Chapter 194

Agnes

Elijah had been gone all day, still at the prison with Olivia, and my anxiety was getting worse by the minute. I knew if I didn’t distract myself soon, I’d drive myself crazy. Or maybe even burn the hotel down; in fact, my palms had been itching all afternoon, warmth sparking through me like fireworks. I had dunked my hands in the hotel ice bucket more times than I could count.

“Hey,” I said, turning to Thea, “how about we have a girls’ night? Just you and me.”

Thea looked up, momentarily distracted from her stuffed pig. “What would we do?”

“Well, I saw the hotel has a nice pool. We could go swimming, then maybe order room service and watch movies. What do you think?”

Her face lit up. “Can we get ice cream from room service?”

“Absolutely,” I promised. “And we’ve got those face masks and nail polish from the mall. We’ll doll ourselves up for when Daddy gets back.”

Twenty minutes later, we walked into the hotel’s indoor pool area. It was nearly empty, just one older couple soaking in the hot tub on the far side. Thea wasted no time, dropping her towel and cannonballing into the shallow end with a splash that made me laugh.

I slipped into the water, feeling instantly soothed by the coolness against my flushed skin. Maybe the secret to controlling these powers of mine was remaining submerged in cold water for the rest of my life.

“Watch me, Mommy!” Thea called, attempting a somersault underwater that ended with her sputtering and giggling. “Did you see?”

“I saw,” I assured her. “Very impressive. Can you do it again?”

We spent the next hour swimming, playing mermaids, and making each other laugh. It felt good to just be in the moment.

After the pool, we returned to our room, showered, and got into our new pajamas—matching sets with little hearts all over them that Thea had insisted we buy earlier. I called room service while Thea flipped through the movie options on the TV.

I ordered each of us a big burger and fries, a dessert, and a small bottle of wine for myself. I wasn’t much of a drinker usually, but tonight I needed something to take the edge off.

When the food arrived, we spread it out on the bed and started our beauty treatments. Thea insisted on applying my face mask first, carefully spreading the green goop across my cheeks and forehead.

“You look like an alien,” she informed me with a giggle when she was done.

“Thank you very much,” I replied, reaching for her mask—a gentler formula made for kids. “Your turn now.”

Once we both looked like extraterrestrials, we started on our nails. I painted Thea’s a sparkly purple that she’d picked out, and she painted mine a bold pink that I’d never have chosen for myself. But watching her concentrate so hard on not getting polish on my skin, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, was worth sporting hot pink nails for a few days.

We ate our dinner and watched a silly comedy that had Thea in stitches. I sipped my wine slowly, feeling some of the day’s tension melt away.

But as the movie ended, Thea turned to me, her expression suddenly serious.

“Mommy?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Are we going to be okay?”

The question caught me off guard. I set down my wine glass and pulled her close. “Of course we are. We’ve been through some tough stuff, but we’ll be fine. I promise. As long as we have each other, we’ll always be okay.”

She nodded against my shoulder, then pulled back slightly to look at my hands. The burns had faded to pink splotches, still visible but no longer angry or painful.

“How did you make fire come out of your hands?” she asked softly, poking at the marks.

I froze. I hadn’t expected her to bring it up so directly. Part of me wanted to make something up, to protect her from the truth, but she deserved better than that. She’d seen what happened; she deserved to know why.

I bit my lip, then sighed. “It’s something that some werewolves can do—or used to be able to do, a long time ago. They’re called elementals.”

“Elementals?” she repeated.

“Yes. Some wolves had special abilities with fire, water, earth, or air. It was pretty common hundreds of years ago, but not anymore. Almost no one has those abilities now. But for some reason, I do.” I watched her carefully, ready to stop if she seemed frightened.

But to my surprise, Thea’s face lit up. “That’s so cool! You have super powers!”

I blinked, taken aback by her reaction. “You think it’s cool? Even after… what happened?”

“Well, yeah!” she exclaimed. “I mean, it was scary when it happened, but that’s just because you didn’t know how to control it, right? All of the superheroes in my comic books have accidents before they learn how to use their powers for good.”

“I…” I hesitated, unsure of what to say. My inner monologue had been so cruel that I wasn’t used to hearing someone actually be… excited about my powers. “I don’t know about being a superhero, but maybe I’ll be able to light a candle without a match.”

“Or make a campfire without matches! Or keep us warm if we get lost in the snow, or kill bad guys!” Thea’s imagination was clearly running wild. She flopped back on the bed, her arms stretched out wide. “Man, I wish I had special powers like that.”

My heart squeezed in my chest. Here I was, terrified of these abilities that had nearly killed my family, and Thea saw them as something amazing. Something to aspire to. It made me want to cry, but I blinked the tears away.

Before I could respond, the hotel room door opened. Elijah walked in, looking exhausted. His eyes were shadowed, his shoulders slumped, and there was a strange expression on his face—like he’d seen a ghost.

My stomach immediately twisted into knots. Whatever news he had brought with him from the prison, it wasn’t good. Had he unmarked Olivia despite his promises that he wouldn’t?

When he saw us sitting on the bed with our face masks and painted nails, a soft smile briefly replaced his troubled expression.

“Looks like you two have been having fun.”

“We had a girls’ night!” Thea announced proudly. “We went shopping earlier, then we went swimming and did beauty treatments and watched a movie and everything!”

“I can see that.” He glanced at me, and something in his eyes made my heart skip a beat. “Thea, honey,” he said, returning his attention to her, “would you mind waiting here for a bit and finishing your movie? I need to talk to Agnes about some grown-up stuff. We’ll just be in the hallway.”

Thea nodded, and Elijah took my hand and led me out into the hallway, shutting the door behind us. The moment we were alone, I couldn’t hold back anymore.

“What happened? You were gone all day. Did you unmark her? Is she—”

“She’s fine,” he cut me off. “I didn’t unmark her. But I did… make a deal with her.”

I pulled back, staring at him. “What kind of deal?”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I agreed to reduce her sentence by two years, with a chance of parole. In exchange for information.”

“You did what?” I hissed. “Elijah, how could you? After everything she’s done—”

“It was worth it, Agnes,” he insisted, gripping my shoulders. “Trust me, what she told me… it changes everything.”

I shook my head, struggling to understand. “What could possibly be worth letting her get out earlier?”

“Isabella,” he said simply, and my heart skipped a beat.

“What about her?” My mouth went dry. “What did Olivia say about my daughter?”

Elijah took a deep breath. “Agnes… those bones didn’t belong to your daughter.”

I blinked. “What? But the DNA test—”

“Was falsified,” he finished. “There was no match. The bones weren’t human at all.”

My knees nearly gave out beneath me. “That’s not possible. The police confirmed—”

“Agnes, think about it. Your father warned you not to trust the results. And he was right.”

I felt like I couldn’t breathe. If those bones weren’t Isabella’s, then what had we buried? And more importantly, where was my daughter?

“There’s more,” Elijah said, taking both my hands in his. “Do you remember how Isabella was conceived?”

I nodded slowly, panic building in my chest. “I was drugged at a party. Had a one-night stand. I never saw his face clearly. I woke up alone.”

“Seven years ago, I was drugged too. At a party.”

I stared at him, not understanding what he was getting at. “What does that have to do with—”

“It was the same party, Agnes. The same night.”

My heart pounded in my ears. “How do you know that?”

“Olivia told me. She was there that night. She meant to drug me so she could sleep with me and get pregnant. But someone swapped drinks with me at the bar.”

“I swapped drinks with someone,” I whispered slowly, remembering. “A guy bumped into me, and our drinks got mixed up. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

“That was me, Agnes,” Elijah said softly. “But Olivia wasn’t giving up. She drugged my second drink when she realized the first one hadn’t worked. So we were both drugged that night.”

The world seemed to tilt beneath my feet. “Are you saying—”

“Our fated mate bond pulled us together, even in that state. We found each other somehow.” He squeezed my hands tighter. “Agnes… Thea is our daughter.”