Chapter 63 Edmund's Doubt (Edmund POV)
She moved exactly like Lyanna, and the whisky in my hand suddenly wasn't enough to dull the recognition.
I adjusted the binoculars, focusing on Vivienne as she circled the training clearing with a grace that shouldn't exist in someone who'd been human three weeks ago. The way she shifted her weight, the unconscious fluidity of her movements, even the tilt of her head when listening—all Lyanna. All the woman I'd killed seventeen years ago.
My hand shook. I lowered the binoculars, took a long drink directly from the bottle. Expensive single malt, wasted on a man who couldn't taste anything past the acid burning in his throat.
Four days until the Silver Moon.
Four days until the trap I'd spent eighteen months building would spring and eliminate every werewolf in Britain, including my daughter.
I raised the binoculars again.
Vivienne was sparring with the young man… Gabriel's pack member, Thomas, according to my intelligence files. She feinted left, he countered, she pivoted with that impossible werewolf speed and had him pinned in under three seconds. Clean technique. Perfect execution.
Exactly how Lyanna used to fight.
"Christ," I muttered, setting down the binoculars to pour another drink. My hotel room was dark despite the afternoon sun, I'd kept the curtains closed for days, only opening them slightly to observe the training grounds.
My laptop sat on the desk, tactical maps and hunter positions displayed across multiple windows. Everything was ready. Marcus had confirmed equipment placement. All twenty-three operatives positioned. UV grids tested and functional. Silver gas canisters loaded into modified ventilation systems. Exit barricades prepared for magnetic lock activation.
The trap was perfect.
I was going to murder my daughter in four days.
The thought should have felt justified. Necessary. Protection of humanity against supernatural threat.
Instead, it felt like drowning.
I pulled up a different file on my laptop, the one I'd been avoiding for weeks. Video footage from Vivienne's first transformation, captured by surveillance cameras I'd hidden around campus.
My finger hovered over the play button. I'd watched this footage seventeen times in the past month, searching for proof that Vivienne was monster who needed to be eliminated.
Eighteenth viewing. Maybe this time I'd see what I needed to see.
The video played. Vivienne in her dorm room, late evening three weeks ago. She was crying, hands pressed to her face, clearly in pain. Then the transformation began.
I'd studied werewolf transformations for two decades. Documented hundreds of shifts through hidden cameras and long-distance observation. Most were violent, agonizing, the human body fighting against unnatural restructuring.
Vivienne's transformation was different.
She didn't fight it. Didn't resist. Just... accepted. Her face smoothed even as bones began shifting. The tears stopped. And when she completed the shift… massive silver wolf with her mother's eyes… she looked peaceful. Content. Like she'd finally come home to herself.
I paused the video, staring at her wolf form.
Lyanna had looked exactly like that. Same silver fur, same size, same eyes that somehow remained recognizably human despite the animal face.
My wife. The woman I'd loved. The mother of my children.
The monster I'd murdered in ignorant fear.
"No." I closed the laptop roughly. "She was attacking. She was going to kill Vivienne. I saved our daughter."
But the justification sounded hollow even to my own ears.
I'd been reviewing that night for seventeen years, replaying every moment, every decision. The official narrative I'd constructed: Lyanna lost control during labor, transformed into mindless beast, attacked our newborn daughter. I defended Vivienne with the only weapon available, silver letter opener that happened to be on the bedside table.
Self-defense. Protection. Necessary violence to save innocent child.
That's what I'd told myself for seventeen years.
But lately, the narrative was cracking.
I pulled up another file, medical records from Vivienne's birth. Lyanna's labor had been difficult. Twenty-three hours of contractions. Complications with positioning. The midwife had been concerned about fetal distress.
Then Lyanna transformed.
I'd always remembered it as sudden, violent, aggressive. Her attacking.
But what if I was wrong?
The whisky bottle was half-empty now. I poured another glass, my hands steady through years of practice drinking while reviewing traumatic memories.
What if Lyanna wasn't attacking?
What if she transformed instinctively to protect Vivienne?
Werewolf physiology is stronger than human. Healing faster, surviving trauma that would kill normal women. If Lyanna sensed Vivienne in danger… fetal distress, birth complications… her wolf might have manifested to ensure her daughter's survival.
Not attacking. Protecting.
And I'd stabbed her through the heart with silver while she was trying to save our child.
"No," I said again, louder this time. "She was snarling. She had claws. She was dangerous."
But memory was unreliable. I knew that from interrogation training, witnesses remembered fear, not facts. Reconstructed events to match emotional state.
I'd been terrified. Lyanna had transformed. My brain had interpreted transformation as threat.
What if I'd been wrong?
I stood abruptly, pacing the small hotel room. Four steps to the window, four steps back. The whisky sloshed in my glass.
The laptop beckoned. I'd been avoiding another file for weeks.
Lyanna's journal. I'd kept it locked away for seventeen years, couldn't bear to read her handwriting, her thoughts, the life I'd taken from her.
But now...
I opened the file. Digital scans of her journal, each page photographed and stored. I'd never deleted it, despite every instinct screaming to destroy evidence of my crime.
Her handwriting was elegant, precise. The entries dated from our early marriage through her pregnancy with Vivienne.
I skipped to the final entries. The last months before she died.
March 15th: Edmund still doesn't know what I am. I'm terrified of telling him. What if he hates me? What if he leaves? The baby is due in three weeks. I can't hide much longer. The wolf wants to protect her, growls whenever I feel contractions. I'm scared of what happens if I shift during labor.
My vision blurred. I set down the whisky, needing both hands to steady the laptop.
March 29th: Contractions starting. Edmund is panicking, which isn't helping. I can feel the wolf pushing forward, wanting to protect the baby. I've been suppressing for hours but it's getting harder. Gabriel is scared, he saw my eyes flash silver twice. I need to get Edmund out of the room before this gets worse.
March 29th. The day Vivienne was born.
The day I killed Lyanna.
March 29th, later: Labor is bad. Baby's in distress, midwife says heartbeat is irregular. I can feel the wolf screaming to do something, to protect her, to make sure our daughter survives. I told Edmund to leave with Gabriel but he won't listen. The wolf is coming whether I want it or not. Please, God, let the baby survive this.
The entry ended there.
I sat heavily, the chair creaking under sudden weight.
Lyanna had known she might transform. Had tried to get me out of the room to protect me from witnessing it. Had been fighting the shift to avoid scaring me.
And when she finally transformed, when fetal distress and maternal instinct overwhelmed her control, it was to protect Vivienne, not attack her.
I'd murdered my wife while she was trying to save our daughter.
The realization felt like physical impact. I doubled over, breathing hard, seventeen years of careful justification crumbling around me.
"I didn't know," I said to the empty room. "I didn't know what she was. Didn't understand transformation. Thought she was attacking."
But ignorance wasn't innocence. Not knowing was my failure, not Lyanna's crime.
I stood, moved to the window, looked out at Blackthorn's grounds. Vivienne was still training. Even from this distance, I could see her confidence growing. Three weeks ago she'd been human, confused, vulnerable. Now she moved like apex predator who'd never been anything else.
Like her mother.
Like the woman I'd killed for being exactly what Vivienne had become.
The trap was set. Four days until execution. Everything positioned, everyone prepared.
I could call it off.
Should call it off.
My hand reached for the phone before I consciously decided to move. Marcus's number was programmed. One call… "abort operation, stand down, mission cancelled" …and the whole thing stopped.
Twenty-three hunters would disperse. Equipment would be dismantled. The trap would never spring.
Vivienne would live.
My finger hovered over the call button.
Then I thought about the government contacts who'd funded this operation. The agencies that wanted supernatural threats eliminated. The international coalition that saw werewolves as existential danger to humanity.
If I called off the operation, someone else would take my place. Another hunter, another contractor, another true believer in the necessity of extinction.
At least I knew Vivienne. Could plan around her survival, maybe, if I was clever about it.
Someone else wouldn't care. Wouldn't hesitate. Wouldn't see her as daughter, only as target.
"Rationalization," I muttered, setting down the phone. "You're rationalizing continued genocide because facing what you've done is too painful."
My laptop showed the tactical maps. Red dots for UV positions. Blue circles for gas deployment. Green triangles for hunter positions.
And in the center, the main arena where Vivienne would be fighting.
I'd designed the trap specifically around her presence. Used her as bait to draw in maximum werewolf attendance. Orchestrated her entire awakening to ensure she'd be exactly where I needed her when the attack began.
Eighteen months of planning. Years of preparation before that.
All building toward my daughter's execution.
The whisky bottle was empty. I opened another from the mini-bar… cheaper stuff, but it would serve. Poured three fingers, drank it in one swallow.
Four days.
Four days to decide if I was going to complete my crusade or acknowledge I'd built my entire life's work on the foundation of murdering my wife in ignorant fear.
The door opened without warning. I spun, hand going instinctively to the weapon I kept holstered under my jacket.
Marcus stood in the doorway, taking in the scene… empty bottles, closed curtains, my disheveled appearance. His expression was carefully neutral.
"We need to talk," he said, closing the door behind him.
"I didn't give you a key to this room."
"I acquired one through unofficial channels. You've been radio silent for forty-eight hours. The operation is in four days and our commander has gone dark." He moved to the window, opened the curtains. Afternoon light flooded in, making me wince. "We're concerned."
"We?"
"The team. They need confirmation that operation is proceeding as planned." Marcus turned to face me. "Is it?"
"Yes. No. I don't know." The honesty escaped before I could stop it.
"That's not acceptable, sir. We have twenty-three operatives positioned, equipment in place, international observers waiting for results. 'I don't know' doesn't work."
"Then tell them it's proceeding. Everything's on schedule. Attack begins as planned." The words tasted like ash.
Marcus studied me for a long moment. "You're having doubts."
"I'm having..." I gestured vaguely at the laptop, the whisky bottles, the binoculars still trained on the training grounds. "...realizations. Inconvenient realizations."
"About?"
"My daughter. My wife. The entire foundation of my work." I slumped into the chair. "What if I was wrong, Marcus? What if Lyanna wasn't a threat? What if I killed her for trying to protect our child?"
"That's not productive thinking, sir."
"That's honest thinking. There's a difference." I pulled up Lyanna's journal entry, showed him the screen. "Read that. Tell me it sounds like a monster planning to attack her newborn."
Marcus scanned the entry. His expression didn't change. "It sounds like a werewolf losing control during labor. Which is dangerous regardless of intent."
"Or it sounds like a mother doing everything possible to protect her baby, including transforming to ensure survival despite knowing it would terrify her husband."
"The outcome was the same. She transformed. Became dangerous. You defended your daughter."
"Did I? Or did I murder my wife in panic and spend seventeen years constructing elaborate justification?" I closed the laptop. "What if everything I've done since then—the hunting, the research, the planning—was just trying to retroactively prove I made the right choice?"
"Does it matter?" Marcus's voice was infuriatingly calm. "What's done is done. Lyanna's dead. You've spent seventeen years developing expertise in werewolf elimination. The operation is planned. Your daughter is—"
"Don't." I stood abruptly. "Don't tell me my daughter is acceptable collateral damage. I wrote those words in the tactical assessment but I can't hear you say them."
"Then what do you want me to say? That we should abort the operation? Waste eighteen months of planning because you're having emotional crisis four days before execution?"
"Yes! Maybe! I don't know!" I was shouting now, control slipping. "My daughter is out there training to fight me. She's become exactly what her mother was. And I'm planning to kill her for it."
"She's not your daughter anymore," Marcus said flatly. "She's a werewolf. A threat. A target."
"She's eighteen years old and I spent most of her life suppressing what she is through torture disguised as medical treatment." I grabbed the whisky bottle, didn't bother with a glass. "I injected her with silver compounds monthly for years. Hired a witch to spell her room, her clothes, her food. Systematically suppressed every supernatural trait. And for what? So she could be human for seventeen years before transforming anyway?"
"You delayed the inevitable. Protected her from becoming a monster for as long as possible."
"Or I traumatized her unnecessarily and prevented her from learning to control her abilities safely." I took another drink. "What if suppression made everything worse? What if I'd just let her transform naturally as a child, taught her control like Lyanna could have done, she'd be adjusted and stable instead of dangerously powerful and barely in control?"
Marcus crossed his arms. "You're second-guessing two decades of decisions. That's not useful."
"Neither is continuing down a path I know is wrong."
"Is it wrong? Or are you just uncomfortable with necessary violence?" Marcus moved closer. "Edmund, you've documented hundreds of werewolf attacks. You've seen what they're capable of when control slips. You've spent twenty years studying the threat they pose to human civilization."
"I've spent twenty years justifying murdering my wife."
"You've spent twenty years protecting humanity from supernatural predators." Marcus's voice hardened. "Don't lose sight of the mission because you saw your daughter move like her mother. Nostalgia isn't strategy."
"This isn't nostalgia. This is recognizing I built my entire career on a foundation of panicked murder."
"Then tear it down after the operation. Question everything, have your crisis, rebuild your worldview. But in four days, we execute the plan. Because the alternative is forty-three werewolves walking away from that tournament to continue threatening human populations."
Forty-three. He was using my numbers, my threat assessments, my carefully constructed justifications.
"What if they're not threats?" I asked quietly. "What if they're just... people. People with abilities we don't understand. People who want to survive."
"Then they survive somewhere else, not in Britain where they pose risk to civilian populations." Marcus pulled out his phone, showed me intelligence reports. "These are documented werewolf attacks from the past decade. Eighty-seven human casualties across England, Scotland, and Wales. Some were accidents. Many weren't. This isn't hypothetical threat, Edmund. This is body count."
I scanned the reports. Recognized most of them, I'd compiled this database myself over years of research.
But looking at it now, with Vivienne's training fresh in my mind...
"How many of these attacks were defensive?" I asked. "How many were werewolves responding to hunters, to threats, to humans attacking them first?"
"Does it matter? Dead is dead."
"It matters if we're calling self-defense 'aggression' to justify extermination."
Marcus sighed, putting away his phone. "Sir, with respect… you're compromised. Emotionally, psychologically. You're watching your daughter train and seeing your dead wife. That's understandable. But it's also clouding your judgment."
"Or it's clearing my judgment for the first time in seventeen years."
"That's not a decision you should make four days before major operation." Marcus moved to the laptop, checked the tactical maps. "Everything's positioned. Teams are ready. We proceed as planned. You can have your existential crisis after we've completed the mission."
"And if I order you to abort?"
"I'd remind you that operational authority transfers to me if commander is deemed unfit for duty." His voice was gentle, almost apologetic. "Edmund, you're drinking at two PM, you've been dark for two days, and you're questioning the entire premise of the operation. That's textbook compromised. I can't let personal crisis derail years of planning."
The realization settled slowly. "You're taking over command."
"Temporarily. Until you're functional again." Marcus pulled out a radio, clicked through channels. "Teams, this is Command. Operation status confirmed… proceeding as scheduled. Commander Ashford is temporarily indisposed but all tactical elements remain unchanged."
Responses crackled back. Confirmations. Acknowledgments. The trap advancing regardless of my doubts.
"You can't do this," I said, but the protest was weak even to my own ears.
"I just did. You're relieved of active command until you're psychologically fit." Marcus pocketed the radio. "Stay in your hotel room. Drink. Process. Have your crisis. But don't interfere with the operation."
"Vivienne will die."
"Your daughter died the moment she transformed. What's left is a werewolf wearing her face." Marcus headed for the door. "I'm sorry, Edmund. I know this is painful. But the mission is too important to abort because you're having regrets."
He left, closing the door with quiet finality.
I stood alone in the hotel room, surrounded by tactical maps and empty bottles and the crushing realization that I'd lost control of my own operation.
And I couldn't stop it.
I moved to the window, raised the binoculars again. Vivienne had finished training, was laughing at something her packmate said. She looked happy. Free. Fully herself in a way she'd never been under my suppression.
Beautiful. Powerful. Exactly like her mother.
The whisky beckoned. I poured another glass, sat at the laptop, pulled up Lyanna's journal one more time.
The wolf is coming whether I want it or not. Please, God, let the baby survive this.
Lyanna's last words, written moments before I killed her.
She'd been trying to save Vivienne.
And I'd murdered her for it.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to the screen, to my dead wife, to the seventeen years I'd wasted building justifications around my crime. "I'm so sorry, Lyanna. You were protecting her. And I killed you anyway."
The journal didn't answer. The dead never did.