Seducing My Werewolf Hockey Captain

Chapter 7: The truth about everything

Chapter 7: The truth about everything

~ Gwen ~

The second Yates left, the room felt about ten degrees colder.

I stood there in the middle of my bedroom with Aunt Anne still in the doorway, my heart still racing from being that close to him, my brain still trying to process the fact that I had just been rescued by a werewolf who apparently hated me but had broken into my house to fight off an intruder anyway.

Nothing made sense.

Actually, nothing had made sense since I arrived in this city, but tonight had taken it to a whole new level of confusion. A werewolf had broken into my house. Another werewolf had saved me. I had pretended to be unconscious while watching them fight. And then I had ended up pressed against Yates Underwood's chest in a way that made my entire body feel like it was on fire.

I pressed my palms against my face and took a deep breath.

"Uhm, Aunt Anne," I started, turning to face her properly. "I just had the most terrible day of my life."

She stared at me, genuinely shocked. "What do you mean?"

The question opened something in me that I had been holding back since the moment I woke up on that lab floor and Elodie told me the truth about this city. Everything came pouring out.

"Are you a werewolf too?" I asked.

Aunt Anne looked confused. Like the question itself did not compute. "What do you mean by that? Of course I am a werewolf. We are all werewolves."

I burst out laughing.

It was not funny. Nothing about this situation was funny. But I laughed anyway because what else was I supposed to do? The absurdity of it all was just too much. Here I was, standing in a house decorated with animal pelts, talking to an aunt I had never met before three weeks ago, asking her if she was a werewolf like it was a completely normal question.

"Elodie had been right," I said through the laughter that was quickly turning hysterical.

Completely, devastatingly right. This entire city was exactly what she said it was and I had walked into it with zero preparation and absolutely no idea.

Aunt Anne looked even more confused now. "Right about what? What are you talking about?"

"I do not know anything about werewolves, Aunt Anne." The words came out sharper than I meant them to, all the fear and frustration of the last few days bleeding through. "I am not a werewolf. And I do not think my parents were one either."

Aunt Anne stared at me.

Just stared, mouth slightly open, eyes wide, like I had just told her the sky was actually green and the ocean was made of lemonade.

Then she closed her mouth. Opened it again. Closed it.

The silence stretched between us, heavy and uncomfortable, and I watched as different emotions flickered across her face. Shock. Disbelief. Understanding. And finally, something that looked almost like relief.

"So it worked," she said finally, so quiet I almost missed it.

"It worked?" I took a step towards her, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. "What worked? What are you talking about, Aunt?"

She sat down heavily on the edge of my bed, like her legs had decided they were done holding her up. She looked at me with something that might have been wonder or horror or both.

"Your parents were…" She stopped. Started again. "Oh God. I cannot believe it worked."

"Aunt Anne." I sat down beside her, my patience hanging by an absolute thread. "Please. Just tell me."

She took a breath. Held my hands in both of hers. Looked me directly in the eyes.

"You are a werewolf, Gwen. You are from a werewolf bloodline. Your parents were rebels because they wanted to be human. They wanted to make their wolves dormant, leave our city, live among humans completely. They were expelled for it."

The room tilted slightly.

I tried to process what she was saying but the words felt like they were coming from very far away, filtered through water or thick glass. My parents. Werewolves. Rebels. Expelled.

"I just did not know that the wolfsbane worked," she continued, her voice picking up speed now like she had been holding this in for years. "I did not know that their wolves truly became dormant. And maybe that is the reason why your wolf is dormant too. Maybe it passed down. Maybe you were born this way because they made themselves this way."

I could not breathe properly.

My chest felt tight and my hands were shaking and I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears like a drum.

"So you have never shifted?" she asked gently.

I laughed. It came out broken and too loud. "I am completely human, Aunt Anne. And I am terrified. I do not think I can live here. I want to go back to Boston. I want to leave."

"Oh dear." Her grip on my hands tightened. "Where are you going to go? This is your home. This is where you belong."

That broke something in me.

I did not know when I started crying. One second I was fine and the next I was sobbing, actually sobbing, for the first time since my parents died. All of it came out at once — the grief I had been swallowing, the fear I had been ignoring, the overwhelming impossibility of everything that had happened in the last week.

"I cannot cope with this," I said through tears. "I never knew werewolves existed before a few days ago and I would like for it to remain that way. I am scared. I want to leave."

Aunt Anne pulled me into a hug and held me while I cried, and for the first time since I arrived in RavenBane, I let myself actually feel everything I had been pushing down.

I cried for my parents.

I cried for the life I used to have.

I cried because I was exhausted and terrified and completely out of my depth.

And when I finally stopped, when the tears dried up and I was left feeling empty and wrung out, Aunt Anne was still there. Still holding me. Her hand rubbed gentle circles on my back the way my mother used to when I was little and could not sleep.

"You are stronger than you think," she said quietly. "You are a Casteel. That means something here, even if you do not understand it yet."

I did not feel strong.

I felt like I was drowning.

But I nodded anyway, because what else could I do?