Affliction (SBTE Book 6)

Chapter One

Chapter one

Ivy sat at the kitchen table staring at the bowl of cereal that sat untouched in front of her. She had been doing this for the last fifteen minutes. Her mother and stepfather sat in front of her eating their breakfast unaware of the emotional turmoil she was going through. Her brother Will sat beside her, scoffing down his food as if it were his last meal.

She glanced up at both her parents who were still eating and reading documents most likely to do with pack business. She opened her mouth to speak but closed it almost immediately. She felt so nervous, she knew her mother would not react well to what she had to say. Her nerves finally getting the better of her she decided to leave it until tonight to talk to them.

“Ivy” He mother said. “Just say what it is you have been trying to say since you have entered the room, otherwise you may give yourself a heart attack every time you try to work up the courage to speak.”

“Stupid werewolf hearing” She muttered knowing they would have heard. Although she was human, she had spent her entire life living in a house full of werewolves. Her mother had met her stepfather Kane a couple years after she was born. Her stepfather was a werewolf and her mother was his mate. They dated for a while until her mother finally agreed to mate with him. The mating processed involved her mother being marked by him. The venom from his bite then entered her body changing her DNA so she changed into a werewolf, leaving Ivy as the only human in a pack full of werewolves.

“Well Mum, Dad” She said calling Kane dad hoping that will soften him up. She didn’t always call him dad it felt weird to her because he really wasn’t her father. Even though he has always loved, and treated her as his own.

“Oh no, this can’t be good, she is calling me dad.” He joked

She gave him a small smile and took a deep breath knowing it was now or never. “I have agreed to go traveling with my friends for the summer.” She said.

She watched as a frown marred her mother’s face. “What do you mean you have agreed?”

She shrugged her shoulders “Exactly that. They asked if I wanted to go and I said yes.”

“No” Her mother said. “You are not going and that’s final.”

“What!” She said raising her voice “Why not?”

“Because it’s too dangerous, you don’t know what could happen.” She said shaking her head.

She snorted “No more dangerous than a human living with a pack of wolves”

“This is exactly why Kane and I wanted you to be changed!” Her mother argued back at her.

“I don’t want to be a werewolf mum!” She said raising her hands in the air. “I want to be human, do normal human things. Not turn into a four legged animal and be stuck here for the rest of my life.”

“You are not safe as a human. At least if you were a wolf you would be a lot stronger.”

“I am not going to be any safer as a wolf then I am as a human mum, I will just have different enemies, instead of having to worry about wolves eating me I will have to worry about hunters killing me.”

She regretted her words as soon as they had left her mouth, one look at Kane told her that she had made him think about his dead parents who had been killed by the hunters. Although he seems fine most of the time, she knew that he often missed them and mourned them being gone.

His uncle who was his father’s twin brother often came over to visit him and make sure he was doing alright. Although she doesn’t really remember everything that had happened after the hunters attacked years ago, she had heard stories about Kane’s uncle Cole who almost lost himself to his wolf after his twin brother AJ had been killed, it took a few years but he finally recovered the best he could. He and his mate Natasha lived at the Pride house, which was built on the pack land years ago for the werelions.