Chapter 32 Mira
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Mira
I couldn’t decide if I was waking up from a dream or a nightmare.
The road unspooled in front of the rental car, two lanes of asphalt cutting through forest that thinned as we moved further from Ashvale.
My forehead rested against the passenger window, the glass cool against skin still flushed from crying, or from the rejection, or from whatever it looked like when three supernatural bonds got slammed shut inside a human body never designed to hold them.
The muted bond sat in my chest, dampened to almost nothing. If I concentrated, pressed against the wall they’d built, I could feel each one. Lucian’s, steady and grieving. Solomon’s, cold with purpose. Percival’s, desperate and getting further away.
I stopped pressing. It hurt worse than the silence.
Thiago drove with both hands on the wheel. The concerned father act from the cabin doorway had settled into patient silence.
My mind catalogued the route on autopilot. Highway 9 east, exit 47, two lefts, a right onto a private road with a gated keycard. The foster kid in me was memorizing the way out before I’d even arrived.
The estate appeared through cypress trees. Iron gate, stone pillars, a winding driveway that curved through manicured grounds.
There were two guards at the gate. They waved Thiago through with familiarity. Security cameras tracked our approach from the pillars. I counted four before the entrance, then stopped because the number was already higher than anything a private residence would require.
Inside was worse in a way that it was beautiful. Marble floors, a curved staircase, art on the walls that cost more than every foster home I’d ever lived in combined.
But the beauty had seams. A reinforced door at the end of the east corridor with industrial hinges. Keypads beside exits that didn’t belong on interior doors.
They didn’t lie.
Lucian, Solomon, and Percival had told me my father is part of a hunter organization. I tried to dismiss their words because believing them meant the last person on earth who wanted me tried to hurt me too.
“We have to talk,” Thiago said.
He led me to what seemed to be his study on the second floor.
Large desk, leather chair, bookshelves on three walls. The fourth wall held a working map covered in pins and notations and strings connecting locations I didn’t recognize. Some pins were red. Some silver. One cluster, deep in a mountain range, was circled three times.
“I don’t know what they told you. But I’m sure they already made me the villain.”
“Did they need to?” My voice was hollow from the rejection but steady. “You told me you were in consulting. This doesn’t look like consulting.”
“It’s more complicated than what they would have shared.”
“Are you part of the Order of the Silver Dawn?”
Thiago went still. Not the guilty flinch of a man caught in a lie. The measured pause of a man recalculating which version of the truth to offer.
“What did they tell you?”
“Enough. The tattoo on your wrist. The symbol. I know what it means.”
He looked down at his wrist. Then, slowly, deliberately, he pushed the sleeve back. The crescent moon bisected by a silver blade sat on his skin, unhidden for the first time.
“I don’t just belong to the Order, Mira.” His voice was calm. Almost gentle. “I lead it.”
The floor tilted. Hearing it confirmed, out loud from his own mouth, made it real.
My father. The leader of the organization that had hunted my mates to near extinction.
Thiago studied me for a long moment. Assessing how much truth I could handle, or how much truth served his purposes.
“We’ve existed, in various forms, for over a thousand years. Our purpose is the protection of humanity from supernatural threats.”
“Supernatural threats. You mean the lycans.”
“Among others. But yes. Primarily the lycans.”
“The lycans who are also my mates.”
“Former mates,” Thiago corrected gently. “They abandoned you. Which I assume is because they found out about me and that also means that they rejected you, Mira. Whatever bond existed, they severed it to protect themselves.”
The precision of that wound was impressive. He’d found the exact spot where the knife already lived and twisted it another quarter turn.
Former mates. As if the claiming marks on my throat had an expiration date. As if the three heartbeats muted in my chest were a subscription I’d failed to renew.
“The fire,” I said. “My bookshop.”
His expression didn’t change. “Yes.”
“You burned my bookshop.”
He leaned against his desk. The posture of a man settling into a briefing, not a confession.
“We’d been tracking lycan activity. Anomalies in emergency response reports. Healing rates that don’t match human biology. The trail led to Ashvale.” He paused.
“We observed the most suspicious people in town and narrowed it to the three firefighters. I didn’t know you were there, Mira. Not at first. But as I monitored them, I watched them circle your bookshop. Day after day. Lycans courting a human woman who had no idea what they were.”
“So you decided to intervene instead of telling your daughter the truth?”
“I couldn’t risk the operation. And I suspected they’d already begun influencing you. The bond isn’t what they told you it is. Lycans don’t form genuine connections with humans. They manipulate through biological triggers designed to override free will.”
“And the tea? What about Hudson?”
“I met him in town. He said he was looking for you, wanted to apologize. Seemed genuine.” Thiago’s jaw tightened. “I gave him a compound to put in your tea. Targeted to erase memories connected to the lycans. You’d wake up, move on, never know they’d gotten close.”
“You drugged me.”
“I didn’t know he’d set the fire. I didn’t know he was abusive. He told me he loved you. I believed him.”
“And the dart that hit Percival?”
“A suppression attempt. Create distance between you and the wolves during the festival confusion. It wasn’t meant to cause permanent damage.”
“It almost killed him. You shot an actual person!”
“He’s not a person. I neutralized a threat that had its teeth in my daughter.” His voice hardened. “You call it a bond. I call it an animal bite. They’ve used this biological trick for centuries to bind humans to their will. You didn’t choose them. Your body was hijacked.”
The words affected my chest and sat there, poisonous and precise.
“I just wanted to protect you.”
“From what?” I was on my feet. Didn’t remember standing. “From the men who pulled me out of the building you helped burn? From those who tracked down my abuser and made sure he’d never touch me again?”
“They are predators, Mira. Creatures that mimic humanity to infiltrate and consume.”
“You don’t know them!”
“I know exactly what they are. And when they got what they needed from you, what did they do?” He held my gaze. “They rejected you. They left. Exactly the way a predator discards prey it no longer needs.”
The silence that followed almost made me choke. Because that part was true. They had left. They had rejected me. And the irony of defending men who’d abandoned me three hours ago was so bitter I could have laughed.
“Even if everything you’re saying is true,” my voice had lost its fire, “it doesn’t justify what you did. You left me at six years old. You burned my home. You handed my memories to a man who put scars on my body. You didn’t have any right to decide for me.”
The mask slipped completely. He was colder than Solomon had ever been, smoother all the way through, because at least my mates’ walls had cracks.
“I’m not going to apologize for the choices I made. I’ll apologize for the pain they caused you. But the choices themselves were correct.”
“You’re insane.”
The study went quiet before I started to walk to the door and leave.
“You can’t be with them,” he said.
The laugh that escaped me was jagged enough to cut. “Well, you got what you want, Dad. They rejected me.”
I’d already turned to leave when his voice caught me at the door.
“That’s not it.”
I stopped. My hand was on the handle.
Every instinct was telling me to walk through the door and keep walking, that whatever came next was calibrated to control me.
“You can’t fall in love with lycans, Mira.” His voice had changed. “They’re monsters.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep needing to hear it.”
I turned away to leave but his last words rendered me frozen and crashed my world.
“Lycans killed your mother.”