Chapter 165 Chapter 165
Violet
"What about you, Nicole?"Aunt Rosy asked. "You must have gotten into some mischief as a child."
Nicole laughed. "Oh, I'm sure I did, but I don't remember much. My childhood was fairly normal."
"Where did you grow up?" Aunt Rosy pressed on. "You never really talk about it."
"Small town," Nicole said vaguely, waving a hand dismissively. "Nothing interesting. That's why I don't talk about it. There’s nothing worth telling."
There was something in her tone, something that suggested the subject was closed. Thelma and Rosy exchanged glances but didn't push.
I pulled out my phone, needing something to do with my hands, and typed out a quick message to Elijah who looked like the brief verbal spar with his father had left him drained.
Me: Just two more days. The day after tomorrow the wedding happens and we can leave this place. Please try to relax.
I watched him check his phone, and saw his eyes scan the message. His jaw tightened fractionally, and he looked up, meeting my gaze across the room. Then he deliberately looked at Nate, then back at me. He didn't reply nor did he type anything back.
Every time Nate laughed or spoke, every time he moved in my peripheral vision, my skin crawled with the memory of his hands on me, his breath on my face, his words about the vibrator and watching me. My stomach turned with revulsion that never quite faded.
"Speaking of interesting stories," Thelma said, her words slurring more noticeably now as she drained another glass. "Has anyone told the old tales yet? The really old ones, from before the manor was even built?"
"Old tales?" Madison perked up immediately, leaning forward with interest. "What kind of old tales?"
"The dark ones," Thelma said with relish, clearly enjoying having a fresh audience. "The bloody ones. The ones that actually happened, not fairy stories."
"Oh, I love a good dark story," Veronica said, hugging a throw pillow to her chest. "Tell us!"
Something about the way Thelma said "dark ones" and "bloody ones" made my skin prickle with anxiety.
"Well," Rosy said, setting aside her knitting with an air of someone preparing to tell a campfire story. "This manor has quite a history. Lots of darkness in its past. Blood soaked into the very foundations."
"Every old building has dark stories," Alaric said, but he didn't sound dismissive. If anything, he sounded almost eager to hear them retold. "Our history is written in blood and magic. It's what made us strong."
"The strongest stories," Thelma continued, leaning forward conspiratorially, "are from the Great War. The war between our kind and the witches."
My mouth went dry. I suddenly didn't want to hear this story. I wanted to find an excuse to leave, but my body wouldn't cooperate. I was frozen in my chair, unable to move.
"The Great War?" Madison's eyes were wide. "I've heard mentions of it, but no one ever really talks about details."
"That's because the details are horrifying," Rosy said, her voice dropping to that particular tone storytellers use when they want to create atmosphere. "It happened centuries ago, before this manor stood in its current form. Back when this was wild territory, barely settled. The witches wanted to wipe out our entire race."
"Why?" Veronica asked, genuinely curious.
"Because they saw us as abominations," Aurelia answered, her voice cold and hard. "Creatures that shouldn't exist. They thought we were perversions of nature, mistakes that needed to be corrected or rather erased."
"They hunted us," Thelma said, warming to her subject. The wine had loosened her tongue completely now. "They'd find our packs and slaughter everyone including the old and children. If you had wolf blood, you died."
The fire crackled, sending up a shower of sparks. Outside, the wind had picked up, rattling the windows with enough force to make the heavy drapes sway slightly.
"But it wasn't just killing," Rosy continued, her knitting forgotten in her lap. "The witches did horrible things. They experimented on captured werewolves like we were animals. Tried to strip away our ability to shift because as per them, they had the sole right to do magic."
"That’s horrendous. We got it as a gift from the Moon Goddess. How could they?" Madison asked, horrified fascination clear in her voice.
"They believed only their god, whoever he or she was, could give the gift of shapeshifting, no other," Alaric said grimly. "They were jealous of us and it drove them mad. Some even went down the dark path, offering the captured werewolves’ souls in forbidden rituals.”
“What?” Veronica gasped and Alaric continued in the same tone.
“Imagine having half your soul ripped away and being left incomplete, broken. Some of them went feral, becoming mindless beasts. Others simply... hollowed out. They became empty shells that eventually just stopped living."
I felt sick. The images his words conjured were horrifying.
"They used dark magic like Alpha Alaric said," Aurelia added. "They'd torture wolves to death while drawing power from their suffering. The more agonizing the death, the more power they could harvest."
"That's horrible," Veronica whispered, her face pale.
"It was genocide," Thelma said bluntly. "And the worst part? We were losing. Despite being physically stronger, despite our numbers, we were losing. Because their magic was too powerful. They could kill from a distance, could curse entire bloodlines, could turn our own bodies against us."
"But we survived," Rosy said. "Obviously. We're here, and they're not. But the cost was staggering. Entire packs were wiped out and whole bloodlines ended. Some of the oldest, most powerful families were completely erased from existence."
"And it was all because of her," Alaric said, his voice taking on a quality I'd never heard before. Something like hatred mixed with fear. "The last dark witch. She killed more of our kind than all the other witches combined."
The room had gone completely silent except for the crackling of the fire and the wind outside. Everyone was leaning in, caught up in the story.
Everyone except me. I was shrinking back in my chair, dread coiling tighter and tighter in my chest.
“What was she like?” Nicole asked.
"She was powerful," Aurelia said softly, and there was something almost like respect in her tone. Respect mixed with revulsion. "More powerful than any witch before or since. She could kill with a gesture, they said. She could make people's insides boil or their bones shatter, could drive them mad with visions."
My blood turned to ice.
"She didn't just kill," Thelma continued, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "She tortured and immensely enjoyed it. The stories say she would laugh while she worked. That she took pleasure in causing pain."
"She killed entire packs in single nights," Rosy added, her face grim in the firelight. "She would especially single out the injured but still breathing werewolves and make a spectacle of their death, killing their families in front of their eyes."
Madison had gone pale, her earlier enthusiasm completely evaporated. Veronica was hugging her pillow tighter, her knuckles white.
"She killed children?" Cassie's voice was small. "Actually killed innocent, helpless children?"