Page 31

31

KENDALL

I find her at the end of the farmer’s market on 12th—like she’s trying to blend in with baskets of herbs and locally-sourced bullshit.

Margreet. My mother.

She’s got a scarf wrapped tight around her neck and her sunglasses tucked low like they’re some kind of shield. Like I can’t see her through it. Like I haven’t memorized every damn twitch in her face after years.

But today she’s not getting away. She can’t escape like she has been trying to since the attacks.

I cut across a vendor table full of crystals and sage bundles and step right into her path before she can slip into the crowd again.

“Don’t even think about it,” I say.

Her body goes stiff. Slow turn. Eyes wide, but her mouth’s already pressing into that practiced line of false calm.

“Kendall,” she says. “I?—”

“Save it,” I snap. “You owe me more than a greeting and a guilted half-smile.”

She glances around, lowering her voice. “This isn’t the place?—”

“No,” I say. “This is exactly the place. Because if we don’t talk here, you’ll just disappear again.”

She swallows hard. “We could always go home?”

I laugh. “Yeah, ‘cuz that worked so well last time.”

“Fine.”

We walk two blocks in silence, the distance between us feeling heavier than it should. She leads me into a quiet alley behind a closed flower shop, and I lean back against the brick wall, arms crossed, heart pounding.

“I’m not leaving,” I say. “So just… tell me the truth. All of it. Adora and Dad have told me what they could. Now I need to know the rest. Unless you want your daughters to die for lack of knowledge.”

She pulls the scarf from her throat like it’s choking her and rubs her temple.

“I never wanted it to be like this.”

“Like what?” I demand. “That you’d lie to us our entire lives? That we’d both wake up with monsters in our blood and no clue who or what we are?”

Margreet flinches. “I didn’t know Edmund was a werewolf.”

I blink.

“What?”

“I swear to you, Kendall,” she says, voice cracking. “When I met him, I thought he was just… broken. Human. Messy. I knew something was off, but I convinced myself it was trauma or grief. Not that he was hiding claws under his skin.”

“You married him.”

“I loved him. Or I thought I did.” Her voice wavers. “And I hoped—God, I hoped —that if you took after anyone, it would be him. Not me.”

“You hoped I’d be like Edmund?” I say slowly. “ Human like him?”

Her lips part. Silence stretches like a noose between us.

“You said human,” I press. “Like him. Not like you.”

She doesn’t answer.

“Mom,” I whisper. “What are you?”

More silence.

“Say it.”

“I can’t.”

“You will. ”

Her hands shake. “There are reasons, Kendall. Things you don’t understand—things I barely do. When the veil lifted, people like me— things like me—we weren’t invited into the new world. We were hunted. Dissected. Forgotten on purpose.”

I feel something tighten in my chest. “You’re not human.”

She nods once.

“You’re not a shifter either.”

Another nod.

“Then what the hell are you ?”

“I don’t have a name for it,” she says. “But I was raised to hide it . To bury it so deep I’d forget what I was. And I did, for a while.”

“Until me.”

Her eyes glisten. “Until you . You were born, and I thought, maybe she’ll be normal . Maybe you’d never have to know what I knew.”

“…And Adora?” I choke out. “Was it the same for her?”

Margreet’s whole body tenses.

“She’s not like you,” she says, slowly. “She never was. I—I didn’t want her to turn. I didn’t think she would . Not after…”

Her voice falters, like the ground just opened beneath her and she doesn’t know how deep it goes.

I take a step closer. “Not after what , Mom?”

She closes her eyes.

“Not after Mathis.”

My stomach drops. I’ve heard that name somewhere before.

“…What?”

Her mouth trembles, and when she opens her eyes, I already know.

“Adora’s not Edmund’s,” she whispers. “I was young, and stupid, and Edmund was already spiraling when we got married. I thought if I just… held it together long enough, things would level out. And then I met Mathis. I didn’t know who he really was. Not then. I just knew he looked at me like I wasn’t something to be hidden.”

“You had an affair , Mom. There’s no excuse.”

“It was a mistake,” she says quickly. “A brief one. And I never told either of them. But when the powers started waking up in Adora, I knew—I knew it wasn’t from me. It was him. ”

My hands are shaking.

“You’ve kept this from her her whole life?”

“I was protecting her,” Margreet pleads. “You don’t understand what it would mean if people knew who she really was. If they found out she’s a?—”

She catches herself too late. And I pounce.

“If they found out she’s a what , Mom?”

Her mouth twists, like the words burn her throat.

“…A Wulfson,” she says.

Click.

The back door of the alley creaks open.

I whip around just in time to see Adora standing there. She must’ve followed me. Must’ve found us somehow. She’s not even trying to hide it—just standing there in total, frozen silence.

“What did you just say?” Adora whispers.

Margreet pales.

“Adora—”

“You said Wulfson.”

Her voice is shaking. Not loud, not angry. Just shocked . And I get it. Because that name means something now. It’s not just a name.

It’s Callum. It’s blood. It’s the Hollow. The old pack. The wars. It’s everything .

And Adora?

She just realized her entire life has been a lie.

“I have to go,” she says abruptly, voice raw, like it’s barely holding together.

“Adora—” I start.

But she’s already gone. Vanished into the alley like smoke on wind.

And the silence that follows is the sound of everything breaking.