Page 66 of The Forsaken Heir

This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever done .

A voice spoke out of the shimmering light, coming from all around me, like some kind of organic surround sound.

“Welcome…daughter of…wolf.”

It spoke in a halting cadence, and I couldn’t quite figure out whether it was male or female.

“Uh…hello,” I said dumbly, surprised my mouth didn’t fill with liquid or smoke or whatever the hell this was.

“Why…do you…venture forth…into our recesses?”

I cleared my throat. God, this was weird. “I came to speak with the Hikshil tribe. The, uhm, the people who live around you.”

“The children…of light. Yes.”

“Right, yeah, the children of light. Sure. There is a war coming. It’s going to be bad. Dragon shifters will more than likely be destroyed or defeated in such a way that their race will vanish in a few generations.”

A strange rumbling moved through the wellspring, like a wave in the ocean, as though something massive had swum by, and I had to steel myself against thinking about some sort of massive creature swimming around in the magic ocean with me.

“We have seen. We know. The veil grows narrow. You are right…daughter of wolf… War comes.”

Well, at least that’s out of the way , I thought.

“We… I mean, I and the dragons need the Hikshil to help us. We need their magic, their numbers, and their power. But they won’t agree until I’ve been, uh, chosen or something by you.”

A long pause followed, long enough that for one terrifying second, I was worried the Wellspring had gone to sleep or fled or something else altogether. When it finally spoke again, I let out a sigh of relief.

“You come… to be accepted…by us. We sense that you have already…been cleansed in a ceremony…of light.”

I thought back on the strange things I saw when Jolon confirmed my identity. “I have.”

“Then…this…should be…familiar to you.”

With no preamble, the light around me brightened until I had to squeeze my eyes shut. Even then, the glare shone through my eyelids, blinding me. It felt like I was still staring directly into the sun?—

“ E lle, come down for breakfast. It’s ready.”

“Coming!” I hurried out of my room and down the stairs.

When I arrived in the kitchen, Mom and Dad were sitting at the table.

My two brothers and my little sister were already eating.

Freddy had a comic book open, and Bastien was craning his neck to read it as well.

A few dolls sat beside Sophia’s bowl of oatmeal, and she was diligently trying to eat without smearing the porridge over her entire face.

“Here you go,” Mom said as she put a bowl down on the table.

“Thanks.” I took my seat and pulled the bowl closer, but my stomach turned when I saw what was inside it. Thick crimson liquid, viscous and bubbling. Blood.

“You need to eat up,” Dad said, not taking his eyes off his newspaper.

“What?” I looked up. My siblings were no longer children but adults.

Freddy and Sophia gazed at me sadly, and Bastien had a wicked grin on his face.

“Your blood is impure,” Mom said, dropping a spoon into the bowl of blood. “You need to eat this to make yourself pure again. To shift. To become a true member of this family.”

I shook my head and backed away from the table. “I don’t want to.”

Mom jammed her fists into her side, and sneered at me. “You were always so difficult. The first born, and such a pain in the ass.”

Deep down, I wanted to shrivel up and die, to lower my eyes and tell her she was right. Not this time. Never again. I’d had to listen to this too often.

“No, Mom!” I screamed, kicking my chair aside and walking up to her, pressing my chest against hers. “I’m not the pain in the ass here, you are.”

Bastien’s grin faded, and his eyes went wide with shock.

Dad slammed his paper down and rose from his chair. “You won’t speak to your mother like that, young lady!”

“Oh yeah?” I picked up the steaming bowl of blood and threw it at him.

The bowl spun end over end and slammed into his face. When it did, the room filled with bright blinding light ? —

“ Y ou must choose,” Delphine said.

Blinking in surprise, I turned to find her, Cassius, and Lorraine from the sewing shop. Three parental figures smiling at me.

“Choose what?” I asked. “Where am I?”

“Choose,” Lorraine said with no other explanation.

“Open the box that you wish to follow,” Cassius said, sweeping his hand toward the three small boxes that sat in front of them.

I walked toward the boxes. They all looked the same: wooden, inlaid with carvings of nature and animals, and a small gold clasp.

“Follow? What am I going to follow?” I said.

“Simple,” Delphine said.

“You must choose,” Lorraine added.

“What path you want to take,” Cassius finished.

“Past, present, or future,” Delphine explained.

My gaze bounced from box to box. Delphine symbolized my past, Lorraine my present, and Cassius my future. But I didn’t want to choose between them. Each had their good parts and bad.

“Time is not on your side, daughter of wolf,” Cassius said. “You must pick. Quickly.”

The choice, however difficult, was easy enough to see. You couldn’t live in the past because there was too much pain there, and if you tried to stay in the present forever, your life would stagnate. There really was only one choice.

“Okay, fine,” I said, reaching for the box in front of Cassius.

Before I could touch it though, he grabbed my wrist.

“Well chosen , ” he said. “But first, you must confront what made you who you are.” He yanked on my arm with his left hand and opened the box that sat before Delphine with his right.

The lid snapped open, and I tumbled inside, hauled forward by the king’s strength. Moments later, I found myself falling through darkness, wind billowing around my body and buffeting my hair into my face. Sightless, I could do nothing but feel the sensation of descent. Faster, and faster, and ? —

“ M omma, don’t send me away,” I cried. “Please.”

“Elle, Elle, don’t go,” Sophia and Freddy cried out from behind her.

Mom turned and shouted at them. “Will you hush? Elle needs some time to herself. She’s proven that she’s not meant to be here.” She huffed. “Now, where were we?”

“You were going to give me the bank account information,” Delphine said emotionlessly. “For the money your daughter will use to live.”

“Right,” Mom said, and dug out a piece of paper, handing it to my nanny. “We’ll have her allowance deposited every Monday. We’ll make sure there’s more than enough.”

“I don’t want money,” I whined. “I want to stay here.”

Mom leveled her gaze at me. “You aren’t staying here. You aren’t a true wolf.” She couldn’t keep the disappointment and anger out of her voice. “I need my children to have the right people around them.”

“But…but…I’m the heir, Momma. I have to stay here to ? —”

“Absolutely not.” Mom gasped. “A shifter who can’t shift being the heir to the Laurent house? Are you crazy, girl? What a disgusting thought. Your brother Bastien will be the heir,” she said, flashing a proud smile at him.

Rather than looking heartbroken like my other siblings, he had a self-satisfied smirk on his face. When my mother turned back to Delphine and me, he flipped me off.

“Be gone, girl,” Mom said. “It’s time to do this. Like a Band-aid. Rip it off quick. That way it’s over fast.”

It was then that I remembered where I was and what was happening.

I refused to let this end the way it had all those years ago.

There would never be another chance to experience what it would have been like to speak my mind.

Deep in the back of my mind, that strange amorphous and androgynous voice of the wellspring whispered to me.

“What would you do…if given…the chance?”

Without realizing I’d even made the decision, I lunged forward and jabbed my finger in my mother’s face.

“You know what? Fuck you.”

Her mouth dropped open in shock and surprise. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Don’t start acting all high and mighty now.

You’re the one sending your firstborn child away.

Treating me like trash just because I can’t shift.

You know what I say about that? I say you’re the one who’s trash.

You’re the one who’s garbage. What kind of mother does this? How fucking dare you?”

“How dare I?” Mom said, managing to gather herself a bit. “How dare you? Trying to pass off yourself as a Laurent. A Laurent with no inner wolf? You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Unconsciously, I pulled my arm back and swung forward, slapping my mother across the face with all the force I could muster.

My palm cracked against her cheek hard enough to turn her head and send her tumbling to the ground, clutching at her face and screaming.

Everyone else stared at me in horror, including Bastien.

Leveling my eyes on my brother, I pointed at him.

“ Your ass is next ? —”

“There is strength…inside you…daughter of wolf,” the voice said again, floating into my ears and through my brain. I could almost feel the words rather than hear them. “Tell us…if you were given…reign over us…what would you do…with that power?”

Again, I found myself floating in the bright, white magic of the wellspring, the strange hallucinations having vanished.

Despite the fact that I knew they’d been visions, I felt a certain amount of catharsis.

For years, I’d thought back on that moment when my family had sent me away, and I’d done my best to shove all those thoughts aside.

The “could haves” and “would haves” had been too much for me to take, and eventually, I’d buried it.

The realistic vision here had given me a way to act out my desires, violent and belligerent as they were.

The gift the wellspring had given me was beyond anything I could have ever asked for. Nothing in my life had given me such freedom. It had been like a decade of therapy wrapped up in a few minutes. The only thing I could think of that had hit me as hard was meeting Aurelius.