Shift | Complete ✔️

28 | Echoes in the Night

I questioned if perhaps I'd imagined it... become delirious due to my time held captive. But, no. It was real. He was real.

"Dad?" My voice cracked. My chest quivered. And my mind played through the reel I'd been played about my life, and I wondered what else I didn't know about.

"But, but how?!"

I had been told he'd been murdered. How then, did he end up working for The Guild? And them not know who he was?!

I knew he couldn't answer. Our conversation was already far too great a risk to have it all come undone now. We were so close.

Instead I watched on perplexed as he pushed a small USB through the crack in the glass, ensuring my hand was ready to catch it before letting go.

"Do you need some water?" he asked loudly, before putting his index finger to his lips, shaking his head to ensure I knew not to respond.

Unzipping my pocket, I placed the USB in before zipping it back up, knowing that I had to place any other questions out of my head for now.

"Yes please, I am very thirsty?!?" I shrugged, my 'what the fuck' expression indicating that I was convinced we were going to get caught.

Whatever was on that stick was pivotal to knowing about my past and my future, but Dad knew it was not the time. I knew it was not the time. It was time to get out of here alive, the rest... the rest we'd sort out later.

I didn't get the cup of water, I just watched as Dad motioned for me to go and feign sickness on the bed while he feigned busy work on the computer.

Far out.

Lying down, I realised that it was like something out of a novel, it felt so surreal. And I chastised myself for not recognising the similarities sooner.

The dimple in my chin was exactly the same as his. Something I'd always hated, I now instantly accepted. I felt a sliver of belonging, self-acceptance and a yearning to know more about where I came from.

For the rest of the day, I'd had nothing else to do but try to make sense of it all. Leila would return in the evening, surrounded by who knew how many other werewolves to dispose of me.

Bring it bitch.

But instead of focussing on mentally preparing myself for such a showdown, I found myself lost in thought.

I wasn't angry that he hadn't been involved in my life. I knew already that he sent me to live with his sister for my protection. And when I met Phelan, he thought, like everyone else, that The Guild had killed both of my parents... But what if my father's skill set as a biochemist with knowledge of the werewolf world was too good of an opportunity to waste?

What if it was easier for them to feign his death so that he could be work in secret, enslaved to them as punishment without anyone the wiser? Ultimately they'd have known that it would lead to me eventually. Be it being caught by Hale or someone else, or by me finding out the truth and seeking out my father.

He was bait as much as I was.

Either way, all they had to do was wait, because I was always going to end up here regardless. And they were always going to need Dad to find a way to bind the DNA. Their plan couldn't work without both of us alive, until neither of us were needed anymore.

Maybe this just showed how cruel they were. Punishing a human for loving a werewolf, and forcing him to watch his daughter die as a result of his reprehensible union with another kind?