10. The Brutal Truth

I'm rooted to my place, and I'm sure this is it. I'm insane, literally. That or I'm going to be eaten by a huge wolf soon.

Charlie, I can hear a voice in my mind. I know this has to be scary.

"Ella!?" I ask. How the fuck is she talking to me?

Not quite. I'm Ella's wolf, Nefeli. She pauses, her huge eyes taking up my frame before she trots forward. I can only talk to you because we are related.

She is freaking gorgeous. Scary, but gorgeous. If only this were real, how cool would that be? Like in Twilight, maybe I could find my own Jacob then. I've always been team hot and steamy werewolf. Pity, I'm going crazy. Nefeli pushes her head against my palm, and I feel her fur beneath my fingers.

For a hallucination, this certainly feels real.

I'm not sure what's happening with me. I know I should scream and run, but I can't. Something inside me draws me to that wolf, and it overpowers all my fear and rationality.

"Mr. Hoffman." One of the helpers comes bursting through the door and turns to the old geezer. "I—" His eyes turn wide in horror when he sees us. "There is a wolf," he screams. "Oh my god, I'm going to call—"

Before he can say anything else, Dante approaches him, wrapping his arm around his neck. Within seconds, the man goes limp. "Don't worry," Dante reassures me. "He isn't dead, just unconscious."

"I'm going to deal with him," Lorenzo says, taking the guy from Dante and moving to the door. "I will tell him he hit his head."

When I furrow my gaze to a glare, Lorenzo sighs. "This is different, Charlotte," he says. "This man here, he is human, a human with no knowledge of"—he points at Ella and the others—"their existence."

"My God," I mutter. "This is real. I'm not crazy."

"You are not crazy," Dante reassures me.

"But… the dreams and all… they were real?"

"Yes, that's because you didn't live in the safety of a pack. Lorenzo tried to keep your existence hidden to save your life," Dante explains carefully while Ella turns back to her human form. I try not to look at her; it's awkward to see her all naked, but fortunately she dresses fast.

"You are a true rockstar," Ella tells me.

"Why's that?"

"I gave you the brutal truth, and you didn't run," she says.

"Well, I asked for the brutal truth, and I prefer it over thinking I'm crazy." I pause. "I don't get it though."

"It's a lot to take," Ella says. "But we will explain it all to you. Whatever you want to know."

"Is Lorenzo a wolf too?"

"No," Dante answers. "Lorenzo is a human, but his mate, his partner, is a wolf. So, he knows. He was a close friend of your grandfather and knew your mom."

I let his words sink in. "Mom's dead, isn't she?" I ask.

Ella's sad eyes tell me everything.

"I knew it," I mutter. "I… One day a few years ago, I felt something, like something ripped inside me, a crazy pain, and then I just knew."

"You felt the family bond to her rip," Ella says. "It's the same bond that prevents you from running away from us."

"Wait, does that mean I'm a wolf too!?"

"Yes, of course."

"Wow," I breathe out. "This is so cool! I'm not some crazy loser!"

Dante snorts and tosses Ella a gaze. "Yeah, she is truly related to you. I can see a certain resemblance."

Ella glares at him, her eyes glossing over. Dante just seems to be amused, though.

I can't believe that she didn't run. I could feel the turmoil through our bond. Ever since seeing and recognizing her, Nefeli's been able to build the bond to her and to the young wolf spirit still peacefully asleep in her mind. She was even able to link her due to that bond and thanks to our gift. Usually it wouldn't be possible.

I feel it, how sad and troubled she is, how lonely. Her resentment, her anger, her desperation.

Yet, it still shocks me that she didn't run! She is a little trooper. Dante isn't so wrong; she is similar to how I was as a kid. Slightly angry with trust issues, but who can blame her?

Gerard promises to deal with the paperwork while Lorenzo, Dante, and I take Charlie out for dinner. Lorenzo chooses a secluded, rather private restaurant that gives us the opportunity to talk. For Charlie, everything is new; she wasn't born into this world although she is a wolf. It's going to make it all so much tougher on her.

Good thing we found her now, Dante links me. She already feels the effects of being rogue.

Yeah, I could feel it through our bond. I pause. D, I know we never talked about this properly, but it seems like she is ready to come with us sooner rather than later, and it means… that…well…

I'm one hundred percent in on this. Together with you, Dante interrupts me.

But she is my niece, not yours. I hate to force this responsibility on you. She is a teen, an angry and traumatized one. This won't be easy.

She is my niece too, he says. You are my mate and my wife, and your family matters to me. I don't have any family left either. He chuckles. I know this isn't going to be an easy transition, but I'm happy we found her, and I'm sure we'll manage this.

I didn't even know I'd been carrying this huge weight on my shoulders until Dante told me he was on board and ready to take her with us and have her become part of my family. There is no way I wouldn't have taken her with me, but until today, I wasn't truly aware of what it means. One glance at her made me realize that I'm not going to have her join Red Claw's orphanage; I also don't want her to be in the little foster home Annie put up for the older kids to give them some autonomy.

I can't. I want her to be with me, and I hope I can be the family that she missed her whole life. I know more than anyone else how hard it is not to have anyone growing up and how lonely and resentful it makes one. I still suffer from abandonment issues sometimes.

I would have taken Charlie with me either way, but the fact that Dante is so supportive and wants this, too, makes it so much easier.

At dinner, Charlie bombards us with questions, and all three of us try to answer all of them. I do have to give her the rundown on what happened with Candy and my parents, her grandparents, but she is taking it quite well on the outside. Through our bond, I can feel her conflicted feelings, though.

We can't rely on it all the time, Nefeli says. We need to make sure our pup is going to open up to us on her term.

Our pup? I chuckle.

Well, isn't she? Aunt, mom, sister—I don't care. Nefeli sits up. I want to hug and protect her.

No one has hugged her for a long while, Nefeli, I say. We need to be patient.

Meanwhile, Dante skillfully shifts the conversation to the more exciting part of being a werewolf. He has clearly benefited from the one time he had to watch werewolf romance movies with Annie, Dave and me, and their mates. It was a bet to see whose mate would throw in the towel first.

Unfortunately, all three were very eager to cater to our whims and please us, so they ended up watching everything we presented them with. Talk about a joke backfiring.

Dante's strategy works because Charlie gets livelier again and asks us the funniest questions she probably has from the movies and books she knows. It's fun that the one thing I thought would scare her off actually drew her to us. I doubt it would have gone so smoothly hadn't we been wolves.

We end the night with Lorenzo leaving with Charlie to get her things and help her deal with everything while Dante and I will handle the rest of the paperwork with Gerard. It's hard to see her leave with Lorenzo, though.

"Hopefully, she'll be safe," Dante says to me with a worried expression while we see them drive off. We will meet her again tomorrow. I offered to go with her, but she wanted to do this alone.

"Are you worried already?" I chuckle.

He looks flustered. "She is my niece," he states. "I need to make sure to protect her. I bet she went through a lot."

My overbearing mate strikes again, but I love that he is already protective of her. "The fact that you accept her as part of our lives so easily means so much to me," I say. "I don't know if everyone would have been so generous."

"Ella, she is your niece, and my lycan already sees her as family too." He smiles. "I'm happy to have her with us."

"This means we have to restructure our apartment," I muse.

"Do you want to move out of it and into one of the houses?"

"I'm not sure. It seems like Charlie is intrigued by the packhouse, and it is quite luxurious. Seeing how she didn't have any luxury at all so far, we could try it with the packhouse first. But we'll need to reorganize everything."

"I can move my office to another floor, where Liam has his," he offers. "The office in our suite is big and has a balcony; we can make it Charlie's room."

"Yes, and it has a little en suite bathroom," I say. "She will have some privacy like that. It's going to be difficult for her to suddenly live with family. This will mean a lot of adjustment for all of us."

She is a teenager, a young girl who grew up alone and neglected. This isn't going to be an easy adjustment, but I'm willing to take it up with all the problems that might come towards us.

"You know what's funny." I chuckle. "Normally couples practice first by babysitting their cousins' or siblings' or friends' babies or toddlers before having their own kids. But we take in a full-fledged teenager."

It truly is weird how fate plays with us sometimes. I'm the least motherly person on the planet—even if Dave and Annie disagree, patience is not my virtue, and now I'm here, going to take in my teenage niece.

I look at Dante, realizing he hasn't said anything. He seems to be lost in his thoughts, and for a split second, I wonder what's wrong before it strikes me. I hinted to our future children. When we brush the topic, he retracts immediately and returns to his own world. Nefeli and I never manage to follow him into this world of his. It's nothing my gift can break through.

His reaction makes my chest clench, though. I'm not the type of mate that wants children like tomorrow. Although it's not unusual for werewolves to have children at a younger age, for me it doesn't matter. I can wait, especially with our longer life span, but I do want children one day.

And Dante's distraught reaction every time I hint it is truly making me more than a little anxious.

I'm contemplating saying something when I can hear my phone ring. "That's the Council," I tell Dante before answering.

"Ella," Bernard's voice reaches me. He sounds more serious than I like it. It's never a good sign. "I have news about the photo you sent me."

"The one I doodled?"

"Yes, exactly. Prince Eric checked on it, too, and got back to me. It's no one from the pack in Tuscany and also not from one of the UK packs. At least no one we know about. However, the tattoo—we managed to link it back to a gang sign."

"Wait, a gang!?" I ask, appalled.

"A mercenary group," he explains. "They are technically not rogues. Instead, they live together in a small group, like a pack, and take up jobs no one else wants to take."

"Wait!" It strikes me like lightning. "Jobs no one else wants to take!? You mean like targeting a child?"

"Exactly," Bernard heaves. "I've talked to Gerard already, and they are upping the security in Cambridge as long as your niece is still there. When are you returning?"

Oh fuck, I can't believe it!

"The moment we have all the documents ready, we are heading back," I say.

"I will make sure to send you some bodyguards," Bernard reassures us. "We are also scanning everyone who travels by airplane. I will send you everything I found so you and Beta Dante can keep your eyes open."

"Elder Bernard, they followed me and Dante, didn't they?"

"Probably," he says. "They must have had their eyes set on you, and the moment you moved to look for Charlie, they followed you."

Fuck those assholes! I swear if they even get close to Charlie, if they even look at her, I'm going to rip them apart. Dante has come closer now, his sharp ears easily picking up our conversation. He furrows his brows now, his glare deathly.

"They will only hurt her over my dead body," he spits out, his eyes gleaming dangerously.

Despite my previous conflicted feelings, I feel safe and warm to have him with me. He is a softie with me, but he is the beta to one of the strongest alphas, and his reputation doesn't come from nowhere.

Dante takes my hand and squeezes it. "No one will hurt her!"