[3] Bloodline • Legacies ✓

xxxv.

chapter thirty-five.

Natalie sat in a room with Katerina and Kai, Iris was out with Vincent getting a tour of the school and would be back later.

"We wanted to talk with you." Katerina said softly. "Iris told us about your past."

Natalie had been aware of this, Iris had warned her and while Natalie was afraid to talk about it, she was relieved that they had at least been eased into it. There had been a lot of things that happened that even Iris didn't know about, things that Natalie purposely locked away in order to keep herself sane, it was how she survived.

"She told me." Natalie nodded her head.

"However, we got the feeling that there was more to it than just abuse." Kai said. "Your scars are more than just beating with wolfsbane."

Natalie looked down at her hands, she was twiddling her fingers as her mouth went dry. "If I tell you, you can't-" She paused and sighed. "- I don't want you to say sorry, I just- I just-"

Kat reached forward and took her hand, "Okay."

Natalie was thankful that they understood, grateful that even with her struggle to get the words out, they knew what she was trying to say.

They always did.

"My mother wasn't a kind woman." Natalie began softly, "I want to believe that there was a time that she loved me and Iris deeply, but as I get older, I know that she didn't. I don't think Iris knows this, but I'm not really her half-sister."

Kai and Kat's eyes widened, "Wait, what?" Kai questioned. "Iris said you have the same mother, but different father's."

"How would Iris and I both be 16 when we're not twins?" Natalie asked him and their eyes widened as they realized she was right. "We look similar because my mother is her aunt, that makes Iris my cousin. My mother died in childbirth and Iris' mother, the woman that I called mother until I was 15, took care of me out of a debt that she owed her sister."

"Wait, this isn't making any sense." Katerina frowned. "Natalie, what is this?"

Natalie sighed. "I didn't find out until the night we ran away. I heard Iris' mother talking to a man about how I wasn't her daughter when he called me that, she sounded offended that anyone would assume so, she then admitted that I was her sister's kid but that her sister was dead, and I had become her burden even though she had Iris already."

This was a lot more than what Katerina and Kai thought they were going to get, they knew that they were going to learn something more about her, something deeper, but this was a lot more than they assumed.

Not that they were complaining, they wanted to know more.

"We were raised to believe we were sisters, that's fine because I've always felt as if she was anyways, and she feels the same way about me." Natalie smiled softly before frowning. "It started when we were ten, when the abusive started for us, I mean. Her boyfriends were pricks, they loved to beat us after sleeping with mother, or even before just because they wanted to relieve some stress."

Kai and Kat shared looks of anger and disbelief, oh how they wanted nothing more than to find this woman and kill her for what she'd allowed to happen to children. Her children! It was sickening.

"I activated my curse when I was young, I think I was 12 and that was because one of mother's boyfriends got handsy with Iris." She said softly and this shocked Kai and Kat.

"You activated your werewolf gene when you were 12?" Katerina asked her shock. "How could a child survive that?"

"Mother was a witch." Natalie reminded her sadly. "She created tonics and used magic to make sure that every full moon I didn't die, I don't know why when she hated me so much, but I think it was simply so that she could at least say that she kept me alive whenever she joined her sister in the afterlife."