Page 19 of The Forbidden Wolf

No wonder my sister was pissy. She had trained for Alphaship her whole life, denying herself even the tiniest of pleasures so she could snap the neck or rip the throat of any male who crossed her. She had studied business and political science alongside all of our shifter traditions so that she would be able to grow our wealth and maintain harmonious relations with all the various human governing agencies. She had devoted her entire life to a Throne she might never get to sit on because Father’s faith had faltered the first time he coughed.

But did that excuse her actions toward me? I had believed her, for a moment, when she claimed she only supported the match with Blaze because she believed it would be best for me. I had believed, for an instant, that she actually cared about me as her sister. But arrogance had always been her Achilles’ heel, and so she’d turned right around and revealed it had nothing to do with me at all.

I was simply an extension of herself, an unruly clump of cells that had fallen off without permission, and as such, I owed her my complete submission. If she couldn’t run the Bronx, then I would have to, not because I was capable but because I had always been pliable. She would lead through me, her puppy on a leash, her little marionette on strings. I had half a mind to go along with her plan just so I could become the Alpha and then tell her to fluff off.

When I finally stopped talking, Charlie drew a deep breath that rattled the line with static before saying, “Okay, honey, well, it turns out I have no idea what any of that could possibly be a metaphor for, but you are one hell of a storyteller… aaannd I am going to have to strongly recommend against anyone marrying a forty-four-year-old father of five and getting pregnant as soon as possible just to one day stick it to their conniving bitch of a sister.”

“I don’t know if I have a choice…”

“Of course you have a choice!” Charlie snapped. “You’re twenty years old. No one can make you do anything unless you value their feelings more than your own, and I’m not going to let you keep doing that. Just walk out the door, Elyse. You’ve been doing it for four years, and not a single person has noticed.”

I swallowed acid. “I think Damian might know…”

“Damian? The creepy uncle in your story?”

“Ugh. He’s not my uncle. He’s just… Damian.”

“Whatever. You go ahead and let that little… wereweasel follow you all the way to my doorstep, and I’ll show him what’s what.”

“Damian?” I chuckled. “Why? Yeah, he’s weird, but—”

Charlie scoffed. “Elyse! Do you not see how he turned your sister against you with that bullshit story about how your mother died?”

My back stiffened. “He just told us what happened, Charlie. It wasn’t his fault—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Charlie said fiercely.

My jaw clenched. “It’s okay—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Charlie repeated.

My eyes scrunched shut. “Okay. Yeah.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

I drew a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re just trying to make me cry like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.”

“There’s a reason it won Best Screenplay,” Charlie said. “And why Robin Williams won Best Supporting Actor. Everyone on the planet needs to hear it about something, and you need to hear it about this.”

Liquid salt scorched my eyes. “But if I hadn’t been there—”

Charlie’s angry sigh thundered through the receiver. “Look, Elyse, you were just a kid when we met, and we all knew right away that something was seriously weird in your home life, to the point that we had a lot of conversations about whether or not we needed to call the authorities, but you weren’t dirty or malnourished or covered in bruises, so we eventually came to the conclusion that whatever it was would only get worse if we got anyone else involved.”

“It would have,” I whispered, leaving out the part where the authorities might have been slaughtered for violating a long-standing agreement that shifters and humans would not concern themselves with enforcing each other’s laws.

“Then you turned eighteen,” Charlie continued, “and nothing changed, except that no one was going to take us seriously anymore if we requested a welfare check. All we could do was buy you a phone in case you ever needed us and hope that eventually you’d take us up on moving into the apartment.”

Hot tears streamed down my nose. “I want to, Charlie. I’ve always wanted to.”

“Then walk out the door.” Charlie swallowed hard. “Your mother didn’t die because you were backwards, Elyse. She died because your whole world is.”

My molars pushed upward and downward, sharp points rasping against each other. I gripped the edge of the couch, claw tips slicing through the weatherproof fabric. Gasping, I bared down on all of my muscles, forcing my wolf back into my soul.

She’s right. You know she’s right.

My wolf gnashed the teeth I wouldn’t let her show. It didn’t matter how much she loathed the thought of mating with Blaze; she would always loathe the thought of being without the pack more. But Charlie’s words had unlocked the door to the deepest, darkest chamber of my heart, the cold and musty cellar where I kept the treacherous thought that thirteen-year-old me had been having right before she noticed the hateful new glint in the eyes of her sister.

My lips parted like those of a newly reanimated mummy, breathing out the dust and cobwebs filling the truth’s tomb. “Humans could have saved her.”

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