Now, they would see her, Annabel Drew, the daughter of the famed hunter family, having been mercilessly attacked in her own home without any prompting, like so many hunters before her.A woman who had tried so desperately to have a normal life, to have a beautiful Mother’s Day lunch with her children and a few of her old friends.They would see her in the marks that decorate her face, and they would know that shifters were dangerous.
And they would agree now, in a way that they never had before, that the merging of two prominent shifter clans would be a menace.They would take one look at that rotten El, whom Annabel had fed and clothed out of the kindness of her heart because she truly was a changed woman—and they would see the spawn that she had created to manipulate the Panterra into joining her in what was obviously a crusade against the hunter way of life.
A grin formed on Annabel's features, and she tossed her hair over her shoulder with a victorious smile for that one single second, looking out at the world, at her Kingdom, and knowing that vengeance was soon to come.Soon, Joseph and that little tart Persia would learn what pain was.
But that was a few steps away from her Grand Master plan.Right now?As she stood there in the window?Annabel tried not to look overly joyous or victorious as she tossed her head back and let out a cry, acting like a woman who had very obviously just lost everything.
The game, after all, was only just beginning.Now, all she had to do was find her bratty little adoptive daughter and seal the deal.
Epilogue
El was pretty sure that she could hear her heart echoing in her eardrums by the time they got to the car, her mind hardly able to make sense of it all as every single breath tore out of her in a ragged gasp, her eyes going every direction and her legs finding themselves unable to sit still.
Never before had she imagined something like this, an occasion in which she was driving away from her parents’ house completely and utterly scared shitless, unable to put towards exactly what it was that she was feeling.Sure, she had had a few bad visits with them, a few times when she had known that they wanted anyone but her to be their daughter, Annabel more than anyone.But she had never imagined something like this.
All those years, all that time, even when she had found out that Annabel wasn't her real mother, El had still wanted to believe that there was the slightest chance that Annabel could have loved her, that all of those years weren't for nothing.She had been a child.After all, she had been innocent.She had looked at Annabel like she held the world once.
In the back of her mind, El replayed the same moment over and over again, one that she had thought would happen with her own daughter.The one where she was just six years old and sitting in the background as Annabel got ready for a party, watching her put makeup on her face and believing that Annabel was very likely the most beautiful woman in the world.Even then, El couldn't doubt that she was convinced that Annabel was supernaturally pretty, but now that beauty had taken a turn.Now, she had begun to see it for what it was: another tool in a killer’s arsenal.A way to get others to bring their guard down.The whole time that she had been with them, it had been fake.The whole time that she had been her mother, it had been nothing but a lie, and Annabel had known.
Annabel had known, and she had used her.What for, El didn’t know, but one glance over at her three guilty mates who sat in the car across from Ryan and her, having had to leave the unregistered white van that they had driven with behind, and she knew that the answer wasn't going to be one that she liked.
To be honest, a small selfish part of her almost didn't want to ask, if only so that for a while longer, she could pretend that things were the way that she had always dreamed they would be, that the delusion that she had had before leaving the house that Annabel would act as her mother could stand firm.But she knew that she couldn't put off finding out forever.Not if she was going to be a mother and care for her daughter as well.To be ignorant was to put Destiny in danger, and since there was nothing that she loved more in that world than her daughter, El reserved herself to find out, slowly trailing her gaze up to meet the eyes of the person that she trusted the most in this world.
Shawn.
El didn't even have to speak for him to know what she was asking, what horrible favor she was requesting from him.She wouldn't have looked to him if she wanted him to coat this situation with a fine layer of sugar and handle her like a child.She didn't want lies; she wanted the truth.She wanted to know what she was dealing with and the person that she had called mother.
“She used me, didn't she?”El asked though she didn't know why she had even bothered to ask, considering the fact that they were currently driving away in the car together, and she knew that it was true.They wouldn't have left as quickly as they did if she thought it was a lie.Hell, she might have even tried to hang back and wrap her arms around Annabel and protect her from everything.
But the moment that she had seen Annabel standing there in the window with the shotgun in her hand, she knew that she couldn't deny it anymore.She realized exactly who the woman was and that her whole entire life had been a lie.
It hurt a lot.But El knew that she would hurt more in the future if she didn’t have that realization.After all, there was always the chance that someday Annabel would have her unaware at the other end of that gun.She wouldn't be fleeing from the scene into the bushes and out an open door, but rather, Annabel would have her cornered and kill her on the spot.This was better.
El had to tell herself that this was better.
Even when Shawn averted his eyes, refusing to meet her gaze even as she silently begged him to do so.A small part of her heart stung at that sight.He was so desperate to preserve the little bit of innocence that she had left, unaware of the fact that whatever pipe dream she had about having a loving, normal family, it already dissipated just an hour before.
They were now tearing through the city, going down the back roads that would lead to the pride compound, where Ryan would inevitably have to enter through the main door and begin to start rambling off orders, commanding people left and right.
This was a situation, after all, one that they couldn't keep from the other packs in the area.If other shifters found out that they knew about a hunter who was currently living in such a luxury house, enjoying the connection to such high-ranking politicians, and exerting her will over all of California, then it was undoubtedly that the other shifters would have their skin.After all, these were dangerous times, and you were meant to stand by your brother, even if your brother were brother humans who could turn into animals.
El could see the stress on Ryan's face as she briefly glimpsed it out of the corner of her eye, unable to focus on his features alone as a heaviness settled in her stomach, and she found it hard to catch her breath.Instead, she looked over to Shawn once more, having caught the hesitation in his eyes and silently begging him to tell her the truth.She could handle it, after all.She wasn't the same girl that she used to be.
“You were her backup plan,” Shawn finally admitted, much to El’s displeasure, and she felt a knot form in the back of her throat at the idea.She wasn't even the main plan, Annabel's main line of defense, or anything like that.She was a backup plan.“In case Joseph left her, in case he didn't achieve all the things that he was supposed to achieve.Joseph was supposed to go into politics after all; he was supposed to follow in his father's footsteps and become just as influential as he was, but he didn't,” Shawn said.
El silently wondered what would have become of her if her father had done all the things that Annabel had hoped he would.Would they have disposed of her quietly in some way?That seemed likely, considering the fact that Annabel could hardly care to look at her half the time.But still.
“She's hoping to use your brothers,” Shawn said, and yet again, El could feel another bullet strike through her armor, hitting her directly in the heart.Her brothers, the two men that she had grown up with, the two who she was closest to, outside of her mates.
Sure, they weren't always perfect.They were far from the Big Brothers that you saw on TV shows who would have done anything for their little sisters.They took Annabel's side too much for that.But time and time again, she had tricked herself into considering them friends.They were, after all, the main witnesses to her mother's special kind of torture.Trauma like that tended to bond people.
Maybe it just hadn’t bonded them enough, or so El dared to think for a moment before Shawn spoke once again.
“They don’t know about you,” he said, and it was the one relief that El found in this world.
At the very least, she could still pretend that her brothers were innocent.At least for a moment.Until Shawn had to open his big mouth and speak again, reminding her of the fact that her brothers were very different people and that for all that she wanted to love them, they still had a different upbringing than she had.
“They're hunters, El,” Shawn said flatly, and she knew that he only said it so that she wouldn't get her hopes too far up, always wanting to protect her from herself in that ever-optimistic mind of hers.“They haven't killed that much is definitely true, but they have the flags hanging off their houses, and while they believe that Annabel has stepped away from the life, they were running to get their guns the moment that she cried wolf,” Shawn said, conveniently admitting the part where he was the wolf that had attacked her or rather the panther who had pounced on her.It was with a pointed elbow from Trip that he corrected this information.“I jumped her,” Shawn admitted after a moment, and El did her best not to gasp, failing entirely.
