arts of secret keeping, torture, espionage, and assassination. Once, I only wished to please you. But no more. Your vitriol may sound pleasant to the ears, but your actions are poison to the soul.”

“All I ever did was for you!” she cried, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. “Please believe me, all I did. It was all foryou.”

“No, Mother. It was all for you.”

Alia’s hand disappeared from my chest as she walked forward to the woman kneeling on the ground. I reached out for Alia, but she evaded my hand, shooting me a look, asking me to trust her. I clenched my fists at my sides, trying to let her go.

“You were born an innocent child,” Alia said, her voice soft.

“What is this which you speak, human demolisher? You cannot know me,” Mother said, snarling in disgust.

“You were an innocent child who broke. They broke you. Many times,” Alia whispered.

“You… you knownothing.” Mother’s voice gave at the end.

“And then they played with you. Made you into their little werewolf. But you rose, didn’t you? You killed them.”

“I did not kill them.” Mother sneered, her face twisting until it was nearly unrecognizable from the cold being I had known my entire life. “They slowly lost all will to live when I took everything from them. Every inch of coin was mine. Every debt was mine to hold. And I cashed out.”

Alia shook her head, her fists clenching against her blades. “You were so young. How could they have treated you so wrong?”

“They did not see it as such. I was merely a means to an end.”

“But you loved them.”

“They were my parents. How could I not?”

In those few short words, I understood. My mother was not born the manipulating woman she was leading up to that moment. She had been made into a manipulator.

“You loved them, and they hurt you. With their words. With their actions. How did it make you feel?”

“Worthless. Helpless. Weak,” Mother whispered.

And in those words, Iknew. She raised me to never know those three things. In her own, twisted way, she was trying to protect me in the only way her gnarled mind knew how. She did the opposite of what her parents did to her to make me the strongest werewolf possible.

“I only wanted their love. I only wanted them to be proud of me. But they used me,” she said. “Sold me to the highest bidder. They climbed up the ladder of the packs because of me, and I was left holding the cut rope at the bottom of the abyss.”

Alia went down to her knees before my mother, the salty tang of sweet tears reaching my nose. “And you haven’t seen the light since, have you?” she whispered.