Chapter 76

Dominic

All the blood in my body rushed down to my feet, then up to my head.

I felt the urge to fall back on the couch, but simply put one hand down between me and my father. Leaning forward, I felt that this conversation was meant to be had in whispers.

“What are you talking about?” I asked my father. “What haven’t you been telling me?”

Appearing calm was not a concern of mine, and my father’s reaction confirmed that I seemed desperate.

“I never meant to hurt you, or hide things from you,” he said, his eyes going to the ceiling as he tried to summon up the courage or inspiration to speak openly. “Everything I have done for you was because I thought it best for you, safest.”

I had no response, and so I made none. Eventually he went on.

“Your mother was one of the strongest women I’ve ever known,” he said, focusing on a positive beginning to the tale he had to spin. “I’m biased, sure, but as a young Alpha I had my fair share of dates and prospects and puppy love to know the difference between finding a good spouse and finding the right match.”

Mira.

“She was kind but had a backbone of steel, could be stern but always fair in her judgment and treatment of others,” his eyes went somewhere else as he spoke. “She was truly beloved by so many. The Pack was stronger because of her. I was stronger.”

It wasn’t often that I saw a vulnerable side of my father, and part of me was glad when he dared to show this side to me. It felt like the bravest thing a person could do.

“So when she died—“ his voice cracked, and cleared his throat to set it right. “I thought the world would end. I thought the Pack would mutiny against me, wondering how I could let her be taken away from us. I felt so much guilt, while also deep in my grief.”

His face pinched in on itself in a painful memory.

“I probably wasn’t a very good father to you, for years,” he said, looking at me. “I am so sorry I was so focused on my own quest that I neglected to look after you as you grieved. I left you alone.”

“It’s okay, it was a long time ago,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You did your best.”

“Maybe,” he said, quiet for a moment.

“What was your quest?” I asked, not moving on from those words.

“To find out what really happened to her,” he said, his voice as heavy as stone.

“She got sick.”

That was what we said, like a coded phrase for something too horrible to say out loud. Everyone knew what we meant, so why get into any specifics?

“That’s bullshit,” my father said, surprising me with his harsh choice of word. “Your mother was healthy, Simone was in the best shape of her life and hardly ever got ‘sick’ a day in her life. I could never accept that she could get so sick so fast and suddenly be gone.”

The blood vessels in my skull were throbbing as he started to rant about his theories.

“Someone did this to her.”

The room blurred around us, but I held myself in control.

“Who?”

“I don’t know exactly,” he said. “She was on a mission trip, doing outreach among distant Packs that were disconnected and vulnerable. They would try to parlay with Rogue groups too, encouraging wolves to come back to the Pack, the community.”

“I didn’t know she did any of that,” I said, relishing new information about the woman who created me.

“It wasn’t widely known, and was dangerous for a Luna to be out in that line or work,” he said, sighing. “But she insisted she would join her team in the field, not just sit behind a desk and give orders like a despot.”

There was pride in his voice as he spoke of her policies and leadership.

“And of course when you were born she stopped, content enough with the behind-the-scenes work while raising you,” he told me. “It was actually through her work that she found the specialist when you were hospitalized as a teenager.”

I grimaced as I thought of what I’d learned about that intense time of my life.

“But after you got better, somehow she got worse,” he confessed. “She went out on a trip— I begged her not to— and when she came back… something was wrong, and she died two days later.”

My heart was caught in my throat, and I felt my fingers gripping into the couch cushion. No matter how much time had passed, it still hit like a punch to gut every time I thought about it. The funeral rites had a closed casket, her body so mauled by disease we wanted to save others from seeing her.

“I spent months, years, searching for answers,” my fathers voice was fervent, “but everything seems to slip through my fingers. And then, I realized it was consuming me, this quest for the truth, and I was neglecting the life that was right in front of me. My life with you.”

He rested his palm on my cheek. It was hot, but I felt safe like a child.

“You have the best of her in you,” he said warmly, “I hope you know that.”

We stayed quiet, my father looking lighter after unloading his secret to me. I was glad for the information, but did not feel any relief. My mind was moving fast, going over every detail I’d just heard and anything I remembered from the blurry years when I was ill and my mother lost her life.

And as the pieces swirled in my head, I thought of the Rogues we’d been chasing. Mira spoke of their plans to create medically enhanced Alpha wolves, and the thought made my stomach turn.

I was confirmed in one thought: what happened to my mother was no accident.

Mira

I walked home lost in wedding planning, purposefully walking by the ceremonial space where new strings of lights were being strung between poles. It was hard to believe that all this fuss was for my wedding, and I tried not to feel too guilty that everyone was working so hard for us.

“It’s really a gift,” Jade, the wedding planner, had said to me, “from the Pack to you. They throw you a big party, and then you protect and serve the Pack for the rest of your life.”

She’d been so cheery, but somehow made it sound like indentured servitude. I hoped that my relationship with the members of the Pack was more mutually beneficial than just that.

I was still overwhelmed at the wedding documents, wondering if I should’ve spoken up more about healthy childbearing and keeping my life as normal as possible. But Dominic’s reaction to it all had pulled my focus, and even as I walked home I could see the twitch of his face and panic in his eyes as he looked over the papers that would bind us to one another.

So many people get cold-feet, hell even I was nervous about tripping over my own feet and falling on my face. But I had a sinking feeling that something else was bothering him.

For now, I would just have to trust him to talk to me when he needed to.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I realized I had a few missed messages from when I was in the Alpha’s office.

One message, and a missed call, from Ward.

“We need to talk,” he wrote to me.

No we don’t.

My wolf apparently had a strong opinion on Ward.

There was a message from Lucian, and I smiled as I thought about my quasi-brother-in-law. We hadn’t seen each other much since the rescue mission, and I was happy to see he wasn't hiding somewhere. He was a strange character, but I was glad to have him as a friend.

I typed out my response then put my phone away.

“Of course, I’ll see you later.”