Ronnie.
My hands fell to my sides. I couldn't have heard right. I looked from my dad to Lucan and back again.
Say something! I urged the two of them uncomfortably in my head.
Dad looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable, shifty, and Lucan looked like Lucan. Pissed about something.
This time he was pissed at me.
I stared at the eyes of my pack mates. They were all thinking the same thing. They had to be.
I was some sort of freak for this to have happened.
How could I be mated to my brother?
My eyes filled as I turned away from Lucan, I could see his eyes as they tried to call to me. I ran, pushing people out of my way, breathing hard and fast with hot tears falling from my eyes.
I was a freak of nature. My wolf was awake, only for her to be mated to Lucan.
I cursed myself, dashing out of the hall. No one stopped me, and I half expected Lucan to come out of nowhere and haul me back into the hall.
Whenever I ran, he found me first.
But he was Alpha now. I'd be second place to everything else.
I ran into the garden, heading for the moon door hidden by the west walls of the pack property.
It was my safe haven, and right now I needed more than a little peace and quiet.
I rubbed at my runny nose and pushed branches that hung low out of my face.
This was not how I'd thought today would go. And I'd been looking forward to today for weeks now.
Weeds and slithering plants clung to the doorway to the inside of my hidden garden across the moon door.
I unlatched the door, and pushed it open, stepping sideways over the raised platform and dropping into my tiny paradise.
It was green as far as my eyes could see. There was a swing hanging from the huge oak tree smack in the middle of the garden and I remembered sitting there so many secret nights with Lucan.
I went to sit in one of them, pushing the swing by kicking my feet against the ground.
It didn't send me flying through the air, but it gave the swing a gentle sway.
My eyes itched and I rubbed at them, wiping them both with the back of my hands.
I dropped my hands and jumped, my wolf's senses becoming alert in minutes.
How had I not heard her approach?
"Hello? Are you lost?" I asked the woman who stood at the entrance, watching my every move.
People never wandered this deep into the garden, and they definitely never found the wooden door hidden by the plants and weed.
They just didn't care enough to really look. This woman had to have followed me, I realized.
Fear threatened to swallow me.
My wolf had just woken and she was still weak. I gave the woman a once over. She looked to be at least forty.
Was she a werewolf or human?
I didn't recognize her as my pack mate.
"What do you want?" I shouted at her, angry that she was creeping me out in my own home.
She stepped through the doorway and approached me a little slowly. "Please don't be afraid, I'm not going to hurt you."
I shrugged, masking my fear. "My father just crowned my brother Alpha. This is my home and you can't scare me."
"If you meant for that to reassure you, you can keep at it for all I care. But you're wrong about one thing and that's why I'm here."
"What do you want, lady?"
"I want to give you a gift."
I eyed her skeptically. Maybe she was nuts. Yes, there was also that possibility.
I played along. "What gift?"
"The gift of truth. Something that everyone around you has kept from you."
She stepped further into the pale glow of the moon. It was enough for me to see her features a lot more clearly.
I felt an eerie chill looking at her.
She looked like me.
She had blue eyes the exact shade of mine and black hair that fell to just above her shoulders.
She wore a long black dress with long sleeves that practically enshrouded her in a cloak of darkness.
I got a distinct feeling that I wouldn't like whatever this woman had to say to me.
I turned away from her, and made myself relax on the swing, kicking the ground with my heeled feet again.
I felt her move closer to me, until she was leaning against the tree's trunk, facing me.
"Listen to me, Ronnie. " The urgency in her voice startled me.
"What? What do you want?" I bristled.
I stopped swaying when I recalled her words. She knew my name.
"What do you want from me?" I asked her in a low tone, this time with a steely resolve to get this intrusion over with.
Her shadow fell over me, and her expression weirded me out. She looked like she wanted something from me.
Like a hug.
"Ronnie, my dear girl. You look just like her."
I wasn't this woman's dear anything, but I'd indulge her. "Like who?"
She brought up a trembling hand and rested it over her chest. She whispered, "Your mother."
That was the second time she was shocking me tonight. "You knew my mother?" I asked her, sure she could hear the curiosity in my voice.
"I'm your mother's sister, Ronnie. I'm your aunty." She choked out, obviously filled with emotions.
"That's not possible. Dad said mom didn't have any siblings."
I wanted to hear her say more. No one ever talked about my mother. All I knew of her was that she'd died before I was five.
She brought out something from the flayed sleeves of her dress. Two things.
One was a picture. And the other, I couldn't make out very clearly.
"Here. This is a picture of you and your mother."
I took the picture from her slowly, while my heart urged me to look at the woman in the picture quickly. See what my mother had looked like, finally.
I turned the picture over and there she was. My mother. She was sitting on a low log somewhere outside in the woods.
She wore a fluttery dress very much like the one I had on, pale yellow and she did look a lot like me.
"She was just a little older than you in that picture."
I looked at the little girl next. Me.
I had pictures from when I was little and though I looked younger in this particular one, I knew that was me.
"There's something you need to know, Ronnie. It'll be hard for you to believe me, but just know that I'm telling you the truth. Think of what just happened today at the mating ceremony first."
"You're not a wolf of the fourth moon pack. You're not Darius Dane's real daughter."
She had to be moon drunk or something. "Get away from me. Leave!"
I held onto the picture. She wasn't getting it back.
"You should believe me, Ronnie. If you were his actual daughter, you wouldn't be getting mated to his son!"
Her words stabbed at a sore place. I shook my head. "You're lying!"
"Why would I?" She cried out, flinging her arms out in distress.
"Because you're mad. Because…because you want to destroy us."
"You'd rather believe anything but the truth. I get it," she snarled in an ugly voice. "Well, ask him then."
I swallowed hard. "Ask who what?"
"Your father! The lying bastard!"
"Ask him, if he'd killed your parents sixteen years ago in a pack war!"
I gasped, stumbled back on trembling legs.
"Ask him why he'd thirsted for power so much, he'd slaughtered the entire pack!" She rushed to me, yanked my hand in a hard grip.
"No!"
"Ask him why he killed your mother, my sister, when she'd done nothing wrong!" I jerked away from her, tripping and falling to my knees.
My entire body shook and I felt close to tears. She wouldn't stop.
"Ask him who takes a little girl from her home, after murdering her entire family and raises her as his own." Her voice fell to a sickly bitter low tone, lips pulled in a sneer.
I got to my feet, walking away on shaky feet.
"Ask him if he's your father, Ronnie. And watch the way a liar slips up!"