Chapter 100 Maddy
MADDY
The stunned silence in the room was deafening.
Her wolf was gone? How could that even happen?
I stared at Gabriella and saw the emptiness in her eyes.
I couldn’t even begin to fathom what she must have been going through.
I’d only found my own wolf a few weeks ago, and already I couldn’t imagine life without her.
It would be like a piece of myself had been sliced off my body.
To have been a shifter her whole life like she had—it had to feel like a lobotomy.
That was exactly what she looked like she’d gone through.
Like her mind had been broken by the loss.
I clutched at Nico’s shirt. “Have you ever heard of this before?” I looked at Tiago. “Any of you? Is this something that happens?”
Nico couldn’t take his eyes off my mother, the look of horror and confusion like a veil on his face.
He simply shook his head. Tiago ran a hand through his thick black hair and gaped at me.
“I’ve never heard of this. I can check with the other elders, but I feel like something this important would be something every shifter would have heard about.
This is… God… this is even worse than being forced to shift.
This is the loss of everything we are.” He hung his head and turned away, heading toward the door.
“I’m going to check in back home and try to talk to my own father.
He’s the oldest member of our pack, nearly ninety at this point.
If anyone knows anything, I trust it to be him. I’ll be back.”
Tiago left, but none of us really acknowledged him as he went out the door.
We were still too shell-shocked. Even Sinthy had the look of someone who’d just watched a car crash—horrified, surprised, and confused.
She was probably wondering what it would be like to suddenly no longer be a witch.
How much that would warp her mind. She understood exactly what this meant to us.
I took my mother’s hand in mine. The skin was cool and smooth, but she didn’t grasp my hand.
Instead, her fingers were limp and loose.
It was like holding the hand of someone who was asleep even though her eyes were open and blinking.
I turned to the group again. “Do we think it was the poison? Is this part of what it does? Maybe the people who are forced to shift eventually turn back, but they lose their animal—could that be what this is?”
Luis shook his head. “We watched tons of videos. Your mom is the only one who ever converted back. The rest stayed as their animal. She’s the only one who was able to return to her human form.
This isn’t what the poison was intended to do.
Even Viola looked pissed and confused. No, this is an anomaly. ”
“Right,” Nico added. “This is something totally out of the blue. But I think the royals want to figure it out. That’s why they were observing her as closely as they were after she converted back.”
I lowered my head, suddenly feeling more exhausted than I ever had in my life. “We need to get her somewhere so she can rest.”
Nico gestured toward the hallway that led to the back of the house. “There’s the bonus room. I’ve got a futon in there. She can sleep there.”
“Okay. Great.” I stood and helped Gabriella up.
She was almost comatose, but there was still something functioning in her mind.
I didn’t have to drag her up and drape her across my shoulders like a dead body.
When I tugged at her hand, she automatically moved to stand up.
Her eyes, unfocused as they were, tilted toward the hallway Nico had mentioned.
It gave me some hope that she was still in there somewhere.
Maybe we could figure out a way to get her back.
Hopefully, her wolf too, but even if she was only human, that was better than this.
She could learn to live a human life, but only if she was able to come around and break out of this fugue.
Before we could get to the hallway, Mom and Dad came down the stairs, probably to check on the commotion and noise.
They froze when they saw me leading Gabriella by the hand.
I looked up at them and saw the recognition in both their eyes.
It had been years since they’d seen this woman, but they recognized my old pediatrician.
The woman who’d pretended to be a simple doctor but had, in reality, been my birth mother.
Dad only looked surprised, but Mom’s face was red, and I could see the stirrings of anger right beneath the surface.
“Now isn’t the time, guys,” I said, guiding Gabriella along.
“Why is she here? I mean… how did she even get here?” Dad asked, taking another step down the stairs.
I sighed. I’d never been more mentally tired in my life. “Nico.” I glanced toward Mom and Dad. “I can’t. I really can’t. Please?”
Nico understood. He moved to the stairs and started the story, telling them all that had transpired since we got back from Australia. Their voices turned to a blur as I made my way down the hall. Gabriella shuffled her feet behind me as we went.
The bonus room was rarely used, or at least it hadn’t been used much since I’d moved in.
It was a combination game room and theater room.
There was a ping-pong table on one side of the room, along with a pinball machine and a couple of vintage arcade cabinets.
One wall had a massive eighty-inch flat-screen TV and some thick leather chairs.
On the back wall was the futon Nico had told me about and a door to a half bathroom.
“Here you go,” I said, helping her to sit on the couch. “I’ll grab a blanket and pillow. You can rest up. Sound good?”
My question was met with nothing more than a slight, almost imperceptible flicker in her eyes.
I took that to be a good sign. Hopefully, that meant she was trying to break out of whatever was holding her.
I stood and went to a closet on the other side of the room.
It was pretty sparse inside, but there were a couple of blankets.
No pillow, though. I brought them back and folded one blanket to act as a pillow, then guided her down and rested her head on it before draping the other blanket across her body.
Whatever she was going through must not have been enough to totally fry her mind.
She must have been tired because as soon as her head touched the pillow, her eyes closed, and her breathing grew steady and deep.
She was asleep before I could even turn the lights off.
I stared at her, praying that things would get better.
We had to figure out how to heal her. I pushed a strand of her hair out of her face and on a whim, leaned forward and kissed her forehead.
When I turned to leave, I found my parents standing in the doorway, watching me apprehensively. I sighed again. “Guys, like I said, not right now.”
“I’m sorry,” Dad said. “We’re only worried.”
Mom’s eyes flicked toward Gabriella on the couch. “You… uh… seem to care for her quite a bit.”
So, that’s what this was about. I stifled a growl of irritation.
“Mom, I understand this is weird, but there’s too much shit happening now for us to worry about your hurt feelings.
Yes, she lied to us about who she was. But this woman,” I said, sweeping a hand back toward the sleeping form, “gave birth to me. She is my birth mother, and nothing can ever change that. She also risked her life for me. That means a lot.”
“No,” Mom said, “I know. It’s just—”
“Stop. You are still my real parents. You raised me and loved me. That will never change. Now, if you still have some ill feelings, then those can be hashed out later. Right now, I’m too damned tired to be concerned with your feelings. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s the truth.”
Mom looked chastened, and Dad gave me a pained smile. “We’re sorry, sweetie,” he said. “You’re right. This isn’t about us. We’ll help in any way we can. You say the word. Okay?”
It was like a fist in my chest suddenly unclenched, and the backs of my eyes burned. I was dangerously close to crying, but I swallowed the emotions and nodded. “Thanks. That’s all I needed to hear.”
Mom and Dad left to walk around that neighborhood.
They were most likely going to discuss the situation.
I stood alone in the living room. My blood was boiling.
My mind kept circling around that hatred.
Again and again, I tried to focus on what Isme had told me.
I couldn’t focus on the malice in my heart.
If I was going to take the blood in that vial, I couldn’t do it with a soul full of this awful, burning hatred, but that was hard.
The fact that Viola and her organization were out there doing all these things, and no one was there to make them pay for it, only sharpened my rage.
It was difficult not to be angry when people like that were in the world.
If I stood there stewing on it by myself, things would only get worse. Nico was out on the back porch with Tiago and Luis. I stomped out to join them, hoping they could put me in a better mood.
“How is she?” Nico asked as I closed the door behind me.
“Asleep. I think. She’s lying down with her eyes closed anyway.” I looked at Tiago. “What did your pack elders say?”
“I called my father and laid it all out for him. He said he’s never heard of such a thing. It spooked him. None of the others were any help.”
“I called my dad, too. He didn’t have any info to add,” Nico said.
Before I could say anything, Sinthy stepped out to join us. I glanced up at her and said, “Sinthy, could you be wrong? Are you positive Gabriella isn’t a shifter anymore?”
“Wait,” she said, frowning. “That’s not what I said. I said her wolf was lost, not that she wasn’t a shifter anymore.”
Tiago, Nico, and I exchanged a look of confusion. I said, “But that’s the same thing, right?”