“God, was there like a newsletter?”

“Wolves are a small community, Secret. Gossip travels fast.”

“So it seems.”

“I need to know if you understand the life you’re getting into. Can you believe that?”

“I know what life I’m getting into.”

“I don’t think you do.” He leaned back, and the leather chair creaked under his weight. “Will you humor an old man telling you a story?”

“Why? Do you know any old men with good stories?”

He ignored me, which was probably best for both of us, and went on. “When I was a very young man, not long after I was Awakened, there was a woman in our pack who was young and willful, not unlike yourself. She fought against her king and her pack every step of the way, believing the rules of conformity shouldn’t apply to her. She felt she was too special to be bound by a hundred generations of tradition.”

“In other words, she was a teenager.”

Callum smiled at this. “Yes, very much so. Well, this girl fell in love, as girls of her age are wont to do. Girls of any age, really. We are all ruled by love, Secret, make no mistake of it. Love will make fools of us all in turn.”

It was my turn to say nothing.

“The boy she loved was a good kid. Polite, charming, and he loved her a great deal. I’m sure this feels like a story with a happy ending, but I’m sorry to say it isn’t. They loved each other, and through a twist of fate, she found herself pregnant at only seventeen years old.”

My blood went cold.

“The boy wanted to take care of her, but…died tragically.”

Yeah, I bet he did. Having a hole chewed in your neck by a vampire is a very specific kind of tragedy. I continued to sit in silence. Any urge to interrupt had vanished when he’d told me the girl’s age. I just wanted him to finish.

“After he was gone, we believed she would mourn but that her love for her child would be greater than the loss she felt for her man. He was human, after all, and he was destined to die before her and she knew it. But time passed, and when the child came, we knew something was wrong.”

“With the child?” Shit. Shut up, Secret.

“No, with her mother. Her grief over her loss had driven her past the point of consolation. She believed the child was an abomination, when it was just a beautiful little girl.” He smiled sadly. “She gave all of herself to the wrong man, and when she lost him, she lost everything that made her who she was. His death broke her, and she never fit together again.”

“I’m not my mother,” I whispered.

“No. I could have told you that, my dear. You are stronger than Mercy ever was. Your identity is not entwined with your love for the king, that’s as plain as day.”

“Then why did you need to tell me her story?”

“Because I don’t think you’re marrying Lucas for the right reasons. I want you to think about what you’re doing. This is something you can’t change once it’s done.”

“I’m prepared. The mate bond has already been activated.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t make this decision lightly. I know what I’m doing, and it won’t break me.”

“It may not break you, but consider the story from another angle. What if you are not the girl? What if you are the dead boy and the fractures you are creating are destroying someone else?”

Callum could have reached his hand inside my mouth and squeezed my heart to pulp with his bare hands and it would have made my chest hurt less than his words had.

“What are you talking about?” I was barely able to wheeze out the sentence.

“I don’t think you should marry Lucas because I don’t think he’s the one you’re meant to be with.”

I had started shaking my head before he was finished saying Lucas’s name. “You’re wrong. Everyone has said it’s perfect. I’m royalty, so is he. I’m pack protector. We’re soul-bonded, and now our mate bond is active. I’ve proven I deserve to be his wife.”

“I’m not disputing whether or not you deserve it. You do deserve to be at the head of a pack. I know all about how you dispatched Marcus Sullivan. I know, too, you were forced to fight your own mother in the end, who was madder than ever thanks to her attachment to yet another wrong man.” Callum wove his fingers together and rested them on his stomach, still toned even though he was pushing forty. Fat werewolves didn’t exist. “You are Alpha material, Secret.”

I fought against the swell of pride that grew larger in my chest. This guy was playing me like he was Hendrix and I was a guitar. He’d found a weakness I hadn’t known I had, and he was poking at it until it was raw.

“I don’t understand your problem then.”

“You won’t be the Alpha anymore if you marry him. He will crush that part of you.”

This made me laugh. “Callum, I know we’ve just met, but I’m going to be honest with you if I can.”

“Please.”

“You think you know me because of what the werewolf grapevine has told you. We’re family, and I respect you think that means you know what’s best for me. I can almost appreciate it. But you need to understand something about me. If I’m meant to be Alpha, if that’s the misguided destiny the Fates have chosen for me…” The lifelines on my palms felt like they were burning. “If it’s my path, then no man will set me off course. Not even a king. Only I decide.”

And I would have to decide. Calliope had told me there was no way around it, short life or long, I couldn’t escape the decision. I had thought choosing to marry Lucas had made the choice for me, but I was still deeply entrenched in my vampire half, and as long as I had a foot in each world, my choice would remain up in the air. My destiny was a coin tossed high, and eventually it would come back down and I would know—wolf or vampire. I couldn’t be both forever.

“I like you,” Callum said. “Things would have been very different for you if Vivienne hadn’t taken you from us.”

Sure. I’d be dead.

“Well, what’s past is past. But if you have a time machine, I’d be willing to give your version a go.”

“Do you know why she took you?” He sounded genuinely curious.

“She thought because Mercy had abandoned me the pack would shun me. She was afraid for me. Of what a young teenaged king might do to an unwanted baby.” I shot him a look.

“A baby who was a born wolf?”

Looks like my story for Magnolia had made it all the way to the top. “Yes.”

“No, my dear, we wouldn’t have shunned you for that.”

I shrugged. “I can’t know now if that was true then.”

“Well, why would you be any different?”

“Different?”

“We didn’t shun Mercy’s other children.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Inside my skull, behind the intense headache that had blossomed out of nowhere, a thousand different versions of what the fuck were bouncing against the sensitive tissue of my brain, bruising me with their sharp, jagged edges.

What came out when I opened my mouth was, “Wuhhhuuueeeezzzzeeee.”

“I guess she didn’t get around to telling you about them when she saw you in New York.”

“She was too busy trying to shred my face.”

“Yes, well. Not the best time for her to deliver such news.” He gave a half shrug.

“Them. You said plural. How many bastard pups has Mercy kicked to the curb?” My heart was hammering against my sternum. I often found that snark was a great way to mask other real emotions. I didn’t have a name for what I was feeling now. Terror… Excitement…

It was motherfucking hope.

“Three. You were first, of course. Then about four years after she abandoned you, she came back seeking refuge. She had the twins with her then, only a few weeks old. We took her in because she was a rightful member of the pack and she was afraid for the safety of her babies. By morning, Mercy was gone, and we raised her pups as part of the pack.”

“Twins.”

“Yes. You’ve met your brother.”

I choked when I tried to swallow.

“Ben,” Callum clarified. “I sent him with Amelia as one of my emissaries in February.”

Oh my God. I’d shaken hands with my own brother and hadn’t had the faintest idea of who he was. I remembered how I’d marveled about us sharing the same last name and wondered how much family I had down here I didn’t know about.

All the while my family had been within reach.

“And your sister…”

I thought of the ages, my heart throbbing. “Magnolia?”

Callum laughed then. “No, no. Magnolia is Amelia’s daughter. Your sister is part of the reason I asked you here.”

“Why?”

“Eugenia, your sister, took on the change at the same time Ben did. Afterwards, Eugenia became difficult. Not like a normal teenager, but something different. The Awakening altered her somehow.”

“How?”

“We haven’t been able to find out. Within the year she ran away. We know where she is, but we can’t get her to come home.”

“You’re the king, she’s pack. It can’t be too hard.”

“You of all people should know nothing is that simple with high-spirited, teenaged werewolves.” He raised one brow and gave me a meaningful look. “She is with family, which is enough for me to believe she’s safe. But she is eighteen now. It’s time for her to come back, and that’s where you come in.”

“How am I going to convince an eighteen-year-old to come home if you’ve already failed?”

“How you do it isn’t my concern. I’m sure you have ways of being very persuasive.”

Sure, but they usually involved broken fingers or silver weapons of some kind. I didn’t want that to be my introduction to my sister.