Fear the Heart (Werelock Evolution Book 2) (14 page)

“And I knew her better than anyone. Knew her doubts and secret fears; ones she hid so well from others. I saw how stifling the expectations my parents and the world put on her were,” she lamented.

Idly I wondered how many more conversations we would have like this—where I would listen to her drone on, saying mostly nothing new while thinking she was imparting some great wisdom to me. Pre-cancer mom had always been sharp as a tack
 
…
getting straight to the point.

“She was larger than life, I tell you; so brilliant and dynamic.”

And how many different adjectives would she employ to describe the same characteristics again and again in her sister?

“Yet, deep down, she was fragile. She relied too much on external sources for her own sense of value and self-worth. And as much as she was adored, hers was that rare kind of beauty lesser souls yearn to crush.”

“You were identical, Ma,” I interjected before I could stop myself. “You were every bit as beautiful and awesome as your sister. Why do you always go on about her like this?”

She looked so confused again, and just as I was about to lose all patience, she gifted me with her own dramatic eye roll. “Duh! I know that. It’s not about better or worse, Milena, it’s about us being different. And of course I’m talking about on the inside,” she stated, as if it was obvious.

My mouth fell open.

She made a face. “Oh, close your mouth, honey. It’s so uncouth when you do that.”

I stuck my tongue out at her in retort, earning a smile.

“I know you’re annoyed with me, and you need to study,” I was shocked to hear her say, “but let me just get to my point.”

Apparently she was more lucid today than I’d given her credit for.

“I loved my sister dearly,” she resumed. “And I was naïve enough to think I could defend her from the world. Protect her from her own worst demons. It broke my heart watching her make choices in life that I knew would ultimately break her. Loving a man who could never be with her and yet refused to let her go.”

My brow shot up, intrigued. “Married?” I had to ask. I’d certainly never heard this sort of story about purrrfect Aunt Kamella before.

“Worse,” she muttered.

Hmm
 
…
what could be worse? Gay?

“But I was as wrong as everyone else for trying to make her live the life I thought was best for her. I had no right. But by God, it’s so damn hard not to do that when you love someone. When you’re scared for them and terrified for yourself that you’ll lose them if you can’t change the path they’re set on.”

“Aunt Kamella died in a car accident,” I reminded her. “Sober. During the daytime. How could you have changed that? It was just an accident.”

“I’m not talking about Kamella!” she huffed out of nowhere. “Bloody fucking Christ, Milena, can you let me get a word in already and finish my motherfucking point here?”

I had to smother my mouth with both hands to rein in my immediate, hysterical burst of laughter.

“Sorry,” I mumble-giggled from behind my hands, relishing in what was possibly the only good side effect of my mom’s cancer-ravaged brain. “So sorry,” I snickered.

Along with the vacant, perplexed stares and other personality changes that continued to emerge, my mom seemed to have lost her filter, her previous sense of decorum and propriety. Pre-cancer mom had rarely ever used foul language. And she most certainly would never have made reference to a “bloody fucking Christ.” It was all so surreal and absurd at times. Like her claim now that she wasn’t talking about Kamella. Who in the world did she imagine she’d been blathering on about for the last ten minutes?

“Parents,” she groused. “We never actually know what the fuck we’re doing, y’know? S’all trial by fire for the most part. We fuck up. A lot.”

I leaned closer, finding her hand amid the blankets. It was cold. I clasped it gently, mindful of the IV tubes. “You’re a great mom,” I assured her, blinking back tears.

“Thanks, baby.” She smiled weakly at me. “I swear I have a point I’m making soon,” she promised with a wink. She returned her gaze to the ceiling, frowning as if to try and regain her focus. “I thought myself so fucking smart and enlightened. And still I did no better than my mom did with me, letting my own misguided fears dictate my parenting choices. I always saw so much of my sister in you.”

I was floored, and admittedly, somewhat appalled, by her revelation. Maybe she sensed as much, because her blue eyes were apologetic when they returned to mine.

“Not because she was there. But because I chose to see her in you. Because I was scared for you,” she explained. “But you’re not my sister, Milena. You share a similar light and inner beauty, an inherent goodness, but you’re not like her at all.”

“S’okay, Ma.”

And it was. It wasn’t as if being like Aunt Kamella would be such an awful thing. Even if she was nauseatingly perfect by all accounts.

“No, it’s not,” she said. “Because I was so stupidly preoccupied searching for signs of my sister in you, so blinded by my own fears, that I never once thought to look for her in Raul.”

She paused to study the ceiling tiles again. “It wasn’t until just last summer, the last time I saw Raul, that I realized my blunder. That I saw all the ways I’d clearly neglected to give him the attention and parenting he’d needed.”

I shook my head. “Ma, it’s been almost two years since we last saw Raul,” I corrected her memory. “Raul didn’t visit us last summer, remember?”

“I freaked out on him, Milena,” she confided, ignoring my assertion. “We fought. And we said so many ugly things that I’ll always regret.”

She looked so dejected, I wanted to again contend that her memory was false, to make her realize no such altercation had ever occurred. To reassure her they’d gotten on just fine the last time we’d seen Raul. But she was already sobbing softly, so sure in her belief in this falling out she thought she’d had with him.

“Please, do me a favor?” she appealed, her wet eyes beseeching. “If you see your brother again, please tell him how sorry I am?”

“Ma, you’re going to see Raul again. We both are. He’s going to turn up soon. I know he will. You’ll see.”

“Please tell him that I was wrong, and that I’m so sorry? He needs to know I didn’t love him less. That I never meant to put him second.”

“Ma, he knows,” I affirmed, even though I didn’t really know what she was talking about. “Raul knows how much you’ve always loved him. But I promise I’ll tell him just the same.”

“Thank you,” she exhaled, letting her eyelids drift shut. I held her hand while her tears subsided, and I waited for her breathing to even out. But just when I thought for sure she’d fallen asleep, her eyes opened again.

“Fuck it all,” she cursed. “I forgot my point, didn’t I?”

I busted out laughing, even as I shook my head in denial. “No, no you made your point, Ma. Get some rest now, ’kay?”

She threw me a dubious look, but closed her eyes anyway. She’d more or less made
a
point of sorts, I decided. Whether or not it was
the
point she’d initially intended didn’t much matter as far as I was concerned.

***

“What are we looking for?” Lupe’s hand clamped down onto my knee that had been bouncing restlessly, forcefully stilling it and jolting me from my reverie.

“Eyes,” I whispered back, my heart in my stomach and my own eyes glued to the oversized computer monitor in front of me as Kaleb scanned through folder upon folder of digital video footage. “And shoulder,” I added succinctly, unable to push more explanation than that past my lips, which I was busy chewing on.

I’d spent the morning obsessing over every last disjointed, cancer-brain conversation I’d had with my mother, plucking the potential facts and truths from what I had previously dismissed as the ramblings and imaginings of a woman whose mind was unwell. In retrospect, she’d likely made more relevant
points
than I’d ever realized.

At Lupe’s suggestion, we’d decided to start off by watching the surveillance footage of Raul on the fourth day after he’d been infected with werewolf venom. Lupe said it was between days four and five that werewolves who’d undergone an unassisted shift reported the transformation process became quite painful. Apparently, it was around that time when most complained of their bones feeling as if they were burning and melting. Having already experienced a brief taste of that unbearable sensation myself before Alcaeus had blissfully arrived to halt my accelerated shift, I was well aware of how much that particular stage sucked.

“Shall I stay while you examine the footage?” Kaleb offered as he cued up the first video for us. “In case you have questions, or need assistance …”

The baleful look I shot him set Lupe sniggering as Kaleb silenced. He seemed more nervous around me. While I preferred to imagine it was because I’d thrown him into a bookshelf the day prior in Alcaeus’ study, I knew it was more likely something Alex had said or done to put the fear of God into him.

Alcaeus and Alex had initially been adamant about being present while I watched the Salvador footage of Raul. But they had both been acting so weird and fidgety around me all morning that I’d been uncomfortable with the idea, preferring to watch it alone. I knew they suspected Raul of attempting to access my mind the night before. I had a sense they were right, but I also didn’t believe Raul would ever intentionally hurt me, and my ire had risen to the surface at them in defense of my brother several times already throughout the morning.

They had backpedaled, saying that they didn’t think he’d intended to harm me, but given his inexperience, maintained it had been irresponsible of him to attempt such a delicate feat in the first place. I didn’t really want to hear it, though, because to me, Raul’s purported attempt only confirmed his concern for me, illustrating how clearly worried and desperate he was to communicate.

And the fact that they seemed to perpetually think the worst of him made me less inclined to want to watch his video footage in their presence. Fortunately, Alcaeus had relented easily enough once I’d agreed to allow Lupe to watch with me. And once Alcaeus was on board, he’d forced Alex to accept the compromise as well.

In the approximately twenty-four hours I’d been staying at Alcaeus’ house, Lupe, as she’d recently mandated I call her, had become my go-between and unofficial emissary in dealing with the werelocks. She was straightforward and didn’t pull any punches, and I got the sense most of the werelocks respected her for that quality. But there was an unspoken power Lupe wielded that went beyond her own sheer awesomeness and her fearlessness in the face of supernatural beings. She had Alcaeus wrapped around her finger.
Completely.

Though I’d assumed it a joke when Alcaeus had first introduced her as the love of his life, I wasn’t entirely sure anymore. Whether he was in love with her in the classically romantic sense, or had at some point been in the past, I couldn’t say, but he definitely loved her. That much was obvious.

While it didn’t quite seem to be sexual, neither did it feel like a strictly familial affinity. His eyes subtly softened to her in a way they never did for anyone else, even when she was castigating him or harshly insulting him to his face. And then there was the little smile of amusement and genuine approval she seemed to earn no matter what she did—a smile I’d yet to see him bestow upon anyone else. He adored her. He respected her. It occurred to me he might even value her counsel above that of his own siblings.
Rightfully so, as far as I was concerned.
But their exact relationship defied conventional definition and remained a mystery.

“Just, uh … call or come get me if you change your mind and need anything,” Kaleb reminded me one last time, scratching nervously at the back of his neck. “I’ll be right in the next room.”

I nodded and waved him away, silently telling him to get lost already. Kaleb was the very last person I wanted in the room while I searched for the proof to dispute what he had so callously alleged. But he just stood there by the door for what felt like another whole minute, his pupils oddly dilated as he stared at me.
Weirdo.

“You can go,” I prompted rudely at last. “We’ll call if we need you.”

“What’s his problem?” I muttered to Lupe once he’d departed.

“Pheromones.”

“Huh?”

“You’re going into heat,” she stated matter-of-factly, her eyes trained on the computer monitor.

“What?”

“You are entering your heat cycle,” she spelled out again before inclining her head toward the screen before us. “What did you mean by eyes and shoulder?”

Pheromones and heat cycle?
Was that like some kind of new wolf hazing humor? I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not, but she was tapping her fingers and waiting for an answer to her question about Raul so that we could start the video.

“Um … well, back when he was in high school, Raul could get pretty macho around his friends sometimes. And also girls he liked.”

Lupe raised a disparaging “so what?” eyebrow that said I’d just described every single male she’d ever known throughout her lifetime.

“Like
stupid
macho,” I expounded.

Her expression didn’t waver. I sighed. “For example, he dislocated his kneecap playing soccer at the park with his friends one summer. I mean,
fully
dislocated it. It was so nasty.” I shuddered in remembrance. “But this girl he had a crush on was watching the game, and so while everyone else was freaking out, he sat there acting like it didn’t even hurt. He had this creepy ability to manage pain and even school his features in order to feign that he wasn’t in discomfort. So in a sense, Kaleb’s partially right”—I made a disgusted face as I formed the words—“that Raul could have endured some pain without the guards noticing.”