My heart was pounding.
The doctor nervously shifted the clipboard in his hands as his eyes glanced from myself to Cain.
"Well?" I asked, my voice shaky.
"Ms. Schulz, as we suspected, you're not entirely human."
The pounding in my chest came to a screeching halt. I began to take deep breaths, immediately feeling light-headed.
There was something about hearing him say it that made me sick to much stomach.
"What do you mean?" I asked as I tried to catch my breath.
"You have the Lycan gene," the doctor said.
I shook my head slowly, rejecting the idea.
"There is no way," I said.
Cain stood from his chair and took the clipboard from the doctor. He examined the contents of the piece of paper with an intense look on his face.
"Can I read it?" I asked him.
I felt my heart in my throat as Cain handed me the clipboard.
I grabbed it from him with shaking hands.
As I read over the various numbers and data lines, I realized very quickly that I hardly understood any of it.
"What does any of this mean?" I asked.
It wasn't just the statistics that I didn't understand, I couldn't comprehend the entire situation.
I'm not a Lycanthrope, I'm not a Lycanthrope, I kept repeating in my head.
The doctor walked over and began to point to various horizontal columns on the chart.
"We did a blood panel," he told me. "We can determine Lycanthropy by reading the levels of hemoglobin, platelets, WBC, and various other things. Because Lycans have the ability to regenerate body tissue rapidly as a way to heal quicker, your white blood cell count is a very good indicator of the differences between Homo sapiens and Lycanthropes."
"What's a normal white blood cell count for humans?" I asked.
"Anywhere between four thousand to eleven thousand per microliter."
"And mine is?"
"A little over twenty-one thousand."
I let out a huge breath that had been trapped in my chest.
I leaned over and put my head in my hands.
"This isn't happening," I whispered.
I felt a large, strong hand touch my upper back and sat up to see Cain looking at me intently, concern written on his face.
Looking from him to the doctor, I struggled to find words to say.
"M-my family," I stuttered out. "Lycanthropy is an entire race, it's hereditary. If I'm a Lycan, my parents are..."
I let out a breath.
"...and Zak is too."
The two men looked between each other.
"Can we have a minute?" Cain asked.
The doctor nodded, leaving the clipboard beside me on the table.
When the doctor left the room, Cain walked over to stand in front of me.
His face was right in front of mine. It felt like his eyes were looking straight through me.
I gulped as he leaned in and placed his hands beside me on the table.
"Listen to me," he said softly. "I'm sure there is an explanation for all of this, but you need to calm down. Just breathe..."
Breathe was the one thing I felt like I couldn't do.
"I don't understand," I whispered. "I don't know how you can live for twenty-three years and not know you aren't human."
"If all you've ever known is what you perceive to be normal I could understand why you wouldn't be able to tell the difference."
I gulped, feeling a knot forming in my throat.
My eyes fell to look at the minimal space between us and I became dizzy.
Cain reached up and held my face in his hands, tilting my head up to look at him.
"Breathe," he repeated.
My body fought hard against the air I forced into my lungs.
As I tried to exhale, I felt it get caught in my throat.
"I'm gunna be sick," I said suddenly.
Quicker than my eyes could register his movements, Cain bent down and grabbed the waste basket that was beside the examination table and placed it in my lap.
The knots in my stomach finally released in the five minutes it took me to empty the contents of my stomach into the waste basket.
Embarrassed and wishing he would just go away, I was less than thrilled about Cain's decision to stand next to me and hold my hair back behind my head. Thankfully, he said nothing the entire time I heaved and gagged over the basket.
When my stomach decided it was finally time to give it a rest, I sat up a little straighter and Cain handed me a paper towel. Wiping my mouth with it, I shook my head.
"I don't understand..."
Cain said nothing as he walked over and opened the door to let the doctor back into the room.
Both men turned to gauge me carefully. I felt like an animal in a cage, like a foreign specimen under a microscope that was being examined.
The doctor saw that I had been throwing up and he reached under his desk to grab me a bottle of water from the cabinet.
"Drink this slowly," he said, handing it to me.
I was still trembling as I tried to remove the cap from the bottle. My shaking fingers couldn't grip the lid properly. I felt pathetic and helpless as Cain reached out and took the bottle from my hands and easily twisted the cap off. I nodded slightly to acknowledge the small act of kindness as he handed the water bottle back to me.
I took a long swallow of the water, however, the disgusting taste in my mouth made me want to spit it back out.
I got up from the examination table, the doctor taking the waste basket from me as I did so, and I walked over to the sink and began to rinse my mouth out with the water.
"I want to know why," I said finally.
My words split through the quiet room and they both turned to look at each other as I turned my attention from the sink to them.
"Why what?" Cain asked.
"Why I was able to live twenty three years on this planet and not know that I was a Lycanthrope."
"I told you..." he said.
"No," I interrupted. "This isn't about what I perceive to be normal. I've donated blood before. I've had blood work done for my annual check-ups. If it's really as simple as a white blood cell count, someone would have figured it out before now."
The doctor cleared his throat.
"The government works very carefully in the realm of healthcare to ensure that Lycanthropy is a topic dealt with in discretion," he said.
"What does that mean? They're hiding it?" I asked.
The doctor nodded with hesitation.
"Somewhat," he said. "But it isn't like you can diagnose Lycanthropy, it isn't a disease. Most doctors won't even mention it. If someone doesn't know they're a Lycanthrope, it's because their parents didn't tell them."
"And they just don't acknowledge it?" I asked incredulously. "It's an entire race of people. How do you hide that? Why would you want to hide that?"
Cain scoffed.
"Society is still struggling with the fact that there are people with different skin tones and religions. How well do you think it would go over if everyone found out there are creatures with super-human strength and senses that can morph into overgrown wolves at will?"
He had a point.
"Still," I said. "How has no one figured it out yet?"
The doctor drew in a deep breath as he tried to figure out a way to explain what he was thinking.
"When a Lycanthrope is born, it is registered with the government the same way that human babies are. But, there is a difference. The government refers these babies to doctors who are trained in Lycanthropy, who are usually Lycanthropes themselves. This helps ensure that you are treated by someone who knows the specifics of your body, but it also helps ensure that word won't get out about Lycanthropy as these people take vows of secrecy when they receive their license to practice medicine."
"And donating blood?" I asked. "Surely not everyone at a blood drive is licensed to treat Lycanthropes."
The doctor shook his head.
"No, but when the blood is sent for testing to make certain that it can be used for transfusions and things like that, the system is programmed to flag blood that is suspected to belong to Lycanthropes and it is sent to specific places where it can actually be used, as humans cannot be transfused with Lycanthrope blood."
I drew in a sharp breath.
"Wait," I said slowly.
My brain was processing so much information at once that I felt like I was going to explode.
"Blood transfusions?" I asked.
The doctor nodded, unsure about what I was getting at.
"You can't be turned into a Lycanthrope?" I asked.
Both men nodded.
"That means that someone, from one side of my family or the other, is also a Lycanthrope..."
I looked at Cain with wide eyes.
"Do you think this is all a coincidence?" I asked him.
The absence of shock from Cain's expression as he shook his head meant that he had known what I had just figured out for a while.
"You knew he was a Lycanthrope," I said, jumping down from the table.
"We knew," Cain admitted.
The way he said those words seemed like a weight had been lifted off his chest. He had been holding that in for quite a while and it had clearly been weighing on him.
I couldn't formulate words to explain how furious I was with Cain.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked angrily, taking a step towards him.
When he didn't answer me, I took a deep breath and turned to leave the room.
Neither of the men tried to stop me as I opened the door and bounded out of the room and down the hallway, fuming with rage.
Why didn't he tell me?
While I understood Cain knew I would probably react the way I had, and that had probably prevented him from telling me, I felt like a fool.
He had led me to believe I was piecing together the mystery of why my grandfather had disappeared—maybe even helping a few other families find their loved ones—only to find out that he had kept the biggest piece of the puzzle to himself.
If my grandfather was a Lycanthrope, it meant that there was probably more to the story than I could have ever fathomed.
And there was only one way to find out...
- - -
Narrative P.O.V.
Dr. Zosak looked at Cain in disappointment.
When Cain noticed this disapproving look, he snapped.
"What did you want me to do?"
The old man sighed, the wrinkles in his face sinking deeper into his skin with his frown.
"You should have told her the truth from the beginning," he pressed.
Cain scowled and pushed past the doctor, heading out of the room.
"I may not know what it's like to be in your shoes, but I know a thing or two about relationships," Dr. Zosak said, stopping Cain. "No one, human or otherwise, enjoy being lied to. Even if it's to protect them."
Cain looked at him over his shoulder.
Cain thought on his words for a moment, his hard stare making it difficult for Dr. Zosak to decipher exactly what he was thinking.
"Have the lab run the rest of the tests," Cain said. "I want to find out how dominant the Lycanthrope gene is. I need to know whether her body can handle being marked."
With that, he left the room.
Ella was on his mind the entire time he walked up four flights of stairs to his office.
The guilt he felt for not telling her about her grandfather sooner was immense. It sat on his shoulders, telling him what a fool he had been for letting her come to the castle in the first place. It reminded him that she would have been better off having never met him, living her life blissfully and naively unaware of his existence or the existence of his people.
Things like Vampires and Lycanthropes should have been nothing more to her than fairytales and nightmares.
He had climbed up from the deepest part of hell and ripped her from the flower-filled pastures of her life back down to his kingdom and asked her to rule a place and people she could never understand.
The last time he checked, that didn't work out well for Hades.
He was still cogitating over the situation and Ella's involvement as he walked up the staircase that led to his office.
Waiting for him there was his mother.
Evelyn sat atop his desk, hands folded in her lap and feet dangling above the ground.
"I thought you had left," he said, entering the room.
"We were going to," she admitted, sighing.
He raised a questioning eyebrow, stopping his stride in the middle of the room.
"Your father thought it best to stay until we were sure you and her would be alright."
Cain scoffed, feeling his anger begin to resurface.
"My relationship is none of anyone's business but mine," he said, crossing his arms.
"Is it not her business too?" Evelyn asked rhetorically. "What about your pack? Is it not their business that they have a Luna?"
"In order for her to be a Luna she has to be marked by her mate, the Alpha, and inducted into the pack."
"And you're not going to do either of those things?" Evelyn asked.
Cain shook his head.
"I can't mark her."
A look of confusion swept over her face.
"Why not, Cain? I'm sure if you explained to her the importance of it—"
"The importance doesn't matter," He growled, his arms unraveling and his fists clenching. "When my mouth gets anywhere near her neck, the last thing that crosses my mind is marking her."
Evelyn paled, realizing what he meant.
Cain shook his head as he saw her reaction.
"Like I said, this is none of your business."
Evelyn let out a shaky breath.
"This is one battle I don't think you can win on your own," she said. "Don't treat that poor girl like a negotiation or territory to be conquered."
Cain shook his head, resisting the urge to laugh at the irony.
"Believe it or not, I'm not the one you'll need to convince that this relationship will work. I don't think she's quite figured out what it is she means to me and this pack."
Evelyn hopped down from Cain's desk and walked over to him.
"Treat her like a Luna and she'll be more apt to believe it."
Evelyn lifted herself onto her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
"Bring her to dinner tonight," she said, walking around Cain to leave the office. "I'm sure your father would like to meet her officially."
Cain walked over to his desk and sighed as he sat down.
"We're not on speaking terms, so I'm not sure that will happen tonight."
Evelyn turned to look at him and smiled.
"Well, then maybe the two of you should get dinner on your own."
"Did you not hear me?" he asked. "We're not speaking right now, she doesn't want to see me."
"I heard you loud and clear," Evelyn said, disappearing down the staircase.
Cain let out a sigh as he leaned back in his chair.
Maybe dinner wasn't a good idea. But, then again, maybe it was.
Cain shook his head.
There was only one way to find out...
- - -