The problem is, once my mom married Marcus, she seemed to swallow the crazy story about him being a werewolf hook, line, and sinker. She even sat me down and tried to talk to me about it after they were first married.
“Honey,” she said to me. “There’s something you need to know—something you have to understand about who we really are…”
She went on and on about how both of us had recessive genes and the same bloodlines as Marcus and Jake and that was why we all had the same pale, pure-gold eyes with no other color at all in them. But when she started talking about “Heat Cycles” and “mating needs” she completely lost me.
“Mom, what are you saying?” I demanded, staring at her blankly. “I mean, it’s like you’re trying to give me the ‘sex talk’ all over again, but this time it doesn’t make any sense.”
“It didn’t make sense to me either, until I met your stepfather, Ani,” she told me earnestly. “Because your father wasn’t a Were, but Marcus is. And being around him woke my body up in ways that I—”
“Eww, Mom—please!” I protested. “Look, I’m really happy that you found someone who, er, satisfies you in bed.” Just saying that made me blush, my pale cheeks going hot and bright red. “But please don’t bring me into it. I really don’t want to know.”
She had sighed then and run her fingers through her long, ash blonde hair—so much like my own.
“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. You’ll probably marry a non-Were anyway—like I did with your father—so your cycle will never become active. I’m sorry if I upset you, honey.”
I wanted to say, “What really upsets me is this crazy cult you bought into when you married Marcus and then you dragged me into it too! How can you really believe he’s a werewolf, Mom? And a ‘Royal’ one at that? What’s wrong with you, swallowing this insane idea? You were never like this before you met Marcus! He’s changed you!”
But of course I couldn’t say any of that. The reason being that I had never seen my mom so happy before.
She’d had a really hard life after my dad died and struggled to raise me as a single mom. She worked her fingers to the bone, taking double shifts sometimes just so I could have clothes that weren’t all from the thrift store and nutritious food to eat. I was twelve before I realized that she sometimes went hungry just to make sure I was fed.
So if she wanted to pretend that her new husband was werewolf royalty and she was now the “Alpha’s Omega Bride,” who was I to tell her differently?
After all, Marcus didn’t hit her or shout at her—in fact, he treated her like a Queen—like a Goddess. Nothing was too good for her. He hung on her every word and showered her in expensive gifts. After years of barely scraping by, that had to feel good—so let her have some joy in her life for a change.
I just wished she wouldn’t drag me into it.
“What upsets me is having to take Marcus’s last name,” was what I said, instead of all of the above. “Why can’t I keep Dad’s name? I know he died back when I was nine, but I still remember him—still love him. Taking Marcus’s name and letting him legally adopt me…it’s almost like we’re trying to erase Dad from our lives.”
“Oh, honey, no!” my mom exclaimed, shaking her head, her pure-gold eyes going wide. “That’s not what letting Marcus adopt you is about at all, I promise.”
“Well, why is it necessary for him to adopt me in the first place?” I had demanded. “I mean, I’m nineteen, Mom. I’m legally an adult—I don’t need to be adopted and taken care of. I don’t need to live in this big-ass mansion with security all around either, for that matter. Why can’t I move on campus at JMU with Madison and Ashley?”
“Because it’s not safe.” My mom had taken me by the shoulders and looked earnestly into my eyes. “Anastasia Ellinora Wulven, listen to me,” she said earnestly.
The last name was my stepfather’s—the one I’d been forced to take when he adopted me. But when she called me by my full first name like that, I knew she meant business.
“All right, Mom,” I said. “I’m listening.”
“Marcus adopting you and keeping you in the house with the rest of the family, that’s to protect you,” she told me. “As long as you have his last name—Wulven—you’re under his protection and everyone knows that. Plus it means that no one can expect anything…unreasonable of you.”
“Unreasonable?” I had raised my eyebrows at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind,” She shook her head dismissively. “The point is, there are people out there who…would expect certain things of you if they could get to you. But as long as you’re living here with Marcus and me, they can’t. Can’t get to you, I mean. That’s why you have a security detail with you whenever you go out.”