Fake Dating The Lycan's Heir의 모든 챕터: 챕터 41 - 챕터 50

ColeGiving Vanessa space was easier in theory than in a school where I could hear her laugh from the other end of a hallway.My Lycan noticed her before I did every morning and reacted to her absence from my usual routines with relentless irritation, although I refused to let instinct become an excuse for ignoring what she had asked of me.She wanted space. More importantly, she wanted me to stop deciding what was best for her before she had the chance to decide for herself.At lunch on Monday, I saw Nathan sit two tables away from her and remain there without approaching. Lillian joined him ten minutes later.I kept walking.Lillian followed me outside the cafeteria a few minutes later. “Are you and Vanessa fighting?” she asked.“That is between Vanessa and me.”“She has been alone most of today.”“She has friends.”“She has people who like knowing things about her. I’m beginning to think that isn’t always the same thing.”I stopped near the stairwell. “What do you want, Lillian?”“

Vanessa Dad spoke first. “You had a sister?” Mum closed her eyes for a moment, then pulled out the chair beside her. “I had a younger sister named Mara.” “You told Vanessa she was your cousin.” Dad remained standing. “You never told me she existed.” “I told you my family lost people during the Ash War.” “That is not the same thing as telling me you had a sister.” “No, Daniel. It isn’t.” “How much younger was she?” I asked. “Three years.” Mum folded her hands on the table. “Mara was louder than I was, braver in ways that often frightened me, and terrible at obeying anyone simply because they expected obedience.” “That sounds like you are,” Dad said. Mum glanced at me, and under different circumstances I might have laughed. “What happened to her?” “She disappeared before you were born. The Covenant hunted families they believed could produce hybrids, especially witch families tied to wolves. Our bloodline was already known to them.” “Because of the magic.”

VANESSA The word RELOCATED stayed in my head all night, mostly because it managed to answer one question while creating a worse one. By ten the next morning, I was sitting at the long table in the Grayson library with Mum on my left, Dad beside her, Dr. Rose Hendrix across from us, and Cole two chairs away from me. His father sat at the head of the table with the copied ledger page in front of him. I had asked for this meeting. I was also the reason nobody had been allowed to start without everyone present. “I need us to agree on something before we discuss that entry.” I kept my hands around my phone because giving them something to do was easier than watching everyone decide whether I sounded unreasonable. “If you find information about me, my childhood, my family, or whatever the Covenant did, I hear it before people start making plans around it.” Mum lowered her eyes. “I know why you hid things before,” I continued. “I know you thought you were keeping me alive. I am not a

VANESSA Lillian was waiting behind the auditorium after last period because I had asked for somewhere private, and she apparently understood that privacy no longer meant the girls’ bathroom. She had her backpack over one shoulder and her arms folded when I approached. “If this is about Nathan, I already told you everything he asked me to look for.” “It is not about Nathan.” “That somehow sounds worse.” I stopped several feet from her. For years, I had known how to stand beside Lillian without thinking about it. I knew which side she preferred in photographs, how she stole the corner pieces of brownies, how she could tell I was lying about being fine because I started reorganizing whatever was nearest to me “I found out who Mara was.” Lillian’s arms dropped. “Your mother’s sister?” “My aunt. She disappeared nineteen years ago with Julian Vale.” “The man in the picture.” “He was Lycan. Mum did not know that.” Lillian watched me carefully. “Why are you telling me?” “Because

VANESSA Lillian brought Mara’s letter to my house the next morning inside the same plastic sleeve her parents had kept for nineteen years. Mum knew the handwriting before Lillian finished taking it out. “That is hers.” Mum sat down at the kitchen table and touched the corner of the sleeve with one finger. “Mara wrote this.” Lillian remained standing. “My parents said they never met her.” “They would not have.” Mum looked up at her, and I watched her take in Lillian’s face as if she were trying to find her sister there. “She would have wanted the placement separated from anyone who knew her.” Lillian’s chin rose. “Please do not look at me like that.” Mum pulled her hand back. “I am sorry.” “I already have a mother.” “I know.” Rose arrived twenty minutes later with Mercer’s confirmation that the placement code on Lillian’s documents matched the relocated infant entry. She simply laid the records beside each other. “The dates, physician code, placement marker, and maternal i