Chapter 44 His Secret
Grace stared out the bus window, watching the streetlights blur past as the vehicle carried her away from the hospital and back toward what passed for home these days.
Her mind kept replaying the conversation with Grant, turning over each word like stones in her hand, examining them from every angle.
Her mother was alive.
Grace didn't know how that news made her feel. There should have been joy, right? Relief? Excitement at the possibility of meeting the woman who'd given birth to her?
But all Grace felt was a hollow ache in her chest.
Because if her mother were alive, that meant she'd given Grace away, she had handed her over to Grant and Sarah, and then just disappeared. She had chosen not to be part of Grace's life for eighteen years. EIGHTEEN fucking years!
‘She didn't want me,’ Grace thought, the realization settling over. ‘Whatever her reasons were, she gave me up. She let someone else raise me.’
Grant had claimed he was under some sort of magical oath that prevented him from talking about Grace's origins. That he literally couldn't tell her certain things even if he wanted to. The words would stick in his throat, the magic enforcing his silence.
And if he tried too hard… something bad would happen.
Grace wasn't sure if she believed that. Grant had lied about so many things already. What was one more lie to add to the pile?
But if he was telling the truth, if there really was a magical oath binding him to silence, then things were more complicated than Grace had imagined. More fucked up than she'd prepared herself for.
You didn't put magical oaths on simple family secrets. You didn't bind people to silence with supernatural contracts unless the information was dangerous, unless, revealing it could cause serious harm.
Which meant Grace's origins, whoever her parents were, whatever circumstances had led to her being raised by Grant and Sarah, all of it was wrapped up in something big enough to require magical enforcement.
Grace's reflection stared back at her from the bus window, she looked tired and older than she was just a week ago. Like the events of the past few days had aged her in ways that had nothing to do with time.
‘Even if I find her, Grace thought, what makes me think she'll want to see me? If she gave me up once, why would she want me back now?
The question sat heavy in her chest, mixing with all the other uncertainties and fears that had taken up residence there.
But beneath the doubt, beneath the hurt of imagined rejection, was something else. There was a need that Grace couldn't quite suppress no matter how much she tried.
She needed to know. Needed to understand who she was, where she came from, and why all of this was happening. Even if the answers hurt. Even if they confirmed her worst fears. Even if meeting her mother ended in rejection.
Not knowing was worse than any truth could be.
With the necklace gone, the only clue to finding her mother was the person who'd given Grace that necklace in the first place. Her grandmother.
The woman Grace had called Grandmama for a long time. The woman who'd told Grace to never take the pendant off.
But Grandmama had died years ago.
The reminder came with a familiar ache of grief. Grace's grandmother had passed when Grace was fourteen, taken by a sudden heart attack that no one had seen coming. Grace had been devastated, had cried at the funeral until she had no tears left.
Now she wondered if that woman had even been her real grandmother or if that relationship had been another lie in a life built on lies.
Grace pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window, fighting back the burning sensation in her eyes. She was so tired of crying. So tired of feeling like the ground kept disappearing beneath her feet.
The bus slowed to a stop and Grace stood automatically, her body moving through the familiar motions while her mind remained tangled in thought. She stepped off onto the sidewalk and started walking, her feet carrying her toward Uncle Matteo's house without conscious direction.
The street was quiet, most houses dark or showing only the faint glow of television screens through curtained windows. Normal people living normal lives, completely unaware of the supernatural world that existed alongside theirs.
Grace had been one of those people just days ago. Now she felt like she was looking at that normalcy from the outside, separated by a glass wall she could see through but never cross again.
She was almost to the house when she noticed the cars.
Two of them, parked at odd angles in front of Uncle Matteo's place like they'd been abandoned in a hurry. Grace recognized them both immediately.
Maddox's truck. The beat-up Ranger he'd been driving for years, held together mostly by determination and effort.
And Enzo's car. That sleek luxury vehicle that screamed wealth and privilege.
Grace's steps faltered. What was Enzo doing here? And why were both cars parked like that, doors not quite closed properly, one still running with the headlights on?
Something was wrong.
Her pace quickened, then broke into a run as she covered the remaining distance to the house.
The front door was wide open.
Grace burst through it and immediately the smell hit her. Thick, metallic, and overwhelming, coating the back of her throat and making her want to gag.
Blood.
So much blood.
Grace's eyes took in the scene in fragments, her brain struggling to process what she was seeing.
Uncle Matteo on the floor, his body broken and bleeding, his chest a mess of torn flesh and exposed bone.
And two wolves.
They were massive, both of them, one was pure black while the other was also black but had a streak of grey in its fur, their bodies filling the living room with fur and muscle and violence. They were locked together in combat, their movements too fast to follow clearly. Blood matted their fur, some of it theirs, some of it probably Matteo's.
Grace couldn't tell which was which at first. Both wolves were similar in size, both covered in wounds that should have been fatal but somehow weren't.
Then one of them got the upper hand, the wolf with the grey streak. He moved with frightening speed, using his weight and leverage to force the other wolf down. His jaws closed around the black wolf's throat, biting down hard.
Grace’s hands clasped over her mouth, trying to suppress the gasp that came.
The wolf with the advantage turned his head slightly, his eyes finding Grace where she stood frozen in the doorway.
And Grace's heart stopped.
She knew those eyes. Had known them her whole life.
Dark brown, almost black, with flecks of gold that caught the light. Eyes that had comforted her after nightmares, had crinkled with laughter at her jokes, had looked at her with a softness reserved only for her.
Maddox.
The wolf was Maddox.
"Mad…” Grace breathed, the nickname falling from her lips without thought.