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Granny nodded. “And my brother didn’t like that one bit.”
“So that’s how shifters spread across the world,” I realized. “You bit them, and they turned.”
“Over time, we were able to become one with the beasts inside of us. We learned to commune with the nature around us and to listen to our instincts. It was several hundred years before the first of us was able to shift back into human form, and once we did, that guilt crept in. All the people we’d killed, all the people we’d turned—it came back to bite us in the ass.
“What I failed to realize was that my brother had grasped on to changing back into human form far sooner than the rest of us. We’d separated into two separate packs by then. Those who weredocile and didn’t want to fight came with me, turning their backs on the ones who had become feral due to power. News would reach me of villages being destroyed by wolves as large as bears. And I knew it was him.
“One day, I confronted him. I told him that he had to stop what he was doing, but he didn’t care. ‘Humans are weak,’ he said. ‘Humans have always been weak and will always be weak, just as we once were. But now we have a chance to change and become the dominant species in the world. Humans are nothing more than a disease we can eradicate.’”
“He wanted me to join them, and I said that I would rather die than give in to his bigotry. He was talking about committing genocide on a scale that, at the time, was doable. We fought, and he won. He won because he had been turning humans, experimenting on them, and then taking their power as his own.”
“The ritual,” I breathed, a shiver running up my spine. Hunter rubbed a soothing hand down my back while Wolf gripped my thigh. “It doesn’t explain how you’re still alive or how you’re even my mother.”
“The ritual you know provides youth and power to the one who takes the sacrifice. The ritual my brother used never involved youth because we never needed it. All magic comes at a price, and ours was not just the curse of having a beast, but the curse of living far longer than anyone ever should. Watching the world pass by but never truly being able to be a part of it.”
“Because humans are suspicious people,” Hunter murmured under his breath.
Granny smiled sadly at him and nodded.
“They became our biggest enemies in those early days. Most of us took to hiding and guiding new wolves that had been created. Protecting them and sheltering them, teaching themhow to control their instincts to live among humans. We lived in relative peace for thousands of years, and then I fell in love.”
“With whom?” I asked, curious about the man who had sired me.
“My brother’s best friend. A man I was wrong to trust. But in the end, he proved that his love for me was stronger than his loyalty to my brother.”
“All right, so to keep this more succinct, when did you meet him?”
Granny chuckled. “You were always the impatient one, Wolf. We married, and I got pregnant with you, Freya, in 1847.”
Shit, was I really that old? I was ancient! Wait, that was impossible. If I was born in 1847, I wouldn’t be alive, would I? Then again, it seemed like anything was possible.
“I thought only omegas could give birth to other omegas.”
Granny shook her head.
“That’s complicated. At the time, we didn’t know much about the different types of wolves that had emerged through the creation of the curse. We knew that there were pack hierarchies, just as real wolves. We operated in the same way, with the same instincts and pack mentality. When the curse was first cast, the only alphas were my brother, Freya’s father, me, and one other man by the name of Monroe. It seemed that the curse naturally gave us our alpha instincts and genetics due to our personalities.”
“So that made everybody else what, betas?”
Granny waved her hand in the air in a so-so gesture.
“I’m not really all that sure about that,” she admitted.
“You’re not a full alpha.” That revelation hit me square in the chest. “You’re an omega, but your blood carries alpha properties. Like mine.”
“Yes,” she said. “I am an omega, just like you are. Just like your children will be. There isn’t much that’s known aboutomegas. What I do know is that they were created out of a necessity to make more alphas.”
“Why?”
“Because nature has a way of correcting problems within itself,” she explained. “My brother, in his desire to control the population of shifters, began hunting down alphas and killing them. Packs without an alpha aren’t packs at all. They’re all on their own, without someone to guide them or lead them. They become lost. Even in today’s society, wolves in the cities mix with humans. They create a pack within themselves with an alpha. Whether it’s a human being who has alpha-like tendencies or a wolf who’s an alpha. In some cases, there have been times when betas were able to transform into alphas. Not physically by taking on the knot, but mentally.”
Wolf laughed; the sound was hollow.
“You were nature’s key,” he said to her. “You were made to fix the solution your bother created before it ever even occurred.
“Were you the only omega?”
Granny shook her head. “No, omegas seem to appear in society when they’re most needed. Nature’s way of trying to balance itself. When I did what I did to save you, I messed with the balance of nature and created a pandemic that still hasn’t been set right.”
