Chapter 244: Exist 1

BONNIE

The wind woke me before anything else.

It swept over my face in long, cool breaths, carrying the scent of freshly cut grass and rain that had yet to fall. I lay with my eyes closed, my cheek resting against something soft, and for a few blissful seconds, my half-asleep mind settled on the simplest explanation.

Lysander had left the window open.

I blinked my eyes open. The world swam before me, a wash of green and grey that slowly sharpened as my vision adjusted.

"Did you open the window or something?" I mumbled, rolling onto my side and reaching across the mattress for him.

My fingers sank into grass.

I froze.

It was lush, cool beneath my palm, and thick enough to cushion my weight. It stretched beneath me in every direction, an endless carpet of green beneath a vast, pewter-coloured sky.

I shot upright.

The meadow swayed gently in the wind. There was no sound beyond the rustle of grass, and sitting a short distance away, just beyond where I had been lying, was a man.

He was perched on his heels, his forearms resting across his knees, watching me with an unsettling stillness.

Amber eyes with a chin that looked like mine.

I didn’t stop to think. My gift answered before fear had even finished taking hold, surging through me in a sharp, blinding rush. I thrust out my palm, and the air between us erupted with force.

He wasn’t prepared for it.

The impact sent him flying backwards. His coat snapped violently around him as he sailed through the air, hit the ground with a heavy thud and skidded across the meadow, leaving a long furrow in the flattened grass.

I scrambled to my feet.

Then I slapped myself.

Once. Twice, harder, until my cheek burned.

"Wake up. Wake up. Wake up."

Nothing changed.

The meadow remained beneath my feet, the wind continued to stir the grass, and the man I’d just sent flying was still very much there.

I stopped.

Forced myself to breathe.

Then I planted my feet and raised my hands, keeping them in front of me. Blue light gathered around my wrists, a familiar hum building beneath my skin. Beneath it stirred something else, something colder and far less familiar. That crimson pull.

I didn’t trust it. I wasn’t about to let it out. But... if it had to come out, then so be it.

Lycaon slowly pushed himself upright. He brushed the grass from his sleeve, seemingly unbothered by the fact that I’d just thrown him halfway across the meadow. Then he got to his feet and started walking towards me.

"Keep your distance."

"Bonnie..."

"I warned you." My voice trembled, but I forced it steady. "I told you to leave me alone. I told you I wouldn’t go down without a fight. If you think I’m going to make this easy for you, you’re dead wrong."

He stopped a dozen paces away and raised both hands, his palms open.

"Why would I hurt my own daughter?"

"Never call me that, you psycho!"

"I did not summon you."

"I told you never to reach out to me. If you didn’t, then why am I here?"

"You are the one who reached out."

A laugh escaped me, sharp and humourless. "And why would I do that? To spend some quality time with a genocidal maniac?"

"To spend time with your father."

"You tried to kill me!"

"Before I knew who you were!"

"And that’s supposed to make me feel better?" I retreated a step, the grass whispering against my ankles. "What exactly makes you think I’d listen to a single word that comes out of your mouth?"

"The world is not as black and white as you would like to believe."

He spoke quietly, almost patiently, as though I were the unreasonable one in this conversation.

"You, of all people, should understand that. You’ve spent most of your life wearing a disguise." His amber eyes remained fixed on mine. "So why are you here? Perhaps you have questions. About your mother. I can answer them."

"Is this your attempt to manipulate me? To bend my mind and my heart until I start seeing you as something other than the monster you are?"

"I..."

"Because if my mother got involved with you knowing what you are, knowing what you’ve done..."

"Done?"

The single word cut through mine.

He hadn’t raised his voice, but something in his expression changed. The wind died around us, leaving the meadow unnaturally still.

"What have I done?"

He took a step towards me.

"What do you actually know that I have done? Tell me, child."

"I’m not your child. My name is Bonnie."

"Bonnie what?"

My lips parted.

Nothing came out.

I had no surname. Or, at least, none that I could remember. I probably had one, but the years of my childhood were still a muddle of broken recollections and memories that didn’t belong to me. Some surnames that I adopted had been stolen, others had been planted, and I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

None of them felt real enough to claim.

"It doesn’t matter." I lifted my chin, refusing to let him see how deeply the question had unsettled me. "Whatever name I was born with, it doesn’t change anything. Your plan has failed. Now send me out of here, or we can settle this the hard way. To the death."

Something flickered across his face. It looked, absurdly, like approval.

"You are growing more confident with your powers. Good." He tilted his head, studying me. "But contrary to all the lies you’ve been fed, I was not a monster, Bonnie. And your mother..." His expression softened, almost imperceptibly. "She was a saint."

The breath left my lungs, and I hated the relief that followed. "So you hid who you were. From her."

"At first, yes." He gave a small, stiff shrug. "When you’ve been cast down and humiliated by your own mother, a goddess your lover worships and serves, it becomes rather difficult to present yourself as anything resembling human if you show your hands and alleged sins."

I scoffed. "You weren’t simply cast aside. I looked into it. You started a war."

"No. That is not what happened."

"Isn’t it?"

"My mother was humiliated." His voice hardened. "A goddess, made to look small before the heavens. Do you understand what that meant? Soon enough, wolves would have been regarded as little more than prey. Too insignificant to protect, too weak to defend themselves. So, before that could happen, I struck fear into them. Fear of my god. Fear of my mother."

His jaw tightened.

"That is a privilege wolves still enjoy to this day. Had I left things to my mother, her pacifism and endless desire to coexist with every living and undying thing in creation would have been our undoing."

"And it led to the Lycans. The birth of a cursed race." I watched him closely. "Do they still exist?"