Chapter 73
I tried to process his words. I tried to understand what he was telling me. Yet why would he do such a thing? “You killed my Aunt?” I asked him, trying to process this information. I had never met her but had heard about her, I knew only as much as my mother had told me,
“You can’t tell anyone, Abbie,” Gannon says, and I glance at him over my shoulder. My brows furrowed in confusion
“Not even Azalea,” he breathes, gripping my arms, but I tug away from him. I had so much running through my head. Is that the only reason he wanted me? I glance down at the picture. She was my mother’s identical twin sister, and I was the spitting Image of my mother and of Sia!
“Say something, Please, Abbie,” he says, reaching for me again, but I take a step back from him and hold up my fingers.
“When?” I ask him. Gannon stretches, placing his hands behind his head as he stares up at the ceiling for a second.
“When Gannon, why? I have so many fucking questions right now,” I tell him angrily. Gannon lets out a shaky breath.
“I met her at her old pack, Vermillion Pack. I was on a job, and that is how we met,”
“And what you didn’t want her, so decided to kill her?” I ask him. Gannon shakes his head. Was I some rebound for her? Some sick amusement for the love he lost? I couldn’t wrap my head around how fucked up this was.
“No, there is more to it than that. I never rejected her, Abbie.” I swallow nervously, not sure if I wanted the information yet knowing I would never be able to live without knowing the curiosity behind it would eat me up.
“Then what happened?”
“She rejected me. She chose Liam over me!” he says, sitting on the end of the bed.
“Liam? She was with Liam?” Gannon nods.
“And Liam helped me cover up her death?” he tells me, so not only was Gannon hiding this from me, Liam was tog. Was I some big joke to them, some oddity they could reminisce on?
“When?”
“I met her twenty years ago and discovered she was my mate. I killed her two years later after she tried to kill me. I couldn’t keep living like that.”
“Like what?”
“Feeling her with him? Two years I felt it, two fucking years, she rejected me but bonds don’t break for Lycans. I felt every time she was unfaithful to the bond, every damn time Abbie,” he tells me, and a lump forms in my throat. That was a pain I did know, all too well, and I couldn’t imagine living with that for the rest of my life.
*Is that why. you?” I point to his chest, and he looks down before nodding his head. He hangs his head, placing it in his hands.
“She was tearing my heart out. What did it matter if I did it myself,” he breathes.
*And her body?” I ask him.
“Outside her old pack along with her mother’s,” Gannon tells me.
“You killed my grandmother?” it just gets worse. I always wondered why she never came for us when we ended up in the orphanage. I believed she would come for us, save us from Mrs. Daley. It wasn’t until a few months in that hope died along with everything else.
That was when it really set in. We were never getting out of that place, no one was looking for us, and no one cared for two rogue girls. We were vile creatures, she called us, and that hope and longing that she would one day come to get us, telling me she never stopped looking for us for the first few months, gave me hope. Then hope died along with me in that place.
“Is that all?” I ask him.
“Some things aren’t worth the risk of you knowing Abbie; I wish I could, but it will only hurt you, and I won’t risk that,”
“What do you mean?” I ask him.
“Your grandmother, Sia, they weren’t good people. They were traitors to kingdoms,” I tried to remember anything that made his words make sense.
Yet all I could remember was the cottage my grandmother lived in. My brows scrunch together as I try to sift through memories, yet they are so blurry and tainted.
I was so young, but one memory that always stood out was the back room. It was the one and only time my grandmother scolded Azalea and me. We were playing hide and seek, and I walked into it, it had strange markings on the walls and a huge star on the floor.
No, now I know it was a pentagram. It smelled funny, the air thicker, yet I remember that memory so clearly because my mother and
grandmother had a huge fight over us going into the room. I was hiding under the big wooden table that held jars and jars of weird things, specimens, and herbs. I remember thinking it looked like a laboratory, only one from the middle ages, spooky. I ended up coming out of my hiding spot because the place gave me the creeps, and that was how Azalea found me. She heard me knock over the huge plant, it spilled soil everywhere, and we tried to scoop the soil up and put the plant back, yet when Azalea grabbed the plant, it burned her hands, and she screamed. I panicked and called out to my mother.
My grandmother kept saying it was no big deal, that we wouldn’t remember, yet I do. I remember her trying to get us to drink the murky water. I refused; Azalea though didn’t. She accepted it, not wanting to upset my grandmother, but I spat it out. I couldn’t bring myself to swallow it.
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