"Dad's gone," my cousin's voice was barely above a whisper. "You must come home for the Evaluations," she uttered and the phone line went dead.
*****
After Keri's Uncle - the Alpha of the Silver Bullets pack - loses his battle with cancer, the young...
In my country, that's not until next Sunday, but today is Flower Day, a.k.a. my name day so I did spend some time with family. Anyway, on to...
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"I told you, I'm not waiting for help. Now are you going to tell me your 'sad tale' or not?"
Anne grinned - this time in genuine delight - and clapped her hands again.
"Oh, yes. With all its gory details."
She fell silent. A minutes past. Two. Three.
"I thought you were going to tell me about yourself," I prompted impatiently, my eyes on her, but my mind only partially so while I wondered what in this room I could use as a weapon later on. There was a lot of broken furniture; maybe a piece of that?
"I've always wanted to tell one of you - a Bullet, I mean - but now I don't know where to start," she admitted, backing away and casually leaning on the same spot on the wall she'd been in the first time I saw her: right next to the door. "Well, I guess you know the beginning. My mother ran away with my father and he was such a scumbag; he made her miserable. But she still gave birth to me - perhaps to share in her misery - and she stayed with him even though he kept cheating on her. I had two half-siblings thanks to my dear dad's inability to keep it in his pants. My half-sister was six and my half-brother was five on that fateful day."
I'd known that Anne Senior's bonding with Jason had been bad news, but this?
He cheated on her?
He cheated on his mate?
Junior had only just started her story and I already felt sorry for her mom. There was no greater betrayal in our world than that of a mate.
"I myself was fourteen," Anne Junior went on. "I argued with my sister - I can't remember what about - and she turned wolf and bit me. By that time, I'd had it with my so called family and... Well, she made me snap, so I snapped her neck. After she turned back to human and started to get dressed. She had her back to me and I took her head in my hands - one on her chin, the other higher - one quick jerk and... She was dead. I was astounded at how fucking easy it was."
Bile rose in my throat and my fists balled. Mouth shut tightly, I breathed heavily through my nose, reminding myself over and over that this was something I had to hear, no matter how vile it was. I had expected her to talk about killing adults, but children?
And she seemed almost nonchalant about it. Almost, because there was a hint of delight in her tone.
"I was just wondering what to do with the body when my brother walked in. He saw her on the floor and I saw in his eyes that as stupid as that kid was, he knew what had happened. He tried to run, but I was faster and then I had two bodies to take care of. But as I pondered on what to do with them, I began to wonder... Why stop at two?"
