The True One

Chapter 20

I could more than guess. "Does it rhyme with Finclair?"

She blinked her eyes slow, like a cat. "So, you did know."

"Yes." I turned towards her, keeping contact with her leg. Pretty soon, she wouldn't want to have any contact with me so I was going to keep this connection as long as she allowed it. "Please, hear me out. I just watched the archive go up in smoke. And now all I have left is the one bit of awful truth that's been given to me. It's not the full picture, and I'm still terrified to tell it to you, but I will if you want me to."

"What is so terrible that you've been keeping it from me? Did... did your dad..." Her voice caught and she paused to gulp down a sob. "Did he kill my mother?"

"What?" Holy shit, she truly had no idea. "No. Both my parents ran the clinic, or the lab or whatever." I brushed a strand of hair away from her face, worrying that she'd slap me away and then order me out of her home. Instead, she stayed where she was, saying nothing.

"You were told your mom took her own life, right?"

She nodded.

"That's a lie. She was killed. But not by my parents."

Tears slid down her cheeks. "How do you know?" she said with a dose of bitterness. "If they were in charge, then they were responsible. If their experiment ended badly, or... Whatever happened to her, they—"

"They didn't kill her. She killed them."

"No." She sat back, wiping away her tears. "That's not true."

"Remember how I said I'd seen a werewolf when I was a kid? Well, it was your mom. Your mom was a werewolf, and she killed my parents as though they were sewer rats."

She shook next to me. I was entering dangerous territory here, but she wanted the truth and I didn't want to hide it anymore.

"And you saw this happen, Alek?"

"I saw her transform. I was young but I remember. Blond hair turned into a golden pelt. Sharp teeth bared. But no. I wasn't there when she... when she did it."

"So, you can't know for sure."

"I do know." I spoke with more calm than I felt. Of course, she'd have trouble accepting this. Anyone would. "That's what happened. It was awful. I lost both my parents. It sucks, but it's the truth."

"But..." She squirmed next to me, uncertain, perhaps in how to transition from my last statement. "If that really happened, what about my mom? How did she..." Gulping, she turned her head away.

"Norvin—that's my boss and the man who raised me—he saw her attack my parents and he killed her. He had no choice. You can see that, right?"

She shook her head. "None of this makes sense."

"It's a shock. I'm sorry."

"No. I mean, yes, it's a shock. But that's not it. My mom... wasn't she like me? Not a... I guess I'm going to call it a traditional werewolf. The regular kind. If I'm this special kind of werewolf, wouldn't that have been passed down from her?"

"I don't know how you came to be like you are. But one thing I do know, she was a traditional werewolf. She might have been a wonderful human, but she was also a horrible monster."

She sat for a while without speaking. I let her exist in silent thought, grateful that our legs still touched, slight though the connection was. Finally, she spoke. "Something still doesn't add up."

"What doesn't?"

"If my mom killed your parents, then she was alive longer than they were."

"Briefly, but yeah. Of course."