Chapter 3: The Bitter truth

I just… stared at her.

For a long time, with my mouth wide open. 

Not blinking. Not breathing right. Trying to make sense of the words that had just fallen out of her mouth like they were not meant to crush my whole life in one blow.

“So you’re telling me,” I said slowly, saying each word like it might burn me if I rushed, “that I…... I’m half vampire?”

“Yes,” the councilor said in that calm, serene voice of hers, like she was explaining the weather forecast. “A dhampir to be precise.”

I didn’t even know what to do with that word. Dhampir. It didn’t feel like it belonged to me. It felt like the kind of word you read in an old, dusty book you’re not supposed to be touching.

“Which is an illegal creation,” the enforcer added, his voice sharp enough to cut glass. His lip curled when he said it, like the truth of my very existence left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Illegal?” I blinked at him. “But that doesn’t even make sense!”

Except………

Except it did make sense, didn’t it? If I stopped pretending for just a second and actually looked at my life, really looked, there were some things that had never added up.

Like the way I healed faster than anyone else I knew. 

Like Greff’s weird, almost addicted reaction to my blood the one time he’d caught a whiff of it. 

The way my mom had uprooted us so many times when I was a kid, never staying anywhere long enough for me to make friends who lasted until the pack. 

Oh my God.

Had we been running from my father this entire time? Running until she’d forgotten what exactly we were even running from?

Was I part of the reason my mom became mentally ill?

Had he been…… not a deadbeat, but maybe a deadly predator?

And if that was true, then………

“Wait. Illegal?” I snapped my eyes back to the enforcer. “You can’t possibly mean…… I mean, not even you could try to pin this on me.”

“Not at all,” the councilor cut in, lifting a graceful hand like she could just wave away my panic. “No one holds you accountable for your father’s crimes.”

“Yeah? So well………”

“But,” she went on, cutting through my interruption like butter, “we will hold you accountable for not sharing any information that would lead to us tracking him down. He could be a rogue.”

I scoffed. “Pay attention, asshole. I didn’t even know my father was supernatural, how am I supposed to know where he is? He could’ve been Bigfoot for all I knew.”

“Pay attention, dhampir,” the enforcer shot back, leaning forward over the table so close I could see the faint scar under his chin. “Withholding information on the whereabouts is punishable by death. That applies to you… and your mother.”

My stomach dropped like someone had just kicked the floor out from under me.

“Withholding information? She doesn’t know her own damn name half the time, you son of a bitch,” I spat, my voice shaking. “So don’t you dare try blaming this on her. She……”

I stopped. Not because I wanted to, but because suddenly my face was wet and I didn’t even remember starting to cry.

Crap.

I swiped at the tears with the back of my hand, glaring at him like I could burn a hole right through his ugly skull.

It was the councilor who spoke next, her voice softer now.

“We hold no grudge against your mother,” she said. “As a human, she cannot have been aware of the crime in which she was involved. She must have been a strong woman to have survived that. Many humans would not.”

“She is definitely a strong woman,” I shot back immediately, because damn it, she was. She fought battles every single day just to stay afloat, and the fact no one else in the pack could see them didn’t make them any less real.

“We will, of course, have to speak to her,” the councilor began.

“No way! You know the state she’s in right now.” I started, but she rolled right over me.

“I realize that’s not possible right now, given her current mental state,” she continued smoothly. “However, should she become well enough, the council will arrange an interview with her. In the meantime, we’re content to leave her under the care of Alpha Cole healers… for as long as he is happy to continue providing that care.”

And there it was. The kicker.

I swallowed hard and nodded because I knew what that really meant.

Alpha Cole wasn’t my biggest fan. He’d made that clear from the moment he learnt I was his son’s mate, and it was no secret he’d only agreed to take my mother in as a way to keep me in line until he figured out how to safely kill me without upsetting his precious son, Davorin.

Well, fine. If that’s how he wanted to play it, I could play too. I’d make sure he continued to need to keep me alive. Be enough of a threat that he’d need leverage over me. Better a hostage than a corpse.

Of course, the idea of me being a real threat to Cole, beyond annoying him by existing as his son’s fated mate, was  laughable. But I’d been laughed at all the time. I was still standing.

“So what happens now?” I asked finally, my voice dry and hoarse.

“You’ll be sent to Ravenhill Academy where you will study your dhampir properties,” the councilor said like she was telling me my bus was running late. “You can expect to hear from the academy council in due time.”

The enforcer leaned in again, his shadow falling across the table. “Make sure you don’t do something that will have us to come looking for you,” he said low and cold. “Because you won’t like how that ends.”

I didn’t doubt that for a second. And I was fresh out of petty replies, so I just nodded.

“Good.” The councilor stood, smoothing her robes like this whole conversation had been nothing but a mild inconvenience in her day. “Then that’s settled. We will begin to make arrangements for you to go to the academy for you.”

She turned to leave, taking the folder from the table with her, like she was carrying the last solid proof of my entire existence under her arm.

And just like that, my identity was revealed and fate sealed almost immediately.