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“Oh, it’s so nice to hear from you, Ashley,” the female said.
“You look good. Are you doing okay?” the male asked.
“I’m…okay. First, this is my mate, Romeo Dawson. He’s a tiger shifter. Romeo, these are my parents, Rita and Bobby.”
“Mate?” her mom asked. “Oh, it’s nice to meet you, Romeo.”
“Yes, it is,” her dad said. “Is that why you called? You can come visit us. We don’t have to do this over the internet.”
“I’m not in LA right now. I’m in Northern Ohio.” She paused and then said, “I’m just going to get right to why I wanted to talk to you guys. I had a blood test done.”
Her parents both frowned. “Why?” her mom asked.
“Because Romeo did some digging into Kerry’s death and spoke to the alpha wolf of the pack. He told Romeo the truth about what happened, that Kerry was Duncan’s truemate, and a she-wolf in the pack attacked and killed her.”
She inhaled sharply like she hadn’t breathed at all when she’d been talking. Romeo rubbed her back and she glanced at him, so he smiled encouragingly. He knew she was struggling to keep it together, but she had to get through this part on her own. He couldn’t do it for her.
“The alpha said that Kerry was half wolf. I didn’t really want to believe it, but I had blood work done and it revealed that I’m half wolf too,andI’ve got long-life. So I want to know…why did you lie to me all these years? Why didn’t you ever tell me that I’m half wolf? Didn’t you think eventually I’d realize that I wasn’t aging normally? People have told me I look young for my age, and it’s because I’m technically still eighteen!” She slashed the air with her hand. “And just who the hell are my real parents because neither of you is a wolf, and someone needs to be a full wolf for me to be half of one.” She sniffled.
There was silence for a long moment, her parents staring at each other and then slowly looking at Ashley.
“Bobby isn’t your real father; he’s your stepfather,” Rita said.
Ashley inhaled sharply but didn’t say anything.
Rita continued. “Your biological father was a wolf named Heinrich. We were truemates, and he was part of a pack that didn’t believe humans and wolves should mate. He left his pack to be with me when I got pregnant with you, and we had to go into hiding because they were chasing us. When Kerry was born, Heinrich left you with me in the hospital to run to the house to pick up some things when his car was run off the road and he died. Although the police said it was an accident, I knew that he’d been found. That his pack had decided it was better he was dead than living with a human. As soon as I could, I left town and moved to LA to live with my parents. The pediatrician said as half-wolves you’d most likely never shift, and that if you did, it wouldn’t be until you were teenagers. We didn’t know about the long-life.”
“But why didn’t you tell me? I don’t…I don’t remember anyone but Bobby.”
“You were only two and Kerry was an infant when Heinrich died,” Rita said. “I met Bobby a few months after I moved to LA and when we decided to get married, we thought it would be better to just wait and see if you showed any signs of being wolves because if you didn’t, there was no reason to bring up that awful time.”
“But it’s part of who I am,” she said earnestly. “You never told me I had a different biological father. You erased him from the house and my memories!”
“Losing Heinrich nearly killed me, Ashley,” Rita said, her voice low and her eyes shining with tears. “When Bobby came into my life, he stepped right in as your father and we decided to move forward as if he were.”
“Your deception got Kerry killed.”
“We didn’t know that you were enough wolf to trigger truemating with shifters,” Bobby said. “And we’ve been grieving what happened ever since.”
“You lied to me. You told me I should accept the alpha’s apology and when I pushed back, you said the matter was closed. You…you have no idea the path you set me on! Duncan is dead because of me! I joined up with an anti-shifter group in my grief and I helped get him killed. There’s blood on my hands because you lied!”
Her voice got high again, tears flowing over her cheeks and her knuckles turning white as she clenched her hands into tight fists.
“We didn’t tell you because there was never a good time,” Rita said flatly. “And then you disappeared. We didn’t know you’d joined up with anti-shifters because you cut us out of your life.”
“Because you kept the truth from me! Holy shit, the lives that have been lost because of your lies.”
“Hold on just a minute here,” Bobby said. “You can’t lay the blame entirely at our feet.”
“Yes, she can,” Romeo interjected. “If you hadn’t hobbled her knowledge of who she and Kerry were and helped her to understand what happened with the wolves, she wouldn’t have gone down the path she did.”
“You stay out of this,” Bobby warned.
“Don’t talk to him like that,” Ashley shouted. Then she inhaled loudly like she was two seconds away from sobbing. “He’s right. What you did, what you kept from me, changed my life in unimaginable ways. Kerry’s death was tragic, but you made it exponentially worse by keeping the truth from me. I…can’t talk about this anymore.”
She rose to her feet and walked away.
Romeo watched her leave, then looked at the screen.
