Last Female Sypher and Her Brother's Friends novel Chapter 16

Last Female Sypher and Her Brother’s Friends

Chapter 16

Aria

The living room upstairs looks completely normal.

Which somehow makes everything worse.

A couch.

A coffee table.

A lamp.

It’s the kind of room where someone should be watching Netflix.

Not discussing supernatural creatures.

Liam sits across from me.

Kade leans against the wall.

Barric brings coffee.

I stare at the mug like it might explain my life.

“Start talking,” I say.

Liam exhales.

“Our family has shifter blood.”

I blink. “Of course it does.”

62

He ignores the sarcasm. “We think it’s from Dad’s side. No one knew earlier because people like us, who don’t have shifter blood on both sides, don’t always turn. I did it for the first time when I was fifteen. Pretty

late by most shifter standards, actually.”

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“I guess we should just be lucky you didn’t turn into a toad,” I intone.

Kade snorts.

Liam shoots him a look.

Then he continues. “I didn’t want to leave you and mom, but it was the only way to keep you safe while I adjusted to my new reality.”

That gets my attention. “You say that like you were going to turn into the big bad wolf and start finding out the best ways to eat us.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he says quickly. “What I’m talking about is other things. Enhanced senses, strength, and yeah, the random shifting I had to learn to control.”

“It isnt safe for a new wolf to be amongst humans,” Ronan says without preamble. “It could hurt the wolf almost as much as the potential to reveal our existence to outsiders.”

There it is.

This is what Theo was talking about when he said our lives don’t fit together anymore.

My mind hazes as Ronan goes into a basic explanation of packs, hierarchy, and specializations, but all I can focus on is Liam. He was never going to tell me. He was just going to accept his life without me and leave me none the wiser.

My brother can shift between human and wolf. He has a whole other existence living alongside his own.

It’s genetic.

It’s ancient.

And my family has been hiding this from me my entire life.

Is that what kept mom up at night? Knowing what Liam had… inherited.

“There’s something called the Veil,” Liam says, bringing my thoughts back to the present

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Chapter 16

I rub my temples. “I hate that word already.”

“It’s basically a magical barrier,” Kade explains. “It keeps humans from learning about shifters.”

“Why?”

Barric answers that one.

“Because humans used to hunt us.”

My head lifts.

“Hunt you?”

“They called themselves hunters,” Liam says. “They thought shifters were monsters.”

I laugh. The sound comes out brittle. “Right.”

No one answers.

The silence stretches.

My chest tightens.

“You kept this from me,” I say quietly. Liam’s shoulders tense. “You abandoned me,” I continue.

“That’s not-”

“You got this whole other life,” I say, gesturing around the compound. “And I got nothing. No explanation. No warning. Just… silence.”

“Aria. It isnt like that. I couldn’t tell you we have rules-”

“Screw you, Liam. Did turning into a wolf make you lose your autonomy?”

“No Aria-”

“I would have fought for you. I wouldn’t have let anything come between my family and me because that’s

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Chapter 16

what you do when you love someone.”

:

“They would have killed you if you knew the truth!” he shouts.

I pause. My world feels like it’s being suffocated in cellophane. “Then maybe there are monsters among

you.”

The room goes quiet again.

I stand. “I want to go back with Barric. I have to get up early tomorrow.”

Liam looks surprised.

Ronan appears in the doorway like a shadow.

He studies me for a moment.

Then he nods. “Fine.”

***

Morning comes too fast.

Kade drives Liam and me to the law office.

No one talks much.

The tension from last night sits between us like a brick.

The office is quiet.

Professional.

Normal.

I cling to that normalcy. There is no need to talk.

When I woke up this morning, it was like all the things Ronan told me came flooding to the front of my

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