Kanin

I’m sitting behind Jax’s desk now, staring down at a picture of a man that I feel like I should know. I search the man’s blue eyes and a flicker of emotion runs through me. I instantly know who he is, but it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense because he isn’t the only one in the photo. Just like before, my heart skips a beat.

My mother.

It hurts my heart to look at her green eyes and brown hair. It hurts to know that she’d kept so much from me. My chest aches at the look of adoration in her eyes for the man, one that isn’t my father. I feel sick to my stomach all over again.

“This is your father.” It’s not a question, because I already know the answer. The first time I’d seen this picture, I thought I’d recognized the man.

I look up to see Jax leaning against the bookshelves to my left. I recognized the man in the photo because he looks like the one standing before me now. They share the same dark hair and nose. Jax’s father had known my mother. What was worse was that Jax’s father had loved my mother.

“It is.” He agreed, his eyes searching mine.

“How?”

“Kanin-”

I cut him off quickly, because I knew he wasn’t going to answer, “My parents told me they’d fallen in love in college. They said it was love at first sight. It was a boring story, a normal one. So, tell me why my mother is in this picture with your father. Tell me why this photo is taken only a few years before I was born. Tell me why they’d lie to me.”

“It’s really not my story to tell, Kanin.” He was speaking quietly and slowly, like he was talking to a wild animal.

“It’s your father!” My hands grip the small photo harder in my fingers. The two faces blur before me and tears start running down my cheeks.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Please, Jax.” I beg.

He sighs and pushes up from the wall. He crosses the space between us and takes a seat before the desk. He sits on the edge of the seat, arms folded over his knees. “There is still so much you don’t understand, Kanin. It’s complicated and a lot of it you might not believe.”

I set the picture aside and focus on him, “I’m ready.”

“I’m not sure you are,” He gave me a small smile. “But you deserve the truth.” He takes a deep breath in, “My father knew your mother way before your father did. They grew up together. It’s true, your mother and my father were in love. They were meant to marry, it was their destiny.”

“Like an arranged marriage?”

He nodded, “But they didn’t mind. The way I know it, your mother loved my father. She wanted to marry him. That is until she met your father.”

“Wait, I’m confused.” I closed my eyes and tried to wrap my mind around what he’d just told me. “How was it that they grew up together? Didn’t your father hate outsiders?”

He searched my face for a moment. He opened his mouth to answer, but quickly closed it again.

I shook my head, “Jax. Answer me. How did my mother, a human, grow up around werewolves?” But I knew the truth. A part of me has known the truth for far too long, but I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself.

He kept quiet, and for the few seconds that he did it felt like a lifetime. When he finally did speak, it was hard to hear him over the hammering of my heart, “Your mother wasn’t an outsider, Kanin.”

She wasn’t an outsider.

“What was my mother?” I couldn’t believe what he’d said. I needed to hear him say the actual words.

“A werewolf, Kanin.”

The world around me reduced to those three words. I heard them echo in my ears. My heart hammered and my vision turned fuzzy. It hit me like a physical blow to my chest. My stomach rolled, threatening to relieve its contents.

“But your mother met Thomas Abbott and she fell in love with him, a human. She loved him for everything the she wasn’t. She loved him for his human traits. She loved him more than she loved my father. My father, Dane, found out and tried to reason with her. He was angry. Like you said, my father hated outsiders. The very mention of humans made the beast in him growl. He couldn’t understand why she’d chosen Thomas over him.

“Dane gave your mother a choice. Either she had to forget about your father or submit to exile. It wasn’t a choice for your mother, Kanin. She chose a human over the pack. She ran before Dane could formally exile her. Thomas and your mother fled. They learned to hide. Your mother turned off everything that made her a werewolf. She made herself human for your father, because she loved him.”

“My mother was a werewolf?” I couldn’t get my mind to process it. Even though I think I’ve known for a while. Even though I knew it was true. It was still hard to hear, hard to understand. “My father was human?”

“Yes.”

“So, what am I?” I asked, my eyes finally meeting his. No wonder I’ve always felt like I didn’t belong. No wonder I always felt different. Because I was. I wasn’t fully human, and a part of me had always known it.

“Incredible, Kanin. That’s what you are.” He smiled at me. “You’re part werewolf and part human, a half-breed. It’s rare, but it happens.”

“But I’m so normal.” Nothing about me was incredible.

He laughed, “You’re anything but normal. It’s easy to think that though when someone’s tried very hard to hide your other side.”

“What?” It was like his words didn’t make sense. My brain couldn’t keep up.

“Your parents hid your werewolf side all these years, Kanin. They didn’t want you to suspect a thing. They never wanted you to know that you were different, that your mother was different. But the signs are there, you just have to learn to see them.”

“What signs?”

“Your father’s been training you sense you could walk. You’ve never noticed how fast you are? How strong you are?”

I shook my head, but that wasn’t exactly true. There were times that I’d over powered my father. There were times when I’d lost control and I’d almost hurt him. Of course, my father had played it off like he was sick or something.

“Of course, you wouldn’t. Your father trained as well. He was a hunter after all. He was faster and stronger than any normal human. He knew exactly how to handle werewolves.” He shook his head. “What about a feeling in the pit of your stomach right before something bad happens?”

The fire.

That’s what I’d always called it, because I never knew what it really was.

“Every werewolf can sense danger before it happens. You can, you just never knew what it was.”

“This doesn’t make any sense.” But it did, I just didn’t want it to. I didn’t want it to be true.

“Have you ever been sick?”

I hadn’t.

“What about the claw marks on your wrist from Cade? Or the one on your head? Are they still there?”

My hand went instinctively to cover where the marks had been on my wrists. My parents had always said it was something to do with my immune system that made me heal faster than others. They used to give me vitamins and make me eat my vegetables. They said that it was those things that kept me strong and healthy. But instead, it was my blood. It was my body. It was my mother.

“I won’t change, will I?” I questioned.

“If you haven’t already, then I don’t think so. It’s possible for a half-breed to half way change. They don’t fully change into a wolf, but they’ll have the blood red eyes and the claws. I would think you already would have now that you’re here.”

An alpha triggers your change, that’s what Cade had said.

“I can’t believe this is happening.”

My mother was a werewolf. She’d once been in love with Jax’s father. I couldn’t quite understand it. What I remember of my mother, she was normal. But I guess that just meant she was good at hiding her beast side. After her death, my father was even better at it.

“Who killed her?” It’d been Jax that had said she was killed by a werewolf. I wondered if it was someone in his pack. Was it someone around us now? Had I been in the presence of my mother’s killer all along?

“I don’t know, Kanin.” He answered quickly.

I nodded, picking up the photo again. It was different now. I didn’t just see my mother with a man she’d once loved. I saw a life she’d wanted to run from. I saw a life that she had wanted to keep hidden.

“What happens now?” I asked him.

“Now, I train you. Now that you know that your half werewolf, I can help you harness it. I can help you prepare.”

"Prepare?”

“For Keera.” He stood to his feet then. “She is coming for you, Kanin. She wants you dead and she won’t stop until she gets what she wants. So, we have to prepare you for when she does come.”

“There’s still so much that I don’t understand.” I looked up at him. “Keera had said she knew my mother. Is that part of the reason she wants to kill me?”

“I will help you understand it all, Kanin, but right now you need to rest. I can’t overload you with too much at a time. I don’t want you to explode.”

“But I feel like I’m going to explode if I don’t get all the answers.”

“Trust me, okay? I’ll tell you it all in time.”

I did trust him. More than I’d ever trusted anyone.