"The Mother's Secrets"

An hour later, Maria Capulet knocked softly on her daughter's door. "Mija? May I come in?"

Juliana had retreated to her window seat, staring out at the garden where peacocks wandered freely—beautiful, pampered, and completely contained. She didn't look up as her mother entered.

"I brought tea." Maria set a silver tray on the side table and settled into the reading chair across from her daughter. "And maybe some perspective."

"Did you know?" Juliana's voice was barely above a whisper. "About Lorenzo?"

"Your father's been negotiating for months. I hoped... I hoped you might show interest in someone else first. Force his hand."

Now Juliana did look up, studying her mother's face. Maria Capulet was still beautiful at forty-two, with the same dark hair and blue eyes as her daughter. But there was something defeated in her posture, something that spoke of dreams deferred too long.

"Is this how it happened with you and Papa?"

Maria's laugh held no humor. "Worse. I had twenty-four hours' notice before our mating ceremony. My parents didn't even pretend I had a choice."

"But you loved him?"

"I thought I did. Or maybe I convinced myself I did because the alternative was too painful to contemplate." Maria poured tea with steady hands that betrayed nothing of the storm in her eyes. "Your father is a good man, Juliana. He provides for us, protects us, gives us everything we could want."

"Except freedom."

"Except freedom," Maria agreed quietly.

They sat in silence for a moment, the weight of generations of Capulet women's sacrifices filling the space between them.

"Mama," Juliana said carefully, "what were you like before you mated Papa?"

Maria's smile was wistful and heartbreaking. "I was going to be a travel writer. Can you imagine? I wanted to see every country, write about different cultures, document how supernatural communities lived around the world."

"What happened?"

"The pack needed an alliance with my family's territory. I was the right age, the right bloodline, the right... sacrifice." Maria's voice carried twenty years of carefully buried resentment. "So I put away my notebooks and my dreams and became the perfect Luna."

"Do you regret it?"

The question hung between them like a confession waiting to be made.

"I regret that I never tried to fight for what I wanted," Maria said finally. "I regret that I let fear of disappointing my family override my own desires. I regret that I never saw Paris or wrote about the wolf packs of Romania or tasted authentic gelato in Italy."

Juliana's heart clenched. "You could still—"

"No, mija. I made my choice twenty years ago. But you..." Maria leaned forward, her eyes bright with something that looked almost like hope. "You still have time to make yours."

"Papa would never—"

"Your father loves you more than his own life. But he shows that love by controlling everything he thinks could hurt you. Including your own choices." Maria glanced toward the door, then lowered her voice. "Sometimes love requires sacrifice, mija, but choose your sacrifices wisely. Don't sacrifice your soul for someone else's peace of mind."

The words hit like a revelation. Juliana stared at her mother, seeing her clearly for the first time. Not just the perfect Luna who organized charity events and smiled at pack gatherings, but the woman who still dreamed of distant shores and stories untold.

"What are you saying, Mama?"

"I'm saying that if you marry Lorenzo Escalus, you'll have everything your father thinks you need. Security, status, beautiful children who will carry on both bloodlines." Maria's voice was steady, but her hands trembled slightly around her teacup. "But you'll spend the rest of your life wondering what would have happened if you'd been brave enough to choose differently."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then you'll face your father's disappointment and the pack's judgment. You'll be seen as selfish and ungrateful. You might lose your inheritance, your place in the family, everything you've ever known."

The choice laid out before her was brutal in its simplicity: security or freedom, family approval or personal happiness, the cage or the unknown.

"What would you do, Mama? If you were seventeen again?"

Maria was quiet for so long that Juliana thought she wouldn't answer. When she finally spoke, her voice carried the weight of every road not taken.

"I would run, mija. I would run as far and as fast as my wolf could carry me, and I would never look back."

The confession hung in the air between them like a bridge Juliana hadn't known existed.

"But that's just one woman's regret speaking," Maria added quickly, her mask of careful neutrality sliding back into place. "You have to make your own choice. Whatever that choice is, I'll support you."

"Even if it disappoints Papa?"

"Especially if it disappoints Papa." Maria's smile was fierce and proud and heartbreaking. "I may not have been brave enough to fight for my dreams, but I can be brave enough to support yours."

After her mother left, Juliana returned to her window seat and picked up Jane Eyre again. But Charlotte Brontë's words about freedom and independent will felt less like fantasy and more like prophecy.

Nine days until the engagement announcement.

Nine days to decide between the golden cage and the great unknown.

Nine days to choose between becoming her mother or becoming herself.