“No,” I corrected her. “I’m a lone wolf who wants nothing to do with Pack politics. Ever.”
Granny sat her skinny bottom down on her plastic slipcovered floral couch and shook her head. “Ever is a long time, little girl. Well, I suppose I should tell you something now,” she said gravely and worried her bottom lip.
“Oh my god, are you sick?” I gasped. Introspective thought was way out of my granny’s normal behavior pattern. My stomach roiled. She was all I had left in the world and as much as I wanted to skin her alive, I loved her even more.
“Weres don’t get sick. It’s about your mamma and daddy. Sit down. And Dwayne, hand over your phone. If I find out you have loose lips, I’ll remove them,” she told my bestie.
I sat. Dwayne handed. I had thought I knew everything there was to know about my parents, but clearly I was mistaken. Hugely mistaken.
“You remember when I told you your mamma and daddy died in a car accident?”
“Yes,” I replied slowly. “You showed me the newspaper articles.”
“That’s right.” She nodded. “They did die in a car, but it wasn’t no accident.”
Movement was necessary or I thought I might throw up. I paced the room and tried to untangle my thoughts. It wasn’t like I’d even known my parents, but they were mine and now I felt cheated somehow. I wanted to crawl out of my skin. My heart pounded so loudly in my chest I was sure the neighbors could hear it. My parents were murdered and this was the first time I was hearing about it?
“Again. Say that again.” Surely I’d misunderstood. I’d always been one to jump to conclusions my entire life, but the look on Granny’s face told me that this wasn’t one of those times.
“They didn’t own a hardware store. Well, actually I think they did, but it was just a cover.”
“For what?” I asked, fairly sure I knew where this was going.
“They were WTF agents, child, and they were taken out,” she said and wrapped her skinny little arms around herself. “Broke my heart—still does.”
“And you never told me this? Why?” I demanded and got right up in her face.
“I don’t rightly know,” she said quietly. “I wanted you to grow up happy and not feel the need for revenge.”
She stroked my cheek the way she did when I was a child and I leaned into her hand for comfort. I was angry, but she did what she thought was right. Needless to say, she wasn’t right, but…
“Wait, why would I have felt the need for revenge?” I asked. Something was missing.
“The Council was never able to find out who did it, and after a while they gave up.”
Everything about that statement was so wrong I didn’t know how to react. They gave up? What the hell was that? The Council never gave up. I was trained to get to the bottom of everything. Always.
“That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. The Council always gets their answers.”
Granny shrugged her thin shoulders and rearranged the knickknacks on her coffee table. Wait. Did the Council know more about me than I did? Did my boss Angela know more of my history than I’d ever known?
“I knew that recruiter they sent down here,” Granny muttered. “I told him to stay away from you. Told him the Council already took my daughter and son-in-law and they couldn’t have you.”
“He didn’t pay me any more attention than he did anyone else,” I told her.
“What did the flyer say that he gave you?”
“Same as everybody’s—salary, training, benefits, car, apartment.”
“Damn it to hell,” she shouted. “No one else’s flyer said that. I confiscated them all after the bastard left. I couldn’t get to yours cause you were shacking up with the sheriff.”
“You lived with Hank the Hooker?” Dwayne gasped. “I thought you just dated a little.”
“Hell to the no,” Granny corrected Dwayne. “She was engaged. Left the alpha of the Georgia Pack high and dry.”
“Enough,” I snapped. “Ancient history. I’m more concerned about what kind of cow patty I’ve stepped in with the Council. The sheriff knows why I left. Maybe the Council accepted me cause I can shoot stuff and I have no fear and they have to hire a certain quota of women and…”
“And they want to make sure you don’t dig into the past,” Dwayne added unhelpfully.
“You’re a smart bloodsucker,” Granny chimed in.
“Thank you.”
“You think the Council had something to do with it,” I said. This screwed with my chi almost as much as the Hank situation from a year ago. I had finally done something on my own and it might turn out I hadn’t earned any of it.
“I’m not sayin’ nothing like that,” Granny admonished harshly. “And neither should you. You could get killed.”
She was partially correct, but I was the one they sent to kill people who broke Council laws. However, speaking against the Council wasn’t breaking the law. The living room had grown too small for my need to move and I prowled the rest of the house with Granny and Dwayne on my heels. I stopped short and gaped at my empty bedroom.
“Where in the hell is my furniture?”
“You moved all your stuff to Hank’s and he won’t give it back,” Granny informed me.
An intense thrill shot through my body, but I tamped it down immediately. I was done with him and he was surely done with me. No one humiliated an alpha and got a second chance. Besides, I didn’t want one… Dwayne’s snicker earned him a glare that made him hide behind Granny in fear.