Forced Mate

22: Mysticum Lupi

Somehow they'd wrestled me into a room. I'm blindfolded now, and my wrists and ankles are bound by silk manacles. Something about them not wanting to hurt me with rope or chains. But my insides ache and turn tumultuously at being caught. If they found me, then Jaxon definitely knows I'm here. He'll come for me. 

He'll die. I grimace as I turn the silk at an awkward angle, hurting my wrist in the process. My mind floats back to the hotel room. What was that? The memory of the black and purple shimmers, my strange and uncontrollable incantation, and the objects whirling around the room hit me like a truck. How did that happen? Did I do that? Where did it come from?

And my mother. She's with Hayes. She's a Lupus Mystici. I knew she wasn't originally from the Smoky Mountain Pack, but they never told me she was from Mistletoe. Which begs the question of just how old my mother actually is. By now, she should be in her late thirties, and yet, she doesn't look a day over 18. 

Has she always looked that young? Was I blind to it growing up simply because she was my mom? Mysticum Lupi are hereditary, even if only one of the parents are magical. Which means... I'm a Lupus Mystici. Sarah had said the energy absorption was level-one magic, taught to up and coming mystical wolves. Although I never remembered who taught it to me, it's becoming clearer that it was my mother, Yara.

But they never finished my training. Or told me about it. Maybe my father didn't approve? Maybe that's why my mother fled? She left when I was 14. My formal training probably would've begun much earlier than that. I don't know much about Mysticum Lupi, just because the lay-wolves are supposed to be oblivious to their mysteries and secrets. I thought I'd never met one until I met Hayes. Apparently, though, every time I look in the mirror I've inadvertently been faced with one.

It's all coming together, now. I haven't shifted, because I haven't been trained. If I know one thing about mystical wolves, is that their training is not something that can just be pushed off for a later date. Their whole essence is magic, their wolves survive off it. Which is why my wolf hasn't manifested. "Wish someone had told me," I grumble to myself, annoyed that this entire time I believed something was wrong with me when in fact, there was such a simple solution.

"Told you what?" Her voice chimes out in the room and my head whips both way, unsure of how long she'd been watching me.

"Let me go," I demand instead, to which she laughs.

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I'm your daughter, and you're about to force me into a life of misery and servitude with your insane Alpha."

"It won't be much different from your life now, then, will it?"

Her tone is smooth like velvet, like one of the women out of a black-and-white movie from the fifties. I press my lips shut tight at her words and bite down on the inside of my lip. I can hear her long dress sliding across the wood floor beneath me; she's circling me like I'm her prey.

"Besides, my dear, you were born for this. This is your destiny," She's stopped in front of me now and I squint my face to try and topple the blindfold. It doesn't move, though.

"I was born for this? What are you on?"

"I grew up in Mistletoe," She hesitates, "though I'm sure you know that by now. Hayes has always been my Alpha, and I've always desired to please him." She continues walking again, her tone distant, now. "But when I was mated to a normal wolf, I realized I'd be torn from him, from my pack, my home," She sighs. "I'd be forced to be with a man I never loved. Not like I love him." My lips curl in disgust at her mention of the love she has for Hayes. "But he told me what I could do to serve him still. Bear the child of the prophecy, deliver her to him, and we'd be reunited."