In Our Blood

Chapter Eleven

        Waking up the next morning seemed like it should've been a movie, with sunlight streaming in through Beca's window and birds chirping around the house. She actually felt good, even after a strange dream of watching a small black wolf running with a feeling of panic in her.
        She stood up and stretched, glancing in the mirror and gladly remembering she had thrown her hair into braids after her shower the night before. She let them out and her curls bounced back, catching the sun and gleaming. Her brown eyes held a brighter tint of amber than they had a few days before, though she pushed it off as a side effect of the transformation. Most mature Wolfbloods seemed to have unusually gleaming eye colors.
        Beca walked to her closet and pulled out a pair of jeans and white tanktop, changing out of her pajamas swiftly. She grabbed a blue and white striped cardigan to throw over herself quickly before opening the door.
        The first scent that hit her gave her the image of sitting round a campfire in the middle of winter, the scent of smoky wood mixed with crisp, fresh air. Then the savory scent of cooking bacon interrupted her imagination from wandering and she took off down the stairs with a bounce in her step.
        You're oddly happy today, the voice in her head that she had declared her wolf said.
        She shrugged to herself and let a smile grace her lips. Didn't you say you wouldn't show up unless I called you?
        I lied.
        "Morning..." Daniel trailed off while glancing at his adopted daughter from his place at the stove. "Should we be concerned?"
        Beca shot him a playful glare and grabbed a piece of bacon off of the plate that was already full. "Why today of all days would you make delicious food?"
        He raised an eyebrow and shot Emma a confused look, who was sitting down at the table. "Because I do every Sunday. Don't I?"
        Beca shrugged as she took a bite out of the strip she held in her hand. Then the scent that had distracted her earlier from bacon intensified slightly as the front door opened and Rhydian stepped in. She tracked it back to him and wondered why he smelled so strong this morning, but let the thought go as she grabbed another piece of bacon.
        "Rhydian, we weren't expecting you today," Emma said with a smile.
        With her mouth full, Beca furrowed her brow. "He practically lives here, Mam."
        Emma shot Daniel a surprised glance but neither said anything about the drop of that word. Nor did they scold her for forgetting her manners, either.
        Rhydian just shook off the odd atmosphere and Beca's behavior, walking in and grabbing some food himself. "I can't pretend to eat another vegetable," he explained. "So I told them I was coming over here."
        "Well, you're always welcome," Daniel said, plopping another round of bacon onto the plate. "You two have any plans for today?"
        Beca paused, knowing this trap better than the alphabet. "Anything that involves getting out of the next thing you're going to ask me."
        He rolled his eyes at her. "I was just going to ask you to drop off a letter."
        "Daniel," Emma said with a slight warning to her tone.
        Beca let out a far too dramatic groan, but sighed. "Fine. Where's Maddy, by the way?"
        "Shannon's," Daniel answered.
        She nodded, figuring that her sister was probably trying to get the "werewolf" idea out of her friend's head. "Well, we're gonna go do something that's not here," she said, turning and grabbing Rhydian's wrist.
        "Letter's in the box!" Daniel called after them. Beca opened the box for outgoing mail that they kept on their porch as they went out the door, grabbing the piece of paper and pulling an amused Rhydian behind her.
        She put the letter into a pocket that she had stitched into the inside of her cardigan as they walked down the drive. Then she turned to the blonde beside her, whose eyes were already trained on her.
        "Did you take something?" He asked, trying to hold back a smile.
        Beca bounced on her heels as they continued walking. "Surprisingly, no. I'm just really hyper today."
        "Better than yesterday," he noted, his hands finding their way to his pockets.
        That was true. After they'd successfully made it back to Stoneybridge yesterday, the three of them walked home. Once home, Beca's instinct to curl up and sulk the rest of the evening, thinking about Callie. But for some reason she didn't even care about the girl today. She just felt free.
        "So, we have a few options. We can go crash Maddy's plan to get Shannon off our backs; we can sit at Bernie's because why not; we can run and last but not least, we can loiter around like normal teenagers."
        Rhydian let out a laugh. "Don't you have to drop off that letter?"
        Beca nodded. "I meant after. Or before. Or during."
        Rather than questioning her logic, Rhydian just nodded. The scenery turned from the woods that surrounded their long drive to the middle of town. Beca pranced off to the post box and pulled the letter out of her cardigan, dropping it into the dark slot. At least that's what she intended to do, but her hand stopped abruptly as soon as her eyes curiously skimmed the name that the letter was addressed to.
        Rhydian took noticed and cautiously walked closer to her. Beca's mind was racing and she felt a strong feeling of betrayal. Her eyes kept darting around each letter, making sure she had read them right, that it wasn't just a trick of her hyperactive imagination. There was no denying the text in front of her.
        Haring, Harry & Louise. 
        For a good minute, Beca's mouth opened and closed as she tried to form words to explain this. Rhydian, having only known her real last name from the K's, understood her confusion. He had assumed her parents had died, but she had never explained the full story to him.
        "They lied," she finally muttered, grip tightening on the letter. She shook her head roughly to dispel any angry tears and turned around, running back the way they had just come.
        Rhydian followed behind, trying to grasp her attention. "Beca!" It wasn't until they just outside out the Smith property that he grabbed her arm roughly and yanked her back. She turned on him with a rough glare. "Maybe they had a reason," he said.
        Her glare became even harsher. "Like they had a reason to not tell me about Wildbloods?" She let out an angry breath. "Nothing is enough for them to have not told me my parents are alive!"
        She was about to run off but was stopped once again when Rhydian's hands landed on her shoulders. She met his icy blue gaze and saw the empathy in his eyes. He understood.
        This fact calmed her, but the blood running through her veins was beginning to darken regardless.
        "Just hear them out. Don't go storming in there ready to ignore everything they say."
        Beca took a deep breath before glancing at the ground. "You may act it well, but you can't tell me that you aren't honestly mad at your own parents for letting you get taken by humans."
        The look on his face made her feel a little guilty, but she ignored it for the time being and walked up to the house. She took a deep breath outside of the door and strained her ears to hear any bit of conversation.
        "You're doing all of the explaining if she read that address," Emma scolded her husband.
        Beca could picture a reassuring and relaxed smile on his face as he said, "She's not the most observant pup. The way she's acting today, I doubt she'll be looking over the letter before she slips it into the box."
        Something inside of Beca sparked once more at that. They knew there was a possibility of her finding out, and they didn't care. Losing all of her self control, she slammed the door open and stepped into the house. Their heads snapped up and Emma shot Daniel a sideways glare.
        "How could you?" She asked quietly. Her plan to yell at the top of her lungs was lost, the words escaping her sounding broken. "How could you lie to me that my parents were dead?"
        By now Emma had stood up and was walking forward slowly, hands out as if she were trying to calm a wild animal. In a sense, she was. "Beca, we did it to protect you. If there was another way, we would've done it."
        "Protect me from what? The emotional scar that my parents had up and left?"
        Daniel was now close behind Emma. "They were running from the alpha of their old pack when your mother found out she was having you. We helped them to settle down here, since there had been no sign of him for a while. But when you were five, we found his trackers in our territory."
        Emma was now close enough to see how Beca was taking this new information. A hand brushed against Beca's right one from behind, and it was only then that she realized Rhydian had probably been following behind her. She welcomed his comforting touch and gripped his warm skin tightly.
        Emma started up from where Daniel left off. "We were able to chase them out, but they kept coming back. Harry didn't want them to hurt you, so we started taking care of you more so you would be comfortable with us. Then a little after your sixth birthday, we burnt down their house so they could go on the run again."
        "Then why couldn't you have just told me 'Mam and Daddy are going away for a while'?" Beca asked, her voice breaking with the use of those two words.
        "We didn't want you to say anything that would destroy the whole cover," Daniel said in the softest voice he'd used with her sine she was ten.
        Tears threatened to slip past Beca's barrier. "Why were you sending them something?" She asked, still gripping the letter in her left hand.
        "They liked to keep tabs on you. Every year we send them an update and a few pictures," Emma explained.
        "Don't," Beca choked out, letting go of Rhydian's hand and holding up the letter before she ripped the paper in half. "They chose to leave. I don't care if it was to protect me. They don't deserve it."
        Daniel furrowed his brow. "They'll think something may have happened to us, we should send something--"
        "Let them. I thought they were dead." With a strong exhale, she walked over to the bin and threw the scraps into it. Then she walked up the stairs and into her room, pulling the picture of her and her parents from under her pillow. She braced her hands on top of it, ready to break it, but a familiar warmth grasped around her fingers, stopping her.
        She looked up to meet Rhydian's eyes and he gently shook his head. Beca sighed and let him take the photo from her hold. He set it on top of her dresser before sitting down on her computer chair, allowing her to try and make sense of all she just learned in silence.