CHAPTER 120
CHAPTER 120
With the amount of resentment I felt towards him, I wonder how he was still able to maintain that stupid cool façade of his. I wanted nothing more than for him to melt from the heat of my glare.
“I see you haven’t changed even after all these years.” He said, in that same patronising tone I loathed. “I’ll have you returned to your beloved soon enough, but I must tell you something first.” His words caught my attention. What could he possibly want to tell me?
He let out a sigh and rolled his shoulders, as if bracing himself for the words he was about to say. His actions made me furrow my brow in confusion. What could be so difficult to say? My questions were answered not too long after.
“You might have been young, but I’m sure you already knew that your parents' deaths were far from natural.” Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. He looked at me as if trying to gauge my reaction before continuing.
“I might not have been there when your father died, but from the way your mother described it, I’m guessing their deaths were very similar. Leading me to conclude that they were both victims of the same suspect.” Could he just get to the point already?
He readjusted his collar, as if it wasn’t already loose enough, and cleared his throat before continuing. “They were murdered, Anastatia. By the very race murdered them you might one day lead as queen.” It took a minute for the bomb to settle, but when it did, it was like the world had fallen all around me.
Werewolves? Why would werewolves want anything to do with my parents? Was he saying this to get into my head? He’s a hunter. That’s what they do, right? Right. Of course, I shouldn’t believe a word he was saying.
He paused for what felt like forever, still trying to gauge my reaction, but I kept my face still, as still as I could keep it when I felt like all the air had been forced from my lungs.
“I know that this is a lot of information for you to handle, but you needed to know.” He gave a pause that told me he still had a lot to say. I couldn’t find it in me to look at him anymore. I was lost in the memories of the last few months.
It had been like a dream; maybe I should have known it was too good to be true. A heaviness settled in my chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe. “When you disappeared nine years ago, we looked everywhere we could for you, but the harder we looked, the more impossible it had been to find you.” He gave a short sigh that I barely registered through my labored breathing and blurred vision.
I thought he was done, but I was wrong. He was as far from being done as an executioner was from letting his victim go. “Your father was a member of the council. In the council, there are rules. Rules that all wolves must follow. The royals are more like ceremony in the werewolf world. The real leaders are the council members.” I was slowly calming down; the lump that was stuck in my throat had dissolved, and the blood that had rushed to my ears slowed down considerably as I listened intently.
“Or at least that was what it was supposed to be. Somewhere along the way, the council lost sight of its founding goal, which was to keep order in the werewolf world. They became greedier and a lot more superficial. They no longer cared about order, much less peace. They had been eroded from the very foundation.” He took a deep breath before continuing again.
“One of the rules they had was that wolves could not be mated to humans. Even if you found out that your mate was a human, they were to reject the human and find a second chance mate.” I don’t know how, but somehow it felt like I had heard these words before. This entire story…
“When your father found out your mother was his mate, he did not reject her. Apparently, he loved her deeply and couldn’t let go of her, so he accepted her as his mate and made her fall in love with him. They were happy; everything seemed like it would all be fine. Despite the resistance that your father was met with from the council, he genuinely believed that one day they would come around, so they went about living their lives.”
Then all of it clicked. This was my bedtime story. The childhood bedtime story I had loved the most was the reality that my parents had lived through. I sat still listening to the same story I had heard a million times as a child.
“But things did not go the way your father wished. Your mother was pregnant with you and all alone in the room when they came after her. She was frightened and didn’t know what to do. They knew your father had gone on a business trip and would not be back for a while, and they wanted to make good use of their opportunity. Just before they snapped her neck, your father came back and saw his pregnant human mate at their mercy. He lost it. He fought a bitter fight and eventually carried the two of you away.”
When Dad told me this story as a bedtime story, the ending always said that they lived happily ever after, and maybe that was true, at least for a while, but right now they weren’t even living.
“As for how he was killed, I don’t know the exact details yet, but I know why they killed your mother. After seeing her husband die because of wolves, she became a hunter. There was this craziness in her eyes that never went away. She was determined to get rid of their entire race, and she was dangerously close to her goal.”