Chapter 92 Bloodline Secrets
RYAN'S POV
I felt like the ground was crumbling beneath my feet and taking everything I had ever believed with it. My father, the man who taught me honor and duty and loyalty above all else, had helped murder Lisa's mother. The words did not make sense no matter how many times I repeated them in my head. This could not be real.
"What did she discover?" Lisa's voice was deadly quiet and controlled in a way that scared me more than screaming would have.
My father coughed violently and struggled to speak through the pain. "The Blackstone line isn't pure Beta blood. Three generations back, our ancestor was a rogue. A powerful one who infiltrated the pack and married the Beta's daughter and hid his origins from everyone. We have been living a lie for decades."
The revelation hung heavy in the air like smoke we could not escape. I tried to process what he was saying but the words felt foreign. "You're saying I'm descended from rogues?"
"We all are. Your grandfather, me, you. We're not true pack wolves at all. We're rogue blood pretending to be something we're not." My father's eyes fixed on Lisa with desperate intensity. "Your mother found proof. Old documents and bloodline records we thought were destroyed generations ago. She was going to expose it and ruin us completely. So I convinced your father that she was too dangerous to live."
Daniel lunged forward and would have killed my dying father if Adrian and I had not grabbed him and held him back with all our strength. "You murdered our mother over bloodline purity? Over PRIDE?"
My father's voice grew weaker with each word. "I was wrong. Spent twenty years living with that guilt eating me alive from the inside. Ryan, I pushed you toward Sophia and away from Lisa because I thought keeping distance from the silver wolf would protect our secret. But she found you anyway. The mate bond was stronger than my manipulation. And you gave up your wolf for her. Became human by choice. Maybe that's the universe's justice for what I did."
I felt sick. Everything my father had taught me about honor and pack loyalty and duty was built on lies and murder. The foundation of my entire life was rotting and false. How many decisions had I made based on teachings from a man who was a killer and a fraud?
My father's breathing became more labored. Each breath was a struggle that rattled in his chest. "There's more. Lisa, your mother wasn't just researching bloodlines. She was pregnant when we killed her. Three months along. You were supposed to have a younger sibling. We killed them both."
Lisa's hand flew to her own pregnant belly in an instinctive and protective gesture. Emma gasped loudly. Adrian looked absolutely murderous and his hands clenched into fists. Daniel was actually crying and I had never seen him cry before in all the years I had known him.
"A sibling," Lisa whispered and her voice broke on the word. "I could have had—"
She could not finish the sentence. She turned and ran from the room with her footsteps echoing in the hallway. I started to follow her because every instinct I had screamed to comfort her but my father grabbed my hand with surprising strength for a dying man.
"Ryan. One more thing. The experimental treatment your mother wants you to take? To restore your wolf? It's not real medicine at all. It's extracted from rogue blood. From captured rogues they're experimenting on in secret facilities. Taking it would make you complicit in torture. Don't do it. Stay human. Stay better than I was."
His grip loosened suddenly. The monitor beside his bed began to flatline with a steady high pitched tone that cut through the room. Nurses rushed in immediately but I knew it was over. My father was dead and he had left behind confessions that shattered everything I thought I knew about my family and my bloodline and my entire life.
I stood frozen in place while medical staff worked frantically around my father's body. Daniel had stopped struggling against Adrian's hold and now stood perfectly still with tears streaming down his face. Emma had her hand over her mouth and her eyes were wide with shock. Adrian looked like he wanted to destroy something but had nowhere to direct the rage burning inside him.
I walked out of the room in a daze. The hallway was too bright and the fluorescent lights hurt my eyes. I found Lisa in a waiting room at the end of the corridor. She was curled up in a chair with her knees pulled to her chest and her arms wrapped around her pregnant belly. She was not crying but her face was pale and blank.
I sat down beside her slowly. "Lisa, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I swear I didn't know any of this."
"I know you didn't." Her voice was flat and emotionless. "But your father did. Your family did. And they took everything from me. My mother. A sibling I never got to meet. Years of lies about who killed her and why."
I reached for her hand but she pulled away. The rejection stung but I understood it. How could she look at me and not see my father's crimes? How could she love me knowing what my bloodline had done to hers?
"The baby I'm carrying," Lisa said quietly without looking at me. "I don't even know if it's yours or Adrian's. And now I find out your entire bloodline is built on lies and murder. How am I supposed to trust anything anymore?"
I had no answer for her. The truth was I did not know if she could trust me or my family or anything connected to the Blackstone name. My father had poisoned everything with his choices and his secrets.
The waiting room door opened and my mother walked in. Her face was red from crying and her eyes were swollen. She looked at me with an expression I could not read.
"Your father is gone," she said simply.