Chapter 115: The Monster’s Daughter

BONNIE

"No. She said I was a mistake." The words tore out of me before I could stop them. "She said I wasn’t supposed to exist. She said she wanted to see if I would become like you. If I would break the way you broke."

He went quiet. The silence was worse than his words. He looked at me with something that might have been pity, or might have been recognition, or might have been the satisfaction of a predator who finally cornered his prey.

"And have you?" he asked softly. "Have you broken?"

"I don’t know." I looked down at my hands. They were still shaking, but now the red was flickering at my fingertips, the power responding to my distress, my confusion, my fear. "I don’t know what I am anymore. I thought I was a werewolf. An Omega with not much going on. Then I discovered I was a healer. And it has always just shined as the fact that I was just a girl with cursed magic. But now... I’m hearing you say I am not. That I’m something else. Something wrong."

"There is nothing wrong with you." He said it with such certainty that I looked up. "You are exactly what you need to be. You are the loophole in the curse. You are the thing my mother did not plan for. And that makes you powerful beyond measure. I am sure that scares her, which is why she tried to demonize me to you."

I did not tell him what Selene had fully said. That she got a loophole for me to exist. I could not trust him. Even if this showdown had gone down differently than I thought, I could not trust him.

"I don’t want to be powerful." I pushed past him, walking to the center of the room, needing space, needing air that didn’t taste like him. "I came and called you into this space for one reason and one reason alone. I want to be left alone. I want to sleep without bleeding. I am not interested in being anyone’s experiment. I just want to be Bonnie."

"Bonnie." He tried the name out, rolling it on his tongue. "That is a beautiful name; your mother named you that, I assume?"

I gave him no reply.

"It does hurt that you are cold to me. It is not my fault that I was already sealed when you were born. I never got to hold you. I never got to see if you had my eyes or her smile. I have been robbed of everything, daughter. Including you."

"Don’t call me that." I whipped around. The red flared brighter, casting strange shadows on the yellowed walls. "You don’t get to call me that. You don’t get to claim fatherhood after trying to murder me. You don’t get to be sentimental about missed birthdays when you were going to gut me like a fish. I pray this is a cruel trick. I pray you are not him."

"Give me some grace. I was confused. I was angry. I had been trapped in darkness for almost twenty years, if not more, and suddenly there was this girl walking through my memories, seeing my secrets, touching my past." He ran a hand through his white hair, the gesture so human it made my chest ache. "I reacted badly. I admit that. But can you honestly say you would have done differently? If you were trapped, forgotten, sealed away like a dirty secret, and someone invaded your mind?"

"I wouldn’t have tried to kill them."

"You killed a Beta. You killed sentinels. I saw it in your head." He lowered his hand. His eyes caught the red light and held it, reflecting it back at me. "You are not innocent, daughter. But you’re not what you think you are. You did what you had to do, and it is sad that you hated yourself for it afterward." His voice softened. "That is what separates you from me. Not the killing. The guilt."

The words landed like stones in still water. I thought of the cell, the way the red had consumed them, the way I’d felt nothing but relief and terror in equal measure. I thought of my mother’s body, cooling on the floor, and how I’d caused that too.

"I came here to warn you." My voice sounded small. I hated it. I straightened my spine and tried again, stronger. "I came here to tell you to stop hunting me in my sleep. That is all. I want nothing to do with you. I don’t care about your curse, your mother, or your tragic backstory. I am not your daughter. I am not your family. I am nothing to you, and you are nothing to me."

He watched me for a long moment. The red light pulsed between us, a barrier and a bridge.

"You can ask him," he said finally.

"Ask who what?"

"Your mate. Lysander. Ask him about me. Ask him about the sealing. Ask him how many generations of his family know about me and have kept me locked in that prison," He smiled, and it was sharp as broken glass. "Ask him if he knows that you are mine. That you carry my blood. That when you hit the right age, the curse will consume you just as it consumed me."

I froze. The red flickered, dimmed, almost went out. "What?"

"The curse is in the blood. It is in the magic. You are Lycan now, not merely a werewolf. Not entirely." He took a step toward me, and this time I didn’t back away. I couldn’t. "You might not be as trusting of me now, but the way that boy will look at you when he realizes what you are? When he realizes that his mate, who he is supposed to love more than anything in the world, is the daughter of the monster his family has kept chained? He will see you in a whole different light, and you will be so sick. You will see the truth of what I am telling you."

"You’re lying." But my voice wavered. I thought of Lysander, of the way he looked at me all the time, like I was precious.

He was not like any of them. He would never. He would never.

"I would not recommend telling him about your parentage, though." He was close enough now that I could smell him again, that cold iron scent, that pine and smoke. "You will be surprised how quickly people switch up on you. How fast love turns to fear. How fast protection becomes imprisonment."

"I don’t believe you." But I did. Some part of me did, which I was now fighting tooth and nail agaisnt did believe it. Because it was not new.

"Then believe this." He reached out and touched my forehead again, too fast for me to stop him, too gentle for me to flinch away from. "I am done hunting you in your dreams. You have proven you can fight back. You have proven you are worth the effort of knowing. But the next time we meet, it will be because you sought me out. Because you need answers I can provide. Because you finally realize that I am the only one who understands you and that I am your father."

I gasped and shoved him away. The vision broke. The room dissolved around us, the yellowed walls melting into gray static.

"I will never seek you out." I backed away, feeling the dream fraying at the edges, feeling myself being pulled back toward waking. "I will never need you. I have people who love me. I have someone who is just like me. I have Lysander. I have... I have a pack."

"For now," he agreed. He was fading too, becoming translucent around the edges, that predatory smile still fixed on his face. "But remember this, daughter. I am the only one who cannot lie to you about what you are. I will be waiting."

"Go to hell."

"I have been there. It looks remarkably like a sealed cell." He laughed, and the sound followed me as the dream collapsed, as the gray became white.

I woke up gasping, sunlight streaming through the window of Lysander’s mother’s room, Fia’s face hovering above me, pale with worry.