Page 114 of The Lone Wolf Café
“That’s the thing.” My mother frowned. “They didn’t know I was a half-witch. I was the product of an affair, and my father told the pack that I was his mate’s offspring to cover up what he had done. My stepmother was a kind woman, always treating me like her own child. Sadly, she passed when I was about ten. I remained very close to my siblings and cousins, but since I was an illegitimate child, I wasn’t eligible to become Alpha. So, once I was twenty years old, my father announced my betrothal to the Alpha of the Hollenboro pack.”
“My father,” I concluded.
“Yes. It was an arranged union, and I was scared to leave my own pack to start a whole new life somewhere else. But we made frequent trips back to Mount Desert Island to see my family, and over time, your father and I grew quite fond of each other. Youcame along a few years later, then your twin sisters. I was quite happy with my life, splitting my time between the two packs.”
“But then what happened?” I asked. I knew the story didn’t end there. Women who were happy with their lives didn’t fake their own drownings.
My mother was silent for a moment, her gaze having fallen in her lap. She had that glassy, empty-eyed stare again – a sign that her mind had drifted far away from here.
Likely back to Hollenboro, and whatever had caused her to leave.
“I came into my powers in my mid-twenties,” she began. “A bit later than you did. Probably something about being raised by werewolves and having to hide the fact I was half-witch. They manifested in small doses at first, enough for me to mask them. Enough for me to hide my magic from your father, and the rest of the village.”
“What changed?”
My mother swallowed hard, her pale throat bobbing. “When your sisters were born, it was like a dark cloud took over me. I was anxious, depressed, every negative emotion you could think of. I’d be sobbing in fear, shaking in the corner… some days I couldn’t even get out of bed. It was awful. And that, unfortunately, was the time when my powers came into full effect.”
Oh gods.I knew from experience that anxiety and empath powers didn’t mix well.
“I completely lost control of my shifting abilities. I’d be a human one moment, a werewolf the next, and stuck in-between for long intervals. Your father would leave me in the kitchen to feed you and your sisters, and he’d come back ten minutes later to three crying children and a deranged red wolf tearing the kitchen apart.”
I flinched, my fists clutching the fabric of my dress in my lap. I had memories of my mother in her wolf form, but they came in brief flashes – bright red fur and the silhouette of her four-legged form in various times and places. I never realized she wasn’t shifting of her own free will.
“You didn’t know those were witch powers,” I concluded. “And you didn’t want Dad to know you were a half-witch.”
My mother nodded. “He and the rest of the village assumed I’d gone mad. I was suddenly an outcast, given the side-eye at pack gatherings and the cold shoulder any time I tried to interact with anyone. I knew I needed help, but my mother had passed the previous year, so I couldn’t ask her for advice. I figured if I could just talk to my father, get some answers, maybe I could fix this. But there was one problem.”
“What was it?”
“Since I could no longer control my shifting abilities… your father banned me from leaving Hollenboro. He said it was too dangerous.”
“Wait. Did that mean…” I pondered. ”You weren’t able to see your family back on Mount Desert Island? Dad just… cut you off?”
My mother nodded, her red tail bristling behind her back as she did so.
I couldn’t begin to imagine how helpless my mother must have felt, being trapped on Hollenboro, unable to talk to her own family or seek help for her mysterious condition. I knew isolation always made anxiety worse. When a wolf was trapped in a cage, their instinct urged them to escape by any means necessary. No matter how messy or destructive.
But the part I hated most was that my father, with his understanding and worldview, had been right. All he knew was that his mate had an unknown “illness” causing her to lose control of her shifting abilities. Even bringing my mother backto her own pack would involve traveling on human ferries and cutting through human towns. One accidental shift could put the lives of a lot of people – including my mother’s – in grave danger.
He was trying to protect us.
“I didn’t mean to leave.” My mother’s voice choked up, and she sniffled and ran the back of her hand across her teary eyes. “Your father tried his best to help me. But he didn’t know what to do. No one on the island did. And not being able to see my family: my father, my sisters, my cousins… my condition got so much worse. By the time your sisters were a year old, I was so unstable I couldn’t take care of you anymore.”
I remembered. The frustration on my father’s face, the constant fighting, my mother’s moods shifting as rapidly as her form did. I just assumed they had marital problems like many of the other couples on the island.
I was so young back then. There was so much I didn’t understand.
“When I fell into the water that night,” my mother continued, “I thought that was it. I was dead. But the current carried me away from Hollenboro, towards a neighboring human-populated island. I washed up there, drenched and exhausted, but alive. I then snuck on the ferry and made my way back to Mount Desert Island.”
“And you never returned to Hollenboro.”
That was the sentence that caused my mother to burst into sobs. “Nettie… I’m so sorry. I feared if I went back to Hollenboro, I’d never see the rest of my family again. And on top of that–” Her sharp, clawed fingers clutched the fabric of her dress. The red werewolf fur now nearly spread up to her wrists. “–the whole island said I was a bad mother. That I was insane and better off locked up somewhere than parenting my own daughters. AndI believed them. I… I truly thought you girls were better off without me.”
But we weren’t.A deep ache tugged at my chest.We weren’t. We needed you.
“You never got better?” I asked, shoving my own emotions deep down my throat. “Even once you were back on Mount Desert Island?”
My mother shook her head. “I still had to hide the fact that I’m half-witch. My father was the only one who knew, but even with me secretly trying to find help, I couldn’t get answers. My mother was dead, and no witch was willing to mentor a half-werewolf. The truth is, Nettie, I never gained control of my powers. I still shift into my werewolf form whenever I’m upset or angry. Since I live among the werewolf pack, shifting randomly isn’t much of an issue… but it means I can’t leave. I can’t travel anywhere. I haven’t stepped foot off Mount Desert Island since the day I arrived back here fifteen years ago.”
