Lone Werewolf Duology (bxb)

5. His Mother's Secret

She put the inflection wrong in their last name, too. Well, not wrong exactly, just not the way most people would have said it. When the interpreter pronounced his mother's first and last name together that way, it sounded weird. Like, there was a not-so-hidden message in the name.

If his mother's name was a secret, then her first and last name together said, secret of the wolves. In turn, if he pronounced his last name the way Marina did, it meant—

Then another thing occurred to him. His jaw dropped at that revelation. Marina sounded so damn sure about his mother's name, as if she knew her.

"You knew her?" Volya's voice jumped to a little girl's pitch, then broke off. "You knew my mother?"

Taina or Tatiana, whatever her name was, Marina had to have known his mother! Unless she was just pretentious.

"No." Marina dashed his hopes with one word.

A knockout punch.

He tried to hide his disappointment behind a cough, but he fooled no one.

Marina's hand patted his in consolation. "I didn't know her, but I've known of her for a while. She was a remarkable woman."

"Uh-huh." Volya hiccupped. "Was? Is my mother dead?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know." Marina knitted her fingers. Two of her nails had weird symbols. A spiral and something like two loops used to signify infinity in math.

"It must be hard on you." She patted his hand again. "But we're nearly done here, and we won't be doing the visas till tomorrow morning, so you'll have the afternoon off to... ah...."

She trailed off, obviously unsure what a guy could be doing for fun, save for cramming the Unit 4. Compassion came hard to her, but he appreciated her trying.

"I'll take a nap," he muttered to bail her out of the uncomfortable silence. The woman earned that much.

***

Volya crawled into his posh hotel room and scoffed from the threshold. The décor was still marvelous, in rich autumnal hues and off-setting crisp whites. The room was still huge yet inviting. It was cleaned to perfection during his absence. The view still enticed him to visit the sights.

But one thing was off: a thoughtful hand deposited two tiny chocolates on Volya's pillow—thoughtful where other people were concerned, that is. Chocolate was poison to him, like all carbs. It was particularly annoying, given how the hotel staff was so attentive to his special needs at breakfast. Heck, they almost made him believe it was okay to be a carnivore.

Fuming, Volya went to sweep the two golden foil wrapped truffles off his pillow, then realized that the candy sat on a note rather than on a napkin.

He frowned, scooped the chocolates and put them in the nightstand's drawer for the next guest—he couldn't just throw away food and these were fancy Evening Bells truffles—and perched on the edge of his bed. The note was written on a lined page from a school notebook. Handwriting was cursive, but rounded, almost childish.

Don't trust the American. Whatever you think you know, you don't understand a fraction of it. Keep the secret hidden.

"What the heck?" Volya inquired of the pillow. "What effing secret? What the actual heck?"

When the pillow didn't shrug its pudgy shoulders or produced any other response, Volya re-read the message.

Item one, he didn't trust Liam anyway.

Item two, if anyone kept secrets, that was Liam, not Volya. Volya's only private and confidential info was how he felt about Toshka, but he doubted his love life concerned anyone. Besides, Liam figured out his deepest heart desire after knowing him for thirty minutes. He obviously didn't hide his feelings well.

Item three... now that was a definite maybe. Marina had told him his mother's name was Secret. Was this a clue? Did someone warn him not to talk about his mother with Liam?

Volya crumpled the note in his fist, looking around the room with suspicion. But the velvet curtains didn't move; the giant round bathtub was empty; and the closet door was firmly shut.

A stranger must had walked into his room. They left him the kind of message that should self-destruct after reading. And they took a risk for nothing. He didn't get their drift. Good thing they didn't instruct him to swallow the note for conspiracy's sake! He ended up ripping it into tiny pieces and flushing it down the toilet.

That act from a spy movie done, he dropped his face into the pillow and wallowed.

The wallowing went much nicer in the privacy of a luxurious room, than in the blind corner between the two buildings back at the orphanage that had been the place to hide his sorrows for many years. Probably that's why rich people whined so much: they had proper facilities to do so.

So, Volya sulked. The stupid forms made him hate his nobody-wanted-you birth, and now he received this good-for-nothing warning. It had to be about his mother, too much of a coincidence otherwise with her name being Secret. The joke was on the perpetrators though. He knew nothing about his mother either.

He even wished that he had kept his mouth shut instead of asking Marina. Then he'd just ignored this message as a stupid prank.

And he wouldn't have been beset by worries about writing his mother's name incorrectly. Nobody had ever questioned him when he wrote Tatiana before. Who cared anyway? Certainly, he didn't. Why would he?

He knew kids like Toshka, who'd come to the orphanage after a long stay in a hospital and would never talk of their parents.

On the other end of the spectrum, there were some who'd broken into filing rooms in search of information, hoping to discover something exceptional about their ancestry. Those clowns ended up bitterly disappointed.

He was smart enough not to look, nor care, nor question it for all these years.

Well, today he'd paid attention, and what did it get him? Nothing but hurt.

Yeah, his family favored weird names for two generations. And, oh! His mother's name was a big fat secret he was supposed to keep hidden. A secret of the wolves. Frigging A!

Volya heaved a mighty sigh. He understood nothing, and Liam with his handmaiden Marina piled up more and more mysteries on him. It was all connected to his family somehow, since genetics was involved, but other than that he got a big, fat nothing. Why wouldn't anyone explain anything to him?

The phone rang, drawing Volya away from his flattened pillow.

Liam's creamy 'good afternoon' poured out of the receiver. Then the voice of the auto-interpreting software took over.

"Get up, we're going out," it grated, and Volya's heart bounced in his chest. "Meet me at the lobby in five. Tell no-one."

"But..."

Liam had already hung up.

Had he just legit teleported into a spy movie?

Don't trust the American. Ha!