In this form, time seemed to play in slow motion. I was faster than I had ever been before, and if I ever thought that the temporary boosts I got from mating with Damon or Blaise were great, this was nothing short of extraordinary.

With ease, I was able to jump through the crowd and knock my mother down on the floor, my powerful frame bearing down on her in a frightening mix of agility and strength. She dropped the gun to the ground with a thud when she collapsed under my weight, and at the same time, the hunters and vampires came to life.

"Get her!" 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

"Stop her!"

They charged straight for me with their weapons raised and ready to attack, but were swiftly kept out of the way by Blaise, who still held Damon’s body in his arms. He reached out his hand, wincing in pain before summoning bolts of lightning that rippled through the crowd in a flash of spark and light. Those who managed to worm their way through Blaise’s electric field were quickly swiped away with just a swing of my tail, cast to a side.

As if the Goddess had finally taken pity on us, someone new burst through the doors. Kyle carried multiple weapons in his hands― he had guns strapped all over his body and various knives and spears either in his arms or slung across his back.

"Alpha, I did as you told! It will blow in―" His eyes first found Blaise and Damon, then it landed on me, widening with realization. "Harper?!" Kyle squeaked out in surprise.

"Well don’t just stand there!" Blaise barked, and that was all it took for Kyle to snap back to attention. He came in, guns blazing as he ripped through the crowd of human hunters with ease, while Blaise kept the vampires off my back.

That left me alone with my mother.

She laughed, spitting out a mouthful of blood. When I looked down, the smell of blood particularly piercing due to the fact that it was right in front of me, I realized that my claws had dug into her chest, drawing blood. Red seeped into the fabric of her clothes, but she didn’t have weapons she could reach for around her. Even if she did, her hands were fastly secured by my weight― her human bones would’ve been crushed if I exerted even just a little more strength.

"What cosmic irony," my mother said with a cold, mirthless laugh, sneering as blood dribbled down the corners of her lips. "You still shifted despite all the precautions I’ve taken."

I said nothing — not that I could even if I wanted to — and merely snarled at her, baring my teeth. I could kill her. It was all too easy. If I just reached down and clamped my jaws around her neck, her windpipe would be crushed and her bones would snap just with one forceful bite.

"Oh, don’t look at me like that," my mother said, clicking her tongue. Even on the brink of death, she was absolutely infuriating. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to send her back to the urn I thought was hers. "That bullet wouldn’t have killed Blaise if it landed on him. This is my way of giving you my blessing for your nuptials. There can be no true love in a mate bond between werewolves. If you and Blaise are meant to be, you’ll be able to make it work even without it."

Then, she grinned.

"But perhaps it would be better that Damon Valentine was the brother who took the bullet," she continued. "Tell me honestly, Harper. If you and Damon Valentine weren’t mates, would you have given him a second chance after everything he put you through at the start?"

She raised an imperious eyebrow, as though she was privy to every uncharitable thought I had about Damon Valentine before he slowly started to change his ways for the better. I needed to say no words― it was as though my mother could read the thoughts that ran through my head, and the more I growled and snarled at her, the wider her grin grew.

"You wouldn’t," she answered definitively for me. "If you hadn’t been tied down to any of the two brothers of Fangborne, you would’ve dipped and dashed as soon as you could. Gus almost got you out, and if he had, we would’ve been reunited much earlier."

Of course. Gus would’ve no doubt been at Fangborne in the first place because of my mother’s orders. She had come for me much earlier than I thought, but those attempts weren’t successful. Time and time again, I slipped out of her grasp and returned to Fangborne― even though back then, it had been my prison.

Everything was due to the bond― that was what I was a slave to.

"What would happen then, I wonder, if your bond with them is gone?" my mother continued her musings, her voice light and filled with enthusiasm as she stared directly in my eyes. "If they are now human, and the Goddess’s ’blessings’ have been removed, would you still love them the same for the horrible, cruel, vile people that they are? How much of this connection you have with him is real?"

My mother’s laughter quickly filled the room amidst the screams and cries of people who were soon to breathe their last. Her hunters collapsed to the floor, unmatched for Blaise’s lightning and Kyle’s expert weaponry, while the vampires took the chance to feed off of the fallen human.

Blood, after all, was their priority. Not loyalty. My mother was a fool to make a deal with them.

"I wished to protect you from this curse," my mother said, her eyes suddenly turning watery. "To have a mate is to be betrayed in the cruelest of ways, even worse than a bond between two humans. I didn’t want that for you, and thus, the only way to do that was to suppress your wolf."

I knew what she had done. But to hear her admit to it was a whole other equation. Other than the chaos that ensued behind us, my blood was roaring in my ears. All I could see was red― blood, anger, chaos.

War.

"And now, you will know for sure that if they stay, it’s for who you are as a person and not because you have been cursed to live the life of a beast," my mother said, snarling at the end of her sentence.

She eyed me up and down, and in my inner turmoil, I hadn’t noticed that she had been slowly reaching for the silver blade tucked in her back pocket.

A crackle filled the air, unlike the sound of Blaise’s lightning. My ears pricked, and for a second, both my mother and my attention were steered away from each other to the building around us.

"We need to go!" Kyle screamed over the chaos, dodging and stabbing as he went. He dropped the gun he held in his other hand when he realized it was now firing blanks, and reached for the other weapon he had in store. "This building is going to collapse!"