Chapter 29

Charlotte Sanguinite

Robert leaps out of the way, with me in his arms.

"What do you think you're doing?!" Terrence shrieks. "Let go of me!"

But the creature doesn't budge. Instead, it looks at me, as if asking me what to do.

I call it a "creature," but on closer inspection, I realize with disgust roiling within me what Terrence meant by enslaving the wolves. I'm looking at a wolf shifter in a weirdly transformed state. His eyes are dull, and I can see my reflection in them.

What has Terrence done to them?!

"Release me! I am your master! You have to obey me!" Terrence is clawing at him, but the shifter doesn't so much as flinch, ignoring the injuries being inflicted on him. "Why won't you do as I say?!"

Something clicks in my head, and I say, quietly, "Take the knife from him."

The shifter twists Terrence's hand and rips the knife out of his hold.

"He's listening to you." Robert sounds shocked.

"I don't know why, but I thought he might," I breathe, my heart pounding in loud, exaggerated beats. "Help me up."

The wound is healing. Ever since I mated Robert and my healing returned, it's faster than it ever was. I'm no longer bleeding, but I'm still in pain. Robert helps me to my feet and blinks confusedly when Arabella hands him her cardigan.

She looks away, and I realize what she means.

"You're naked."

Robert rolls his eyes but wraps the cardigan around his waist. I look over at the fighting and try to be as loud as I can as I yell, "Stop fighting!"

I don't expect it to work, but the drugged shifters freeze in place.

"Am I seeing things?" I feel so confused. "Why are they listening to me?"

"Your blood." Ricky is climbing the steps, his right arm and his face badly bruised. "You have both wolf and vampire blood in you. It could be that."

The shifter who is holding Terrence has his eyes fixed on my neck. Ricky notices his line of sight, and his eyes tighten. "May I?"

"What?"

He leans forward and wipes some of my blood off my neck. Approaching the shifter, he holds out his finger. In what looks like a wildly inappropriate scene, the shifter leans forward and licks the blood off Ricky's finger. For a few moments, nothing happens. Then, the shifter makes a choking sound, and his body starts contorting. Fur bursts out of places where there is skin, and he goes down on all fours.

"He's shifting!" Robert whispers in surprise.

Within minutes, a large wolf is lying unconscious in the shifter's place.

"Your blood is the key!" Robert looks awestruck. I stare at the wolf, stunned.

I see movement from behind Robert, and I'm about to warn him when he turns around swiftly and thrusts his hand into Terrence's chest. His voice is dark and cold. "She never would have chosen you. Even if I hadn't been in the picture, my mate wouldn't have given an insignificant insect like you a second glance!"

Terrence's eyes stare blankly, blood appearing in the corner of his mouth.

Robert yanks out his heart, and Terrence's body crumples to the ground.

I see him go down, and I feel nothing.

The fighting has stopped. The wolf shifters are looking around, not knowing what to do. I see the other two Alphas approaching us, and Robert immediately turns me around so I don't have to look at their naked bodies.

"Are you okay, Charlotte?" Morris asks, his voice kind.

"Yes."

Robert quickly catches them up on what has happened. In the meantime, I see the vampires from the Nelo Clan standing at a distance, nobody brave enough to attack the wolves. This whole thing has been very anticlimactic, and my knees are shaking now, my wound still hurting.

"If my blood can reverse the effects of the drug, we need to do it," I say quietly so only Robert can hear me.

"Charlotte—"

"Losing a little blood isn't going to kill me," I tell him. "But before that, I have to do something else. I need your help to walk."

With Robert assisting me, I make my way down the mansion's entrance stairs to the place where the clan leaders are standing. They give me wary looks, and I meet their gazes steadily.

"This is a monumental moment. What you decide here will impact the future. It's true that I am Jean Sanguinite's descendent, and I have reason to believe that there is a prophecy in place. Jean Sanguinite brought a golden era because she united the wolf shifters and the vampires into one cohesive unit. She mated a wolf Alpha like I have. I have proof of my words if you wish to see for yourself. You can decide what you want, but the Nelo Clan will no longer exist. Its practices have destroyed too many lives. If you wish to keep your oath of allegiance, then bear in mind, it will be an allegiance to my pack, not the Nelo Clan. Take your time to think about it."

I look at Robert and murmur. "Let's go."

My heart is heavy and light at the same time.

It's been a long day.

******

The next couple of weeks are hectic, to say the least. Each and every affected shifter was reverted and saved, using my blood. For every drop I lost, Robert was there to give me more. The recipe for the drug was found and burned.

As I had suspected, there was no shifter blood in the drug. The version Robert had discovered had been planted to throw them off. Terrence had experimented with the drugs and had figured out that putting a vampire's blood in the drug helped control the shifter who ingested it. But he had never accounted for me.

An anomaly, as Ricky has put it. For some reason, the fact that I had both shifter and vampire blood was overpowering for the drugged shifters, and once they caught my scent when Terrence attacked me, their loyalty switched to me.

It is incomprehensible to me when I think about it, but Ricky was not surprised. Blood, as he told me, is a powerful tool and not to be underestimated.

With so much going on with Angie's death, and the chaos that followed my father's death, as well, Ricky simply forgot about the macaroons. If he had remembered earlier, I wonder how things would have gone. But the moment he did remember, he tried to contact me, and when he couldn't, he showed up at the cafe, only to find out from Jazz that I had left with Terrence.

Sometimes I wonder if the world runs on coincidences. If Ricky hadn't gone to the cafe, he wouldn't have called Robert, and Robert wouldn't have rushed to the compound in time. Terrence had installed jammers to prevent me from calling for assistance. But whoever sold them to him gave him a shitty deal, and he got faulty jammers. Another coincidence.

The clan leaders ended up choosing to view the evidence with Robert and me. One of the things we discovered was that the last person to access the cave where we found Jean and Lucian's entire life was their oldest daughter, Lillith. The cave had been her parents' meeting spot, and in their later years, it had become their private living space. Lillith's last act on their behalf had been to bury her parents in that cave. Robert and I have decided to preserve the place as it is, after making copies of the journals.

Robert negotiated a solid alliance plan that had other clans coming forward, as well. I have been nominated as the single point of contact. Robert and the other Alphas believe this is beneficial to everyone. I guess the constant warring has been exhausting for all parties involved.

My father's people were already dead by Terrence's hands, and the rest of the clan has dispersed into the other vampire clans. The Nelo Clan has been wiped out completely, which is what I wanted. It's time for a new beginning.

The only loose end is my sister. She's still running her company, but she's been avoiding me. I finally had a message delivered to her, and she agreed to meet with me today.

There is awkwardness, though, and she can't seem to meet my eyes.

"I'm going abroad," she murmurs, sitting on the park bench where Angie and I once used to sit and talk.

My heart tightens at her words. I watch the children running around nearby and let out a long breath, letting her speak.

"Fa—Father wanted me to do a lot of horrible things to you. I thought I was just trying to survive, but I became the person he wanted me to become. I know you kept saving me and protecting me, yet I still was cruel to you. I can't take any of it back."

There is regret in her voice, and I sigh heavily, my hand on my stomach.

"And I can't forgive you, Arabella. Not yet." She flinches, and I give her a small smile. "I know nobody will understand this, but I raised you for quite a few years, and that love…it doesn't go away. So, go. Wherever you have to go to find peace, go there, and we'll let the distance between us do the healing. But please know you're not going to be alone. You can write to me or call me whenever you want to. I'm not abandoning you. I'm still your family."

Tears drip down my sister's face. "I'm sorry."

"I know."

When she walks away, I watch her figure getting smaller and smaller in the distance.

"She's right, you know." Robert's voice reaches my ear and I look over my shoulder to see him leaning against a tree. "What she did to you can't be undone. I don't understand how you're choosing to look past it all."

I hold out my hand, and he comes over, sits beside me, and pulls me into his arms.

"You don't know what it was like living with my father, Robert. He could make a devil out of a saint. And now I know that Terrence was equally horrifying. Arabella had to survive in those monsters' domain. She did what she had to do. I couldn't protect her, so she protected herself. I haven't forgiven her. I can't forget everything she said and did. But I want to believe that she's going to find another version of herself on this journey. And maybe sometime in the future, we can reconnect."

"You have a big heart," Robert murmurs, pressing his lips to my forehead. "That's why I fell in love with you, you know. That big heart of yours."

He pokes my chest, and I bat his finger away, laughing. "That's not my heart, perv."

"Are you sure?" Robert pretends to be confused. "Maybe I should take a closer look."

"Maybe you should remember there are children nearby," I grin.

"Speaking of children…" Robert puts his hand over my stomach. "Ricky mentioned something interesting. When were you going to tell me?"

I'm about to tease him when I see the wild joy in his eyes. I smile at him instead. "I was going to surprise you with the news. It's too early to tell whether it's a boy or a girl."

Robert lowers his head, and taking my hands in his, he presses his lips to the back of them. His voice thick with emotion, he says, "Thank you, Charlotte."

I've never seen him like this, and my heart constricts. "What're you thanking me for?"

When he looks at me, his eyes are wet. "You've given me so much. You have no idea. If someone had asked me a year ago, I would have said my life was going to be bleak, with no one to love, no mate, no children, my house just walls to sleep within. Everyone around me had found love, had found it all, and I envied them. You stepped in and gave me everything I hoped for and more. You're in every breath I take, every heartbeat."

Tears slip from my eyes. "You think you should be thanking me for that? I was in the same place you were, Robert. I love you. With every breath I take, I love you even more."

His hold on me tightens. I know the future isn't going to be without its ups and downs, but after everything we've been through, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to handle it.