STONES AT GLASS HOUSE

Lyra's POV

I have always wanted my mother to love me.

Not the way she loved the idea of us. Not the way she paraded us at pack events with our hair done and our mouths shut and our smiles perfectly positioned. Not the way she bragged about our betrothal. I mean really love me. The kind that didn't require anything from me first. The kind that just existed.  

I was still waiting.

I missed my father.

A mother should make breakfast for her children in the morning, but mine scream. The screaming had started at seven in the morning. Before breakfast. Before I had even finished combing my hair.

I heard the first crash from my room and I already knew. I set my comb down slowly on the vanity and looked at myself in the mirror and told myself it was probably nothing. It was something huge. It was always huge with Mum. She was probably just in one of her moods. She had them sometimes, these episodes where the whole house had to bend itself around her energy or get broken in the process. We had learned to read the signs early. The way her voice dropped right before it rose. The way she moved through rooms too fast. The way she stopped looking at us directly.

I saw the signs yesterday.

She had come back from Alpha Hayden's in a dress I had never seen before. It felt like she was trying to be remembered in that dress. The sad thing was that the colour was horrible against her skin. But I wasn't going to do her the favour of telling her. I didn't want to be buried alive. She hadn't said where she was going when she left. She never did. But I had seen the way she checked her reflection multiple times at the front door before she walked out and something about it had sat wrong in my stomach all evening.

I didn't say anything, but something told me my mother was into Alpha Hayden. Eww. My stomach turned immediately. I pushed it away. That was insane. That was completely insane. She wouldn't. Would she?

I finished combing my hair, set my comb down, and went downstairs.

The kitchen looked like an argument had started there and moved. One of the dining chairs was on its side. The fruit bowl was on the floor, oranges scattered across the tile. Vera was standing near the counter with both hands raised slightly. “Your mother has started again!” Her face was twisted angrily. Her eyes were moving wildly. How bad was this? How long will it last today?

I walked to the living room. Mum was in the centre of the room.

She was still in her robe. Her hair was undone. She was talking; no, not talking, pouring. Words coming out of her in a stream that didn't have a clear start or a clear target, just volume and heat. Something didn't go her way and I was guessing it was her encounter with the Alpha

"...ungrateful, the three of you, I have given everything, do you understand what I have sacrificed…"

"Mum." I stepped into the room carefully. "Mum, what happened?"

She turned and looked at me and for a second I thought she was going to stop.

"Don't look at me like that," she snapped. "Don't stand there with that face like I'm the problem. You think I don't see it? You think I don't know what you all think of me?"

"Nobody thinks anything," Vera said. Her voice was flat and controlled. She was better at this than me. She had always been better at this than me. "You need to sit down and tell us what happened."

"Nothing happened!"

Something happened, I thought. Something happened yesterday and it didn't go the way she planned and now we are all standing in a room with upturned chairs.

"I'm done." Eden's voice came from the doorway.

We all turned. She was standing there in her training clothes, bag over one shoulder, face completely closed. “Claire keeps screaming at us for nothing,” she pointed at Mum. “If you didn't want children, you shouldn't have had them!”

"Eden…" I started.

"No." She looked at Mum directly. “I'm not doing this today. I have practice. Claire can go fuck herself!” She started walking away.

“What did you say?” Mum was eyeing Eden dangerously.

“I said go fuck yourself, Claire!” Eden kept moving 

"You do not walk away from me," Mum said.

"Watch me." Eden picked up her keys from the counter.

“You are going to respect your mother!” Mum crossed the room and grabbed a fistful of Eden's hair at the back of her head and yanked and Eden's neck snapped back and the bag dropped from her shoulder and I screamed. I heard myself scream from somewhere outside my own body and then Vera was moving.

"Let go of her." Vera screamed. "Let go of her right now, Claire!”

Mum didn't let go.

“Please, Mum! You are going to hurt her!” I wheezed. I felt my chest tightening. I felt my legs give out. I fell to the ground in a thud. “I can't breathe! I… I can't breathe,” I coiled on the floor crying. No one looked at me. No one noticed me. Their voices were so loud, no one heard me. I felt my life slipping away.

Through my peripheral vision, I saw Vera grab Mum’s wrist and she pulled. They lurched sideways into the counter and Eden twisted free and Mum turned on Vera with her eyes blown wide 

Vera, who had always been the voice of reasoning, had snapped. She has spent years being the one who stayed calm. But now she snapped

"I WISH YOU HAD GONE MAD INSTEAD OF HIM!" Vera's voice tore through the room like something that had been sealed for a very long time. "I WISH IT HAD BEEN YOU!"

“Lyra!” Eden

suddenly screamed as her eyes landed on me. Finally, someone noticed