Chapter Seven

The trio stood silent for a while… Katie's guardian seemed too petrified to answer the question that had come from their child. Katie could feel the wolf from her dream struggling to get out, but unfortunately for the wolf, it relied on emotion and anger, all things that Katie had been taught to suppress while she was growing up. In fact, the more the wolf struggled, the more she found out how to block it out. "You might want to sit down, Katie."

Katie's aunt was the first one to speak up, slowly pulling her to the dinner table where she retrieved a chair for her to sit on. Her beloved guardians sat on either side of her. "Honey, go bring her meds." Her aunt said beckoning for her husband to go and search for the pills they had been feeding Katie since she could walk.

"So is this it? The talk that…"

"Yes, Katie, this is the talk…"

"So you knew, then…"

"Your breathing, Katie… focus on your breathing," her aunt raised her voice, putting all the authority she could muster into it. Katie began getting worried about what they were telling her and the constant probing of the wolf did not help cool her nerves. Katie then began the breathing exercises she had been taught growing up, the wolf in her imagination retreating the more she got a hold of her emotions. Now she knew why the training she was put under was different from the training the others were put through.

"So you can see her," she said to Katie before footsteps alerted them of her uncle returning.

"Marie, dear…" Katie kept calm as he revealed the crime she had obviously been carrying out for the past few days, "the bottle is still full," he said. The room went dead silent upon his revelation. She put out her hand, getting them from him and giving Katie two of the blue capsules from the bottle. The wolf from her 'imagination' clawed its way back and snarled at her ferociously before she swallowed the blue pills. At first, nothing happened and then the dizziness hit her like a brick to the skull along with a hammering headache. Katie staggered wildly, the world spinning a hundred kilometres per hour. In just two steps, she tripped forward, fainting before she even hit the ground, unconscious.

Katie woke up much later, her head giving her one hell of a hammering. She brought her hand up to her forehead only to find a wet cloth there. "Don't move just yet. That's what you get for skipping your medicine."

Katie closed her eyes in search of the wolf but found nothing. It was gone like nothing had been wrong, to begin with. Her hands felt like lead under the weight of the blanket. Her whole body had lost a ton of energy in a short amount of time. The feeling of loneliness that briefly overwhelmed her was not among the reactions she expected to come from her, "It's gone. The wolf…"

"Yes, that is what the medicine is for," the voice of her uncle spoke up, startling her. Her mother stayed at the threshold of the door to her room, silently listening to the conversation. Katie noticed the ceiling and walls weren't the same wood she had been accustomed to before she fainted. A quick look around the room told her that she was back in her room in the estate. As it so seemed, they had moved her back to the estate to avoid a night when they did not come home from 'work.' "You must have noticed by now. You aren't exactly normal," her uncle began.

"Just get to the point. Tell me the whole truth," Katie was trying her best to keep her cool while they explained what it was they had to say. "So, I'm supposed to believe that I am a werewolf, is that it? I've been careful to keep from being bitten for as long as I can remember, I have never been bitten by an alpha or a Royal for that matter."

"You didn't have to be bitten. You were born a werewolf," Aunt Marie spoke up to speed the process along. The news hit like a brick, Katie's heartbeat getting heavy and loud in her chest. A part of her wished they were just saying stuff to prank her, but the Chase family was not known for such behaviour, especially when it came to issues of such magnitude.

"That's preposterous. My eyes have never been bright blue and I don't have any characteristics of a wolf. I've seen them in a mirror enough times that I… I know the colour of my eyes," Katie tried arguing, the fight between reality and fantasy was now in full swing within her mind as she struggled to grasp what she was being told as well as find a way to deny it.

"We have been giving you that medicine for as long as you can remember. It was meant to suppress your werewolf abilities. When the medicine is working, it removes all the characteristics of a werewolf from you including the glow of your eyes," her uncle said, waving at her a plastic container filled with blue pills.

"But then, my eyes… they are blue…" panic was starting to rise within her as she realized the last thing she needed right now was to know that it was actually a bad thing for his eyes to be that colour.

"You are a Royal," Aunt Marie said, her voice completely void of any emotion as she said it. Katie's headache threatened to split her skull as she got even more agitated. "We were meant to tell you all this within this week because over the weekend, when the moon is full, on your birthday, the medicine will lose all its power on you, and you'll shift."

"How are you so calm about this?" she asked them, disbelief etched into her voice.

"We have known about that deadline since the day we were sent into hiding to raise you and we have taught you everything we could so that you would not be defenceless," Aunt Marie spoke, steeling her voice once more and hiding all emotion that she was feeling at the moment. Her eyes, however, still betrayed her and released tears slowly.

"If I am a Royal, why am I in hiding?"

"Because… an attempt on your life was made when you were only an infant. The moon goddess herself sent us to protect you… I'm still unsure why the moon goddess would rely on humans to save her species. All she said was that you were special and your existence threatened the evil that lay in the shadows of both mankind and werewolves," her uncle did the best to explain what it is he meant.

"I don't understand what it is that you are trying to say," she told them.

"I only hope she speaks to you herself on your birthday," her uncle spoke up.

"I have to go to that party on that day," Katie said

"That won't be happening," Aunt Marie said, "you can attend the day part of that programme, but once it clocks seven, you come straight back here."

"That day is special to Sandra. I will be making it to that party on that day. I also have to make sure she doesn't get carried away by having too much fun," Katie chuckled at the thought before continuing, "Don't worry about me. You trained me well. There is nothing I won't be able to handle on that day."

"Get some rest. We'll discuss this later. We trust your judgement. On that day, if you notice you may not be able to stop it, you come right back," Aunt Marie said. Her uncle got up from the chair he was seated on and made his way to the door, switching off the light once he was at the threshold of the door.

"Sleep tight, Katie," he said. Regardless of how they looked at it, these two were like parents to Katie and she valued them more than any other Royals that would claim to be her real parents. She almost asked the question… the question that would disclose who her parents were, but thought better of it and kept her mouth shut. Besides, she had all the family she needed with her. Nothing was going to change that. Her thoughts swirled into a confusing mess as she closed her eyes, sleep coming to her faster than she had expected rendering her unconscious within minutes.

......…

As Katie slept, the horrors of her reality trying their best to break her mind and world apart, someone watched on from far away, preferably for her own safety and convenience or simply because there was nothing that they could do for her at the moment. "How long are you going to keep this hidden from her?" a man asked his wife, hugging her from the back while he kissed into the crook of her neck. The woman dressed in a white robe, barely responded to the loving gestures as she watched the girl sleeping, her mind deep in thought, trying to find a way she could best approach her current predicament, "You need to stop stressing so much. It's not good for you."

This time, the man gently licked the mark in the crook of her neck forcing a reaction from her as that was probably one of the most sensitive parts of her body. "Honey, it's not the right time yet," the moon goddess said leaning into her husband.

"When is the right time then? You have watched this girl grow up and you have done nothing to interfere with her life… I thought that was all you were ever going to do, but now it seems like each time you stand at this pond staring down at her, you are holding back with all your control from going to her," the man voiced his observations.

"You are right," she did not bother denying what he said, "four days from now, she will turn eighteen and her wolf will awaken. The time we have been waiting for is almost upon us."

"I don't quite understand what you mean. I thought the girl was a hunter," the man said, confusion leaking into his voice.

"On the contrary, she is a werewolf. One of the pair that will bring peace to the humans and the werewolves," she said.

"You remember that night that the Rogues attacked the royals to kill the newborn baby that was meant to do that. You sent me to protect her, but when I arrived, the baby's blood was in that crib and her mother had vanished along with her personal guard. I was sure that she was dead. Are you telling me that this whole time, the girl was still alive? And I been watching you loom over her for all this time," a hint of agitation leaked into the man's voice as he spoke to his wife.

"Yes, my love, that is correct," she spoke, her voice completely void of all emotion as she did. She felt the man's hands tighten their grip around her waist before he let go and walked away from her. "Where are you going?"

"For a run," he said, briskly walking out of the room, his fists constantly clenching and unclenching as he searched his mind for a way to blow off some steam.