How Long?

How Long?
LINCOLN

“I think someone is going to have to explain to me just what the fuck is going on,” Rafael hissed with a low growl that was aimed at the back of Giselle’s head. His eyes narrowed, his gaze zeroing in on every little stitch of Giselle’s muscles as she grew more and more agitated and focused her beseeching gaze on my mother. 
“So you are the man responsible for the Omegas that abused my daughter,” my mother snarled, standing with her chin high.
“M-Mom! I-I-” Gisellele began, but my father interrupted.
“Shut up Giselle,” he snapped, and Giselle gazed at him in quiet horror. “The grown ups are speaking now.”
Swallowing the laugh that threatened to bubble up my throat, I fixed my attention on Rafael’s slowly disintegrating scowl. His face morphed into a mask of confusion as he regarded my mother with an almost dismissive frown.
“I’m sorry,” he replied to her, shaking his head. “Omegas abused her? I thought I heard it was the Dread Wolf Pack.”
My mother burped a laugh, covering it with a withering glare as she said, “You know precisely who I am speaking of. The Omega trash that ended up raising my child! The fools that thought they could parent an Alpha’s daughter. This daughter! My daughter! A daughter that was stolen from me and then replaced with their atrociously pathetic little-”
“Mother!” I barked in warning, every muscle rocking up tight as I contemplated reaching across the space to close my hands around her throat. “Enough!”
It was disgusting the way she spoke about Ginger now as opposed to then, and try as I might, I couldn’t shake that there was some other reasoning behind it. Something I hadn’t yet thought of. Something way more sinister than Ginger being an Omega’s daughter. Because she loved Ginger at one time. I know she did. So why all the hate? And why so much of it?
My mother hooked her sharp gaze on me and I shook my head, my jaw pulsing with anger. 
Rafael’s gaze sizzled as he glared at me and all I could do was nod in Giselle’s direction. I said, “Tell us again of how horribly your Omega parents used to treat you, Giselle. For surely Alpha Rafael must have been aware of such a thing.”
Giselle looked like she was going to be sick, casting her gaze downward toward her lap and closing her eyes. “I…” she began and the rest of us waited for her to finish, but she simply shook her head and buried her face in her hands.
Rafael took that as his cue, stepping a little closer to her chair and causing her entire body to flinch at his nearness. “Giselle,” he spoke softly, much more softly than she deserved anyway, “what is the meaning of this? Who are these Omegas that they’re speaking of? I find it hard to believe that Fawn would have-”
“She didn’t,” Giselle whispered, a barely audible plea for Goddess only knew what. 
“Then what the hell are they talking about?” Rafael snapped, lifting his gaze from Giselle to survey the rest of us like we were the liars and not she. “Giselle was raised by my brother the Alpha and his wife, our Luna Fawn. And from what I’ve heard, the attack on my family happened in the days after I left, so there wasn’t even time for Giselle to have been-”
“I wasn’t!” Giselle snapped, standing to face Rafael and pointing an accusing finger in his direction. “You knew didn’t you? You knew that they weren’t my real parents and you never told me. None of you did.”
Rafael swallowed thickly, visibly uncomfortable. He nodded, ashamed. “I was sworn to secrecy. Fawn never wanted you to feel like you were unwanted and she…she loved you so much.”
“You knew?” my mother snarled. “You knew she didn’t belong to your pack and you kept her anyway? Were you the one who-”
“No!” Rafael snapped, glaring at my mother. “I had nothing to do with the switch. Believe it or not, until the day that she was injured playing too close to the ravine, none of us even suspected that Giselle was not my brother’s biological child. She lost a lot of blood that day and she was only eight years old, so her healing capabilities were at a minimum. That was when my brother and his wife were informed that Giselle was not their real daughter.”
“So you knew for years,” my mother harped, stepping back from the table angrily. “Did any of you even try to find out what happened?”
Rafael sighed heavily. “I did, against my brother’s wishes. I went to the Emergency Hospital where Giselle was born all those years ago, but it had apparently burned down the night after she was born. So there were no records for me to look through. No one that remembered what children had been born that night. So, I left it alone.” He turned his attention back to Giselle. “How did you find out that I knew?”
Giselle, for the first time since I’ve met her, broke down in real tears. Gut wrenching sobs that dropped her back into her seat and caused my mother to leap forward to soothe her.
“Giselle,” I said sternly, “he asked you a question.”
Giselle wiped her eyes, her sad frown fixed on some far off place beyond my mother’s head. “My mother told me.”
My mother gasped, “I never-”
“Not you!” Giselle growled, her face crumpling once more. “My mother. Fawn.”
“But Fawn was not your mother!” my mother snarled. “I am your-”
“She was my mother!” Giselle snapped and I had to hold back a grin. “And she was kind and loving and caring! And nothing like I told you she was. So yes! She was my mother. And she died protecting me!”
“And you spat on her memory by lying about who she was,” my father hissed angrily, calling my attention to him for the first time since Giselle’s confession had begun. Oddly enough, he appeared unsurprised by this truth. Almost as if he’d been aware all along of how treacherous his new daughter was and chose to keep silent. 
And one had to wonder…why?
“How long have you known?” I heard myself asking, my eyes fixed on my father’s angry face. 
“Wh-What?” My father scoffed, fixing his gaze on me. “Known…known what?”
I spoke with a deadly calm that carried the warning of violence should he answer untruthfully. “That Ginger was not your daughter. How. Long. Have. You. Known?”