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The hunter is my father? How?These questions kept running through her head as Spencer sat beside her. Adria listened to the breeze rustle through the trees. Ironically, she heard the birds singing sweetly and felt the warm sun on her skin. She wondered whether she was in some parallel reality.This just doesn’t seem real, she thought.It makes no sense to me.
“I’ve known only for a little while; this was never public news. I assure you that, besides the council, everyone else wasalso kept in the dark.” She looked at him and saw the friend she used to have. The one she never wanted to lose. The one who would always tell her the truth and be by her side through thick and thin.
“What else is there to tell me?” she asked, wanting, needing to know more, even though she felt like it was going to hurt.
“What do you know about your past? Before you came to Rosewood?” he asked instead. She searched her memories, trying to remember anything she was told before coming to what she had always called home.
“Not much, really,” she admitted. “I was barely two when I started living with my Aunt Lily. She told me that my parents were both killed in a car accident way up north and that they never recovered the car or their bodies. It was raining badly, and the road was slippery. They skidded and ended up going off a cliff and into a lake. They had tried to find them but came up empty-handed. She never told me much about them or how they were. I have never pushed for more information since it always seemed as if she was suffering when speaking about them,” she answered.
She had been told that story by her aunt anytime she asked growing up. As a child, she was curious when she saw parents come to events and gatherings. Knowing that she was the only one who didn’t have a mother and a father. As she got older, she brought it up less and less. She could see the pain it caused and kept reminding herself that her aunt had lost her sister. She was happy with her life; her aunt gave her all the love and attention she could ever want or need. No one else knew of what had happened, as far as she knew.
“Please know that everything you have been told was to protect you.” Spencer looked at her earnestly. She saw he was trying to find the words to tell her the truth about her life. She let him hold her hands, feeling their warmth give her a little comfort as he started.
“Your mother was a shifter, part of our pack long ago. I was told that she was gentle and soft-spoken, just like you. It seems you were just her spitting image, with the same hair, eyes, and even the same laugh, my father claims. The story the council told me was that, on a trip up north just after her twentieth birthday, she met a man—your father—and after spending time with him, she fell deeply in love. When she spoke with the council, they told her she couldn’t bring him back to Rosewood. It always has been and always will be forbidden for a human to know about us, let alone be a part of the pack. They just wouldn't understand. Your mother had a hard time accepting this, so she decided to leave the pack to be with him. From what I understand, she was very happy for some time. They built a life together, a home, and they got you. They had jobs and friends, but your father went on a lot of hunting trips. Your mother never questioned this, as he would come back with some deer and moose. But those trips lasted weeks at a time. Your mother used this time to shift and run freely through the woods. She would come back to Rosewood and visit family and friends in secret with you. It was the only time she could be her true self.” He paused, giving her time to process.
Adria had never known how her parents had met, what it was like to see them as a couple. She never knew where they lived or if they were happy. She often had thoughts of them having a little house in a small town, enjoying warm summer days, and snuggling by a fire on cold winter nights. She saw herself nestled between them, her mother singing softly to her,and her father giving her little forehead kisses. Adria had always just assumed that her father was a wolf shifter as well and that they wanted to have their little pack of just three. It wasn’t unheard of a wolf shifter falling for a human, but it was very rare and rarer that it worked out well in the end.
She reeled at the thought that her mother had to hide her wolf side from her father and how hard that must have been. She never was able to shift and be herself. One of the best parts of being a wolf was being able to shift and be free. She never knew what her mother was like and smiled that she had inherited some of her traits and looks. Adria hoped she would be proud of the person she had become, how she had grown up under the watchful guidance of her aunt.
“Keep going,” she whispered. Visibly shaking, she held Spencer’s hands tighter.
“Well, as I was told, not long after you were born, your mother got the shock of her life. Your father had come home one night covered in blood after a hunting trip. He told her they needed to go and hide for a bit. Of course, your mother wanted to know what was going on. He thought he was letting her in on some big secret about wolf shifters, us. He told her that we were all barbaric savages and that we needed to be annihilated. All we wanted and did was kill the innocent. No one ever knew where he got that idea from, but he was set on our demise. He told her that what he was doing was trying to make the world safe for her, you, and every other human. Except he didn’t know what she was. He had no idea. Your mother had done very well keeping it a secret from him.
Unfortunately, she knew it was just a matter of time before he found out. So, she convinced him to let her take you far away to keep you safe. She even convinced him that it was better for him not to know. He thought it was a good idea in case he wasever captured and tortured. Your mother never told him about Rosewood. That’s why she brought you here. When she headed back, she was trying to figure out a way to escape and disappear so that the two of you could live without the threat of him and his hunter friends…” He paused, watching her closely.
“Why did she go back? She could have stayed in Rosewood and been under the protection of the pack.” Adria was so confused. The answer seemed simple to her, and her mother would still be with her. She would have had a completely different life with her mother at her side. The emotions that swirled inside her felt like a tornado, spinning everything she ever thought into a whirlwind of the unknown.
“Because, like you, she wanted to protect her friends and family, her pack. She didn’t want to take the chance of your father coming to look for the two of you and putting the town at risk of an attack. When she got back to your father, he and his friends were in the midst of a battle with another pack. When that pack saw your mother, they unintentionally outed her. They begged her to join the fight and help them. Your father was shocked and raged at her for her betrayal. She begged your father to stop, to listen to reason, that wolf shifters were not what he thought. That everything he had been told was wrong, that she could prove it and had been proving it in the years they had spent together already. She had no choice but to shift and show him that the person he loved was a wolf.
Unfortunately, your father was too headstrong and set in his ways. He cursed your mother for lying to him and told her she was the worst. She had no choice but to try and defend herself. He came straight at her. She wanted to fight him off, but she loved him.” Adria pulled his hands to her chest, stopping him. Her whole body shook with the fear of what he was going to say next. A secret that had been kept for so long.
“Spencer, please don’t tell me, please,” she pleaded, tears streaming down her cheeks. Adria begged him with her eyes not to say what she knew was coming next.
“He killed her,” he whispered.
Adria screamed, “NO!” Yanking her hands from him, she bolted up. “No! Spencer, no! You are not telling me this. That didn’t happen! It can't be true!” Adria sobbed as she felt Spencer’s arms wrap around her, holding her tightly.
“I’m so sorry, Adria,” he whispered in her ear.
Adria buried her face in his chest and let out a scream full of anger, frustration, and pain. She could feel his arms holding her tighter as she shook. She tried to clear her mind of the mental picture of her father taking her mother's life, someone he was supposed to have loved.
How could he do that? How could he kill someone he had a child with, someone who had left their home, their family, to be with him? It didn't make any sense.
Her emotions raged inside of her. Adria couldn’t take it anymore; she needed a release, she needed to break free from the hold the pain wanted to take on her. She pushed herself away from Spencer and ran towards the woods.
Before she got to the tree line, she shifted. She ran as fast as she could, trying so hard to leave all her thoughts and emotions behind. Her vision blurred as she raced over the soft, mossed-covered ground and leaped over fallen trees with such agility, letting pure instinct take over. Adria's breath was hot and ragged as she came to a stop. She had reached the other side of the woods. Slowly, she approached the tree line and could see Rosewood. She thought of the one person who could tell her if all this was true or just a bad dream. Adria shifted to her human form and headed to her Aunt Lily’s house.
Chapter 4 - Spencer
Spencer cursed as he saw Adria shift and disappear into the woods. He knew that she was going to take it hard. He didn’t blame her; it had to have been hard on her not having a mother and father all her life. He couldn’t imagine how she felt, watching other kids spending time with their parents at the park. Or looking for them during school plays and concerts and waving from the stage. He knew it must have hurt her, seeing parents hugging their children at graduations and being told how proud they were of them.
She grew up under the assumption that they both died, only to find out now that her father was a hunter and killed her mother because she was a wolf shifter. Spencer couldn’t imagine her pain, the sheer disbelief of being hidden from someone who was supposed to love her unconditionally. To know that she could never be accepted by him. Spencer could never imagine how that felt. But he knew he had to help her, in any way he could.
As he ran to his car, he had an idea where she was going. He needed to be there; needed to see this through with her. He still saw her as his best friend, regardless of what had happened between them. Just like how, even though she left, she still came back to warn them about the hunter and to make sure everyone was safe. She had a strong sense of family, community, of pack loyalty.
He peeled out of the campgrounds parking lot, hoping that he would get there either just before her or at the same time, and hopefully be able to warn her aunt that she knew everything and was angry, upset, and confused.
When he pulled up to her aunt's house, Spencer saw Adria taking the front steps two at a time. He jumped out of the car and ran up the steps just as she flew into the house.
