Chapter 14 The Voice that Found Me
"My mother is dead."
My father remained silent, which was all the confirmation I needed.
"No," I responded quietly, as if my instincts were ahead of my thoughts. "No. You said she died when I was three."
"I said she was gone," he gently corrected.
"That’s the same thing!"
"It’s not." His voice trembled as he spoke. "Isabella, please—"
"Don’t." I stepped away, the journal feeling unbearably weighty in my hands. "Do not speak to me like that. I’m not the child you can control anymore."
The tunnel overhead throbbed once more. The ancient voice had faded, but its echo clenched my chest, as though something within me was trying to break free.
Vince stood beside me, I was glad his hands remained by his side. Anger slowly rose within me but I tried to maintain my calm.
"Who is she?" he asked my father, his tone direct.
My father closed his eyes. "Her name was Elena. Elena Hart, before she took my surname. Before that, she was Elena Vasquez."
Rafael let out a noise from the other side of the room, capturing our attention.
His face had gone pale.
"Vasquez," he repeated slowly. "As in the Vasquez bloodline?"
"Yes," my father confirmed softly.
"The Vasquez line has been extinct for forty years," Rafael asserted deliberately. "All records support this. They were eradicated during the border wars."
"They were hidden," my father countered. "Not eradicated."
"Hidden by whom?" Rafael questioned.
My father turned to me.
I anticipated the response before he spoke.
"By me," he admitted.
The room fell into a stunned silence, processing this revelation.
"You concealed an entire bloodline," Vince remarked.
"I concealed what remained." My father strained against his bonds, not to escape but to relieve tension. "Elena was the last of the Vasquez line. If the other packs knew she survived the border wars, they would exploit her the same way they’re trying to use Isabella now."
"So you married her," I said, my own words feeling strange. "You married her and erased her identity, telling me she was dead."
"I protected her," he insisted.
"You erased her," I countered. "Just like they aimed to do, only you did it more subtly."
The ensuing silence was thick, a moment where one side acknowledged the truth but couldn’t counter it.
Rafael firmly placed his hands on the table. "The Vasquez bloodline served a different purpose than the Hart line." His tone shifted to one of focus, as if he was piecing together something significant. "The Hart line upheld the compacts. Preserved them."
"And what role did the Vasquez line play?" I asked.
He met my gaze.
"Commanded them," he clarified. "Not preserved. Commanded. They possessed the ability to control compact energy, redirect it, and communicate through it." He paused. "Like a voice over a wire."
Everything clicked into place.
"She communicated through my blood," I realized. "That declaration. The signal of dissolution. She used my bloodline signature, but her power to convey it."
"Exactly," Rafael confirmed.
"So every pack that received that signal believes I chose dissolution."
"Yes."
"And they are reacting to a decision I never made."
"Correct." His jaw clenched. "If your mother can access your bloodline signature from a distance, she has been monitoring everything—the movements, the locations."
I turned my attention back to my father. "Where is she?"
"I don’t know."
"That’s unacceptable."
"Isabella, I truly do not know," he insisted. "She left eight months ago upon discovering what I had embedded in you. The secondary system. She was furious." He softened his tone. "She said I did to you what the packs did to her."
Those words cut deeper than I had anticipated. I collapsed to the cold floor, my legs unable to support me.
The silence overwhelmed us.
The sigils on my skin moved faster, shifting itself and trying to create something meaningful.
"She’s not trying to save me," I said slowly. "Is she?"
My father's silence confirmed my fear.
"She’s aiming to complete what the second system started," I continued. "She wishes to dismantle the compacts completely, and she’ll exploit my blood to do it, with or without my consent."
Vince knelt before me, meeting my gaze, his posture allowing no commands.
"Can she?" he inquired softly. "Force the activation from the outside?"
I looked down at the sigils on my hands.
They were now forming words.
Ancient words.
Words I recognized from a time I had never lived, ingrained deep within me, older than memory.
"I think she already is," I replied.
Rafael hurried across the room, staring at my hands, a flicker of realization crossing his face.
"What does it say?" Vince asked.
I read it aloud.
Once. Twice.
The warmth inside surged forward, it had a strange energy to it.
I lifted my head.
"It says: I have been waiting for you to wake up, my love. Now open your hands and let me in."
The tunnel darkened.
Every light and even the glowing symbols all disappeared.
And in that darkness, close enough for me to feel, a heartbeat synchronized with mine.
It was not Vince's or Rafael's
It was a woman's voice.
And she was already inside the building.