Chapter 134: Trust 1

BONNIE

The silence after Fia asked her question sat heavy in the room, thick enough that I could hear the faint drip of something in the adjoining bathroom, a tap not fully closed, marking time while I decided whether I actually had the nerve to say this out loud.

I picked at a loose thread on the blanket instead of looking at her. It felt easier that way, confessing to fabric instead of a face that might flinch.

"In the dreamscape," I said finally, "he showed me my mother."

Fia’s hand, which had been resting light and warm against my shoulder this whole time, went still. "He got into your head," she said slowly, like she was working through the mechanics of it rather than the meaning. "So? That’s what he does, apparently. That’s the whole horror of it."

"No." I shook my head, and something in my throat tightened so hard it ached. "That isn’t what I mean. Just, give me a second. I haven’t said this out loud yet. Not even to myself, really."

She didn’t push. She just waited, her fingers curling gently around my wrist, an anchor rather than a demand.

I made myself keep going, because stopping now, halfway into it, felt worse than any version of finishing.

"When I was younger," I said, "my mother was killed. By a Beta. He was trying to force me to use my gifts, to prove what I was in front of a room full of people who already wanted me dead for it. She told me not to. She told him, with her own throat already opening, that I was powerless, that I had nothing worth taking from me. And I watched her bleed out on that stone floor because I listened to her instead of saving her."

Fia’s breath caught, but she said nothing.

"I think, over the years, I started forgetting her on purpose," I continued, my voice thinning out. "Not the fact of her. Not that she existed, or that she loved me, or that she died protecting a secret I still don’t fully understand. But her face. Her voice. The little things, like how she hummed when she braided my hair, or what her laugh actually sounded like when it wasn’t strained through fear. All of that got buried under the one image I couldn’t stop seeing. The blood. Her eyes going empty. That’s all that survived in my head for years. I don’t have a picture of her, Fia. I don’t have anything real to hold onto except that single, awful moment, replayed so many times it wore a groove into me."

Fia’s grip on my wrist tightened, not painfully, just present, just there.

"But he showed me a memory," I said. "Not of the death. Something before it. Something I did not even have. It was her, laughing, running through a meadow, being chased and caught and spun around by someone who clearly loved her. And it was her, Fia. It was really her. I recognized her. I hadn’t seen her face like that since I... do not even know... seven year old? And suddenly there she was, whole and happy and alive, and I understood, all at once, exactly who the man chasing her through that grass actually was."

Fia went very still beside me.

"So that means," she started, and let it hang there, unfinished, like she needed me to be the one to say it.

"That means," I said, forcing the words out before my nerve failed me completely, "he’s my father."

For a long moment, Fia just looked at me. Her face moved through several things at once, horror, disbelief, something that might have been pity, before settling into something more careful.

"So why was he trying to kill you?" she asked, her voice low. "I’ve had my own share of terrible fathers, Bonnie. Trust me on that. But actively hunting you through your dreams, trying to gut you? That’s a different category of insane entirely. That’s not neglect. That’s not even garden-variety cruelty. That’s premeditated."

"He didn’t know at first," I said. "Not until he actually cut into me. I think he caught the scent of my blood, or felt something in it that told him the truth before I did. But he is my father. There’s no version of this where I get to pretend otherwise anymore." I let out a slow breath, steadying myself before the last part. "My father is Lycaon."

Fia’s mouth opened, then closed. She blinked once, twice, like she was waiting for the words to rearrange themselves into something less impossible. "Did you just say Lycaon?"

I nodded.

"Is that not," she started, then stopped, shaking her head slightly, as though she could physically dislodge the thought from where it had lodged itself. "Is that not the demigod whose story is told from the rhyme? The one everyone gets taught as children?"

"Yes," I said. "The tale we all grew up hearing. Selene’s son. The one who mocked the sun god’s people, started a war to defend his mother’s honor, and then refused to bend the knee even when peace was finally offered to him. She cursed him for it. Cursed his entire bloodline." I let out a short, humorless laugh that scraped my throat on the way out. "As insane as it all sounds, it actually makes sense now. Why she abandoned me the way she did. Why she chose this exact moment, of all the moments in my entire life, to finally break her own rules and show up. I think she was afraid he’d reach me first. That if he did, he’d turn me toward whatever he actually wants, whatever unfinished war he’s still fighting against her."

"This is insane," Fia said, rising from the edge of the bed, pacing a short, tight line across the floor like her body needed somewhere to put all this new information. "We have to tell Lysander. Immediately. This isn’t something you sit on."

"It was hard enough confessing this to you," I said, watching her pace. "Telling him would be so much harder."

She stopped mid-step and turned back to face me, something baffled and a little wounded crossing her features. "Why would that be the case? Out of everyone in this entire estate, you should trust him more than you trust me. He’s your mate, Bonnie."