Page 20 of The Tracker's Secret

“Oh, my God! I’m so sorry,” I blurted out, plucking my fingers out of the holes I’d made. They came out one by one, strips of cottony stuffing stuck to my gnarly, disgusting claws. Shame washed over me as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over my head.

“Oh, no!” I exclaimed, mortified. I glanced up at Rosalina, feeling lost and helpless.

“Um, what’s with the claws?” she asked in a trembling voice. “Is that like some sort of Fae glamour you got from Yalgrun?”

“No, Rosalina. It’s not a glamour. The thing is... I’m a werewolf.”

Chapter 7

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“YOU GOT HIT IN THEhead during the attack, right?” Rosalina asked, staring at me as if I’d gone certifiable.

“Nope.”

Now that the secret was out, my shoulders relaxed, and as my desperation and fear dissipated so did the threat of shifting. I breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed back in the armchair.

“I’m so sorry about the chair, Rosalina,” I said. “I’ll get you a new one.”

“Who cares about the damn chair? You need to see a shrink. Maybe you even need to be locked up in the psych ward or something. Toni, you’re not a werewolf. Yeah, something really weird is going on...”

She pointed in the general direction of my hands, which now looked normal, just a little fuzzy with puffs of cotton still stuck to the fingernails. I started picking the last bits off, finding the task relaxing. Since it was Rosalina’s turn to freak out, it seemed I could be calm.

“... But the fact that you grew claws,” she went on, “doesn’t mean you’re a werewolf. Maybe this is some sort of prank, or a spell that lunatic mage put on you during the attack. Or maybe a side effect of the attack and healing magic combined. Or maybe—”

I glanced up at Rosalina and interrupted her. “I’m afraid you’re rambling.”

She blew a raspberry and sank into the sofa, her arms limp to her sides as if she was exhausted. “Wait, I get it. This is just your idea of a joke,” she said, sitting up again.

“I wish that was all, but no. Yesterday, Mom didn’t feed me creamy tortellini. Not at all. Instead, she told me that my dad wasn’t my dad.” As I uttered that last sentence, an awful sadness descended over me, making everything around me feel pointless.

Dad, I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter what she says, you will always be my father.

Always.

“You’re not joking, are you?”