"You're wavering," Mom says. "Aren't you?"

We're standing in what looks to be her office—a secluded, fairly dark room stationed across from the parlor, a huge antique desk littered with papers and a high-backed office chair right in its center. I study the disarray that is the desk, and the careful, methodical put-togetherness of my mom's expression. I wonder which one is the truth.

"I—"

"It's okay, Vy," Mom says, and I'm thankful for the interruption, because frankly I wasn't sure what I was going to say anyway. "It's a good thing. That you still have your mercy, I mean."

I duck my head, softening my shoulders. "It just wouldn't be fair, Mom. It'd be hypocritical. We can't kill him just because he did something wrong, just because he's not who he used to be. None of us are who we used to be."

"You're right," Mom says. "You could be more."

"What?"

Mom just stares at me for a moment, not speaking, not moving, her eyes intently looking at me with something that could be sympathy or pity—I can't quite decide. She tells me, bracing herself back against the desk, "There is something about your father that you don't know. And for that matter, something about yourself you don't know."

The weight of the words hits me slowly, like a stone easing itself down onto my chest. I flex my fingers, curl them, flex them again. "Tell me," I say, my voice soft. "Tell me, then."

"Even before he sold out our pack, Vy, he was always a self-serving brat," Mom begins with a sigh, rolling her eyes. "He just did a very good job of hiding it, for yours and Jamie's sake."

The thought that he really was pretending, for far longer than we even knew, hurts too much to think about. So I don't. I ask instead: "What do you mean? What did he do?"

She looks at me squarely. "Jamie wasn't the Donahue Pack's next alpha, not really. It was you."

The stone doubles in weight, and I can feel myself sinking into the floor. "Me?" I stagger forward a bit, grabbing for the nearest chair to keep myself from keeling over entirely. It doesn't make sense. It goes against everything I thought I knew. "But I'm—"

"A woman?" Mom says, raising an eyebrow, and when I nod she just lets out a laugh. She waves a hand in the air. "Look around you, Vy. The idea that a woman doesn't belong in the lead is something humans invented, not us. That's just what your dad told you."

Mom notes the growing confusion on my face, and clears her throat. "The fact that Jamie was at all born with some sort of gift—what was it he had the nurse say about his eyes? That they were the mark of a warrior, or something? Anyway, it's all a fabrication. Truthfully, he was born with a defect."

"A defect?"

A rueful smile climbs across Mom's lips. "Have you ever met another werewolf who changes on a whim when they get nervous?"

I think about it, and then shake my head.

"Exactly. It's not because he's especially tuned into his power. It's because he genetically doesn't have as much control over it as a normal werewolf does."

"I don't understand," I say, slumping into the chair, my hands gripping my knees. It was just a bad habit, I thought, one of those childhood quirks he'd yet to grow out of. The thought that it could be something much bigger than that is making my head pound. "When everyone told him that he was the best at everything, that he was going to grow up to be a great alpha...they were lying to him?"

"Better that than let it come out that the only son of one of the most influential packs in the Southeast had a birth defect," Mom says, "or so your dad thought. So he lied. Made up this story that Jamie's weakness was really his strength. He went so far with it that he robbed you of your destiny, Vy. He couldn't make up this story about Jamie only to not deem him the alpha—it wouldn't add up. So he changed the rules."

Now my head is really killing me, like my skull is splitting in two. Mom's just watching my face, a faint frown at her mouth, still with that muddled expression between sympathy and pity. "Would it have been so bad? To just tell the truth?"

"To him, I suppose so."

"But you went along with it. All this time, you let him do what he wanted without saying a word," I say, looking up at her. "How does that make you any better than him?"

Something in Mom's face tightens, a crack appearing in her otherwise calm demeanor. All she says is, "Believe me when I say defying him was not an option."

I wince like the words are a blade beneath my skin. "Fine," I say, deciding I don't want to know the details. "Then why tell me now?"

Mom pushes out a long breath through her teeth, then leans forward, folding my hands in hers. She lowers herself to a crouch, looking up into my face, eyes like water, blue and calming. "Violet," she says, one hand reaching up to cup my cheek. "Everything I've done has been to bring you here. Every clue I left. The grocery store—"

"That was you?"

"It was. I was going to get Jamie then and use him to lure you here, but you caught me."

"Mom, that doesn't—"

"I know it was stupid. You don't need to tell me that; Trin already has. Plenty of times," Mom says, and she shakes her head, starting again. "I need you to do this. I need him to look you in the face, to see everything he stole from you, to see you as you're born again into the alpha you were always meant to be. There is no better way to destroy him. Do you understand?"

"I don't know," I say, my voice a trembling shell of itself. "I still don't know if I want to destroy him, Mom."

"He took everything away from you, Vy. Everything. And he made your brother live a lie. He's a thief, a con artist, a murderer—think of all the lives that were lost in that raid," Mom elaborates, squeezing my hand tighter. "And all because he'd rather serve greed than his own family. His own pack."

"Mom..."

She squeezes my hand again, searching my face. "You and Jamie are both merciful; I love that about you two. But now is not the time for mercy, Vy. Did he ever show us any?"

I start to speak, but stop again, because I think we both know the answer to that question.

Mom's mouth whips up into a smile, and she pats my cheek, getting to her feet again. She turns her back to me, facing the desk, head lowered as she sifts through the stacks and stacks of papers. "Once he and the Medinas are out of the way, you and Jamie can stay here. I'll train you up to be an alpha, and find a way to treat Jamie's defect. It'll be like it used to—no. Even better."

"But—"

"For now, though," Mom says, glimpsing me over her shoulder. "You won't say anything about this to Jamie, will you? There's just too much going on. I don't know how he'd take it."

His face flashes in my mind—that fiercely bright, ear-to-ear smile he gives me every time he sees me, like he'd trust me with anything in the world. I'm tired of keeping secrets from him. I'm not sure I have to strength to do that again.

But now Mom's staring at me, one eyebrow arched, pinning me here like a butterfly to a piece of cork. I ask, "Just until after the conference, right? And then we'll tell him everything?"

"Of course. It's like he said. We'll start over, without anyone or anything to hold us back."

Something doesn't quite feel right, a faint unsettling atmosphere, like I've arrived home and found my front door open. It could be nothing; I could've left it open myself or the wind might have done it. But even the chance that it's more than nothing is enough to set my pulse speeding off like a race horse.

I furl my hand over my chest, where I can feel my heart beating. I tell Mom, "Okay."

I want that unsettling feeling to disappear. If it did it would mean I was doing the right thing, right? Yet all it does is grow stronger.

Mom's face opens up into a smile, and in it, just for a second, I see Jamie. "Perfect. Friday couldn't come any sooner."

The second I step out of Mom's office, the glass doors squeaking shut behind me, I sense him.

"I know you're there, Lucci," I say. "You can come out already."

Slowly, he peeks out of his hiding place from behind the stairs. There's virtually no trace of guilt on his face.

"Why were you listening?" I ask.

"Curiosity. What other reason?"

I scoff, setting one foot on the stairs. "Are you satisfied, then?"

Suddenly, his face goes grave. "It's up to you, Vy. You know that right?" he says, leaning over the banister, his cheek resting in his palm. "You don't have to do what she tells you to. You decide what you want to do, okay?"

I pause, my fingers absently dancing up the wood railing, until I stop them just an inch from Lucci's elbow. Both of our eyes fall there, to that small gap between us, but neither of us move. "He fooled me. He fooled all of us. That makes me unbelievably angry."

"As it should," Lucci says, "but is killing him going to make you less angry?"

I blink. "I don't know."

Lucci shakes his head, leaning further over the banister, so that now it's our faces that are only inches apart. "You're smart," he says, dark eyes steady on my face. "So I think you do know, Vy."

We linger there for a moment too long, in this stagnant in-between space of something friendly and something a bit more than friendly. My breath hitches, but I pull myself away, climbing a bit higher up the stairs. "No, Lucci," I say. "We can't. We talked about this."

"Vy—"

"Don't....don't say anything, please. Just—" I sigh, scrubbing a hand down my face, letting my eyes drift towards the floor. "It's okay. As soon as this conference thing is over and I deal with my dad and you deal with your uncle, we'll both have done what we needed to do. You can go back to Spain and I'll...and then we can just forget we ever knew each other."

"Vy," Lucci says. "That's not fair."

"Maybe not," I say, not looking at him, "but I've never counted on fair. I've just counted on the option that keeps me and everyone I love alive."

I expect him to say something, to reach out to me, as lately it doesn't seem like he's been able to leave me alone. But something I said must've hit him, must've snapped whatever tether within him was keeping him aloft, because I don't hear a word from him. The only noise I hear at all is the sound of the front door opening and shutting as he disappears out of it.