Chapter 0003

Down the hallway, I could still hear my mother’s voice.

“Holly doesn’t need to know about Aunt Gina’s illness…”

So much tension filled my body so suddenly that I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. Only my mind was running a million miles a minute.

Aunt Gina was sick and Mom had kept it a secret?!

It seemed too cruel. Gina and I had always gotten along. She was there for me in times when my own mother was not. My mom was too busying going out with various men, obsessed with finding a wealthy man to support her. If I turned out decent, I was only because my Aunt Gina had basically raised me since I was a child.

Standing there, my hand on the doorknob, I began to tremble. The tremors were so hard, that my name plate on my door began to rattle. Quickly I shut the door and released the knob. But not before the nameplate clattered down to the floor on the other side.

Backing away, I worried my eavesdropping might have been found out. But after a moment, no one came, and no one said anything, so I turned away from the door and dropped down, sitting on the foot of my bed.

“Oh, Aunt Gina…”

It was a long night of worrying over Aunt Gina and feeling anger and outrage towards my mom for keeping this a secret from me.

Early the next morning, without much sleep, I changed and left the house, taking a cab to the hospital. The receptionist recognized me as part of the Alpha family and gave me the number of Aunt Gina’s room. When I found it, I had to stop in the doorway, seeing how frail and fragile Aunt Gina looked in the bed.

Her mind still seemed sharp though. She spotted me at once and smiled warmly. “Holly. I heard you were coming to town but I didn’t expect to see you.”

“You didn’t?”

“Your mother has been under some pressure lately. I thought she might forget to mention my condition…”

Despite my mother’s many shortcomings, Aunt Gina never talked badly of her. Family is everything, she’d told me in the past.

I hurried to her side and pulled her into a kind of side hug, the best I could do with her laying down.

“She didn’t tell me anything…” I said.

“I know,” Aunt Gina said. Leaning back, Aunt Gina cupped my face with her hands. “You’ve grown so much.”

I clutched Aunt Gina’s wrists. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

Aunt Gina slowly pulled her hands away, returning them to her lap. “I have Ever-Change Disease.”

I recognized the name. It was a serious disease that only targeted werewolves, and kept them in a chronic state of pain. Eventually, she’d be in a constant state of shifting, caught somewhere between werewolf and human. Her body would eventually exhaust itself and she would die.

“They’ve given me a year,” Aunt Gina said.

A year? That’s such a short time. Heart aching, tears start dropping down my cheeks.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

“Why should I have you worry? You were away at boarding school, focusing on your own life and your studies. It didn’t feel right to burden you with this. And now that your Shift Day is coming up… I was hoping I would get to celebrate it with you, Holly, but I’m sorry. I don’t think I will.”

“It’s alright,” I said at once. Being here like this, laid up in a hospital bed, she had nothing to feel guilty about. Besides, though I wouldn’t tell her this, my Shift Day had already been forgotten.

My 19(th) birthday, or my Shift Day, was the very same day as Alex’s engagement ceremony. No one had mentioned or acknowledged my Shift Day at all, and I imagined that they wouldn’t.

Only Aunt Gina seemed to care about it at all.

Reaching out, she clutched both of my hands. “You’ve always been special, Holly. I’m sure that when your Shift Day comes, you will gain a strong wolf and be a major asset to the pack – someone that none of them can ignore any longer.”

It was a nice little dream that Aunt Gina had for me. I didn’t believe it at all.

“You will come visit me after,” Aunt Gina said, a question in her voice.

“I’m going to visit you as much as I can,” I told her, and meant it.

That evening, the Alpha had an event and Alex was out, which left Mom and I alone for dinner.

At the appropriate time, I went to the dining room to find Mom standing in the doorway to the kitchen. When she spotted me, she waved me over.

“I think we can give the servants a few hours off,” Mom said, leading me into the kitchen. The cook and a maid turned to look at her in shock. I assumed my mother didn’t often say those words in this house. “The meal is almost done isn’t it?”

The cook nodded. “When the oven timer goes off.”

“And the salad?” Mom asked the maid, who had been preparing the salad on the nearby kitchen island.

“Just needs the dressing, ma’am.”

“My daughter and I can handle that,” Mom said and dismissed the servants. We could handle it, and had in the past, before Mom married pack Alpha. I’d never seen her lift a cooking utensil since then.

As the servants left, Mom looked to me expectantly.

Ah. She’d said my daughter and I, but what she meant was me. I was going to do it.

That was fine. I’d gained a lot of cooking experience in my time abroad. The wolves of the Timber pack were exceedingly self-sufficient, perhaps because of the harsh, isolating climate. The Alpha there insisted that everyone know how to cook and clean and take care of themselves. It was even part of our curriculum at the boarding school.

I’d laughed many times then, trying to imagine the kids from my aristocratic school trying to learn how to cook.

As I set to work with the salad, listening for the oven timer, Mom leaned against the kitchen island, crossed her arms, and said, “How long of a break did you take from school? When are you set to return?”

Not only had Mom been unhappy to see me, but now she was eagerly looking forward to me leaving. It shouldn’t have hurt, given the type of person my mother was, but it still did. Mom was the only bully I could never totally harden myself against.

After speaking to Aunt Gina though, I was feeling courageous enough to fight back. “I’m not going back.”

Mom straightened. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not going back. I’m staying with the pack.”

“Like hell you are,” Mom snapped, her face filled with an unattractive mix of horror and shock.

“Why did you keep Aunt Gina’s illness a secret? I’m a medical student. I could have been here to help take care of her.”

“You know very well why you couldn’t have come back. Just as you know why you can’t stay this time. It’s your own fault, that scandal with Alex. You’ve brought so much shame onto this family.”

These were old lectures that I’d heard a thousand times before. It still hurt inside, but I’d trained myself not to let it show.

When the oven timer beeped, I walked around the island back towards the oven. Unfortunately, this brought me closer to my mother. She grabbed my arm tightly near the elbow, keeping me from continuing.

“You will stay away from Alex,” she hissed. “And when you leave, you will not return again. Ever.”

White hot anger flared up inside of me, fueled by the unending hurt my mother always seemed to cause within me. Turning toward her, I snapped, “You only care about protecting your position as the Alpha’s second-chance mate. Since you’ve married Alpha, you stopped caring about me, your own daughter.”

“How dare you speak to me that way?!”

“It’s true!”

Outraged, Mom lifted her hand as if to slap me.

At the last moment, Alex barged in and grabbed her wrist, stopping her.