Chapter 220

Fiona

Five sets of eyes stare at me- four of them with disbelief. I know I should be excited but worry and anxiety fill me. What if they don’t like me?

I sink back into Ethan’s chest and drop my eyes to try to calm myself, but Etha is ahead of me. The soft purring starts up again, easing my worry. I love when he does that.

“Good,” he murmurs, his lips brushing my ear. “I’m right here for you. If you want to wait, we can—”

“No,” I whisper, twisting my fingers in my shirt. “I want to meet them.”

“Then meet them, little mate,” he says. Fingers gently grip my chin and lift it, letting me see the small group of people in front of me. Now that I’m paying attention, I can see it. The old woman looks like my mother, her soft features and pretty brown eyes. The old man has the same nose and smile as my mom, and the sight of his soft smile has my eyes tearing up.

I bite back a whimper as my eyes trail over to the former King. My uncle. He has the same color hair as my mother, yet his has streaks of gray, something I didn’t get to see in my mother since her hair fell out early due to the radiation and her sickness.

Then, I look at the man on the end. His dark hair has silver streaking through it, and he looks like an older and slightly darker version of Aaron, but his eyes are what catch me off guard. A beautiful hazel color I see in the mirror stare back at me, and I just know.

He is my father.

Tears blur my vision, and a sob forces its way out of me. Like a chain reaction, each of them launches forward, wrapping their arms around me and crying with me.

“Oh, the Goddess has blessed us!”

“She’s beautiful like her mother.”

“My baby girl is back.”

“Oh, miracles do happen!”

Once everyone calms down, me included, and we’re all wiping the tears off our cheeks, they all stay huddled close. It would probably be a strange sight, with me in Ethan’s lap and a bunch of people around me, but I feel nothing but ease as I look at them.

My father and Aaron are at my sides, holding my hands while my grandparents stand at the end of the bed.

“How is this possible?” My father, Maximus, asks.

“We think your wife was poisoned when she was attacked. Somehow, she made it to the docks and onto a boat to the East,” Ethan answers for me, sensing that I’m overwhelmed with everything.

My father shakes his head, asking, “Why?”

“She had amnesia, Dad. She probably couldn’t remember to find us,” Aaron answers. Our father pauses, making me wonder what he’s thinking. What would it be like to hear our mate had been poisoned and forgotten you?

I peek up at Ethan to find him already looking down at me. It would be awful. I know it would. It would be even worse than when I found out Ethan had been poisoned.

“Where is she?”

I freeze, then slowly look up at the man who feels familiar to me. Is that part of being a Lycan? You just know and feel connected to the people closest to you? I tucked that question away to ask Ethan later.

“She never recovered,” I answer, trying not to cry again. Now that I know the truth, it’s worse. If only I’d known she was a Lycan, I might have been able to get her some help.

My father sucks in a deep breath, his words cracking as they come out, “When did she…”

He doesn’t finish. We all know what he means, and the wave of distress and pain that hits me also hits Ethan, making him grit his teeth. It wasn’t recent, but my reaction to talking about my mother’s death is still intense. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it simply because I had to sit there helplessly while she slowly faded away.

“Three years ago,” I croak, my tear-filled vision blurring. “She passed while in the hospital, having her condition tested for the millionth time.”

It feels like it was just yesterday.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that alone,” Ethan murmurs, pulling me back into his chest. I snake my arms around his waist, wondering what would have happened if I’d met Ethan all those years ago. Then, I shake my head. There’s no point in wondering about things I can’t change.

My father slumps back into a chair and rasps, “Three years. I knew she was gone, but I didn’t realize she’d passed so recently. I thought… I thought she died twenty years ago because I couldn’t feel our bond.”

Something inside me cracks and shatters at his words and the raw emotion in his voice. I can practically taste the devastation he feels in the air. It’s so heavy that it’s palpable.

“Did you live a happy life? Was Elizabeth… was she happy?”

Was she happy? Mom had lost so much that she couldn’t remember, but I don’t know if she was truly happy.

“I like to think she was,” I answer truthfully. “We’d had each other and loved each other, but now, I realize why she had those random moments of sadness. Neither of us knew what we were missing, but I guess she could still sense it sometimes.”

He nods, and my uncle steps up to his side, clapping him on the shoulder in solidarity. They share a brief moment of silence before my uncle turns to me.

“And today was the first time you ever shifted?”

I nod.

“I was thinking about it and figured that the poison must have suppressed her wolf, and if I was as young as you say, some of it may have passed to me through breast feeding, which could have also suppressed mine,” I tell them. I’d thought about it a bit after Aaron told me how old I was, and it was the only thing that made sense.

“The only other thing I can think of was that you wolf was traumatized,” my uncle says, rubbing his chin in thought. I look up at him, confused. He notices and continues, “Because her mother was ill, for one. It could also be because she was not around other Lycans, leaving her dormant.”

But my wolf is no longer dormant.

She came out and protected me.

I look around me at the people gathered, and now, she’s helped me find my family.

Unknown POV

Rage boils my blood. How the hell did she foil my plans again? A pathetic, weak girl like her.

Growling, I throw the bottle across the room, only feeling slightly satisfied when it shatters against the wall. The girl has become more loved and important than before.

How are things going to change for me to become King if everything ended in their favor?

Snatching up another empty bottle, I launch it at the wall. It shatters and scatters across the floor. The only way to get rid of Ethan is to defeat him, which directly pointed me toward his pathetic mate’s demise, but now, things are more difficult.

I need a new plan, something that will look like an accident and won’t point at me.

In the distance, a broken, lonesome howl pierces through the air, and I look out the window. A rogue wolf darts through the trees, running from the guards on patrol, and a plan forms in my mind.