“Oh, Carol,” Mum sobbed into the phone. “I’m so glad to hear your voice, sweetie. It’s all over the telly. The wolves … they’re at a wedding, and they’ve revealed themselves. It’s for real this time. They’re—”

“Yeah, I know.” Now that I was in the car and the full horror of what I’d just witnessed rolled over me, the tears spilled over my cheeks, and I sniffed. “I was there.”

“Oh god, Carol—” Mum sounded like she was having trouble breathing.

“They were my clients, and then all those wolves appeared. Mum … I’m scared. I don’t think I’m safe here any longer.”

“You have to come home. I’ll look after you, just like I always did.”

Home. The place I’d fled because of her stifling love, because she wanted to lock me away from the world’s cruelty, and ended up depriving me of all its joy, as well.

Irvine never wanted to lock me away. His strength made me stronger. He believed in me when no one else did. He saw me, truly saw me. But did I ever truly see him?

Just the thought of going back to Mum’s house made my stomach turn. I was a failure. A sassy new name and a different haircut couldn’t change the fact that I wasn’t able to cut it in the real world. Now, I had to go back, because I couldn’t run away from who I was – the broken girl with the peg-leg who needed to be kept away from the cruelty of others.

Mum had been right all along.

“I know you’ll look after me.” The tears rolled down my cheeks and splashed onto my lap, no doubt ruining the expensive fabric of the floor-length gown I’d worn for the wedding. “I’m on the M1. I’ll be at your place in a couple of hours.”

“Be careful, honey. I love you.”

“Yeah, love you, too.” I hung up the phone, choking on the sobs that tore through my body.

The radio blared news reports from the wedding. Panic gave the announcer a high-pitched squeal. I jammed my mobile into the jack and turned the volume up on my loudest, angriest playlist. The drive sped by in a blur of ugly, angry tears and rage against the world. I must’ve run a hundred red lights and drifted over the line several times. It was a miracle I made it at all.

By some stroke of luck, there was a street park available right outside Mum’s semi-detached Chiswick residence. I parked up, grabbed my suitcase from the backseat, and rushed up the path.

Mum was outside before I’d even opened the car door. “Come on, come on,” she yelled, dragging me toward the house. “It’s not safe outside. They could be anywhere.”

I highly doubted that even in wake of what happened, any shifters were staking out Helen Winters’ house. But there was no use trying to convince Mum of that. Instead, I hobbled after her, dragging my heavy case up the steps.

The house was exactly as I remembered it. Piles of old newspapers filled the hall and lined one wall of the stairwell. Each one had huge sections torn out, articles circled and notes scribbled everywhere in loopy handwriting. A mountain of takeout containers floated in dirty water in the kitchen sink. Dark blankets were nailed over all the windows, and stacks of old recording equipment, occult books, and other junk cluttered the living room. The whole place smelled faintly of mouldy cheese.

Unusually, the cramped living room teamed with people – Mum’s fellow werewolf hunters, all of whom had seen the wedding on the telly and were jostling for action. They were loudly discussing how to proceed. One guy was even stroking the barrel of a rifle. I followed Mum into the kitchen, eager to get away from them.

Mum bustled around me, putting the kettle on and preparing tea for both of us. It was the English way – existence of shapeshifters confirmed on national TV, time to make a cup of tea and figure out what to do next.

Finally, she set down a cup in front of me. “Your new hair looks nice.”

“Thanks. I changed my name, too.”

“I figured that.” She sipped her tea. I blew on the top of mine. “What to?”

“Willow Summers. I kind of like it. I think I might keep it.”

Mum flinched, but she didn’t say anything else. In the other room, someone yelled for revolution, and twenty people started chanting something in Latin.

“You told me you weren’t in that village,” Mum said. Her tone wasn’t accusatory. She just sounded … sad.

“I didn’t want you to worry. I thought I had everything under control.” I laughed bitterly as I raised the cup to my lips. Too hot.

“I’m your mother, I’ll always worry about you.” She stared at me with huge eyes, and wiped a strand of dirty blonde hair out of her face. I noticed then that her usually pristine face was devoid of makeup, her features drawn and the skin under her eyes were sagging from lack of sleep. She looked older than when I’d left. “I wish you’d been able to trust me with your location, but I understand now … that you couldn’t. I’ve done wrong by you, my beautiful daughter. I’ve kept you locked up because of my own fear, and all I succeeded in doing was driving you straight into the hornet’s nest.”

“I was the one feeding Lachlan all that information,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I should have trusted you then, but I—” The words failed me. I sipped my tea. Better.

“Oh, honey, what happened?”

“I …” I screwed up my face, forcing out the words. “I fell in love with a werewolf.”

I expected her to scream, to curse, to wring her hands and beat me over the head. Instead, Mum’s face warmed. She reached across and wrapped her hand around mine. My heart skipped. “Are you mated?”

“Yes … um, I think so … he gave me the bite … he said we were fated to be together …”

Mum lifted her hand from mine, and placed it on the neck of her jumper. She tugged down the collar, revealing a semi-circular scar on her shoulder. It was a scar I knew well, for I’d seen it there for my entire life, and because she bore it in pictures for every article and YouTube video she did. It was a bite mark from my father, one that she’d earned when she was trying to tear him off me.

“Like mother, like daughter,” she said.

Her words sank in. “You mean … you and Dad were …”

Mum laughed woodenly. “Yes, I lied to the press because I was so angry about what happened to you. Your father was the after-hours cleaner at the office where I was doing temp work. I would often stay late at night to try and get extra work done to impress my boss. Richard would bring in his dinner and share it with me. I felt this … tingling under my skin every time we touched.

“I ran away to be with him. It was all so exciting at first, but we were young and foolish and we were into drugs … and then, you were born, and I got scared. Richard was talking about going clean, but that meant he’d give up the street dealing he was doing, and how was I going to be able to look after you on a janitor’s wage?” Her eyes grew sad. “I saw no future for us, so I decided to take you and leave him. I would go and hide. But he was looking after you one night, and he found the bus tickets I’d booked, and he panicked. He always had this problem … if he got agitated, he’d shift and go all beastly. It was even worse either side of the full moon. Richard said it wasn’t normal for shifters, but he had some defective genes. Anyway, he realised I was leaving, and he got agitated, and so he shifted and latched onto the first thing he saw, which happened to be you, my precious girl.”

“Mum—” I couldn’t believe this. Why had she kept this secret from me?

Tears glistened in Mum’s eyes. “I don’t think Richard meant to hurt you, truly I don’t. He couldn’t control himself. But as soon as he realised what he’d done, he dropped you, and he fled. The neighbour heard you screaming and called the ambulance and found me on the street corner trying to score crack … there was so much blood and you weren’t screaming. You’d gone so quiet, so still …” Her breath came out in a short, ragged gasp. “They got there in time to save your life, but not your leg.”

“Oh, mum.”

She wiped her eye. “I never knew what having your heart broken felt like, but that night, my chest was torn open and someone ground their heel right into mine. I watched them take you into surgery, and when you came back …”

… and when I came back, I didn’t have a leg anymore.

“Why did you lie to me? Why?” Tears burned my own eyes. “You made me do all those videos, and appear in all those interviews where I told people that my father was evil. You made me into the laughingstock of London, all to rail after werewolves when it was all just a horrible accident. He had a disability, just like me. You robbed me of the chance to get to know him. Even if you couldn’t forgive him, I should’ve been given the choice. It’s my leg. It’s my life.”

Mum’s face paled. I’d never spoken to her like that. “Do you hate me?” she asked in a small voice.

I looked up at her then, and on her face I saw the pain she’d felt that night, watching me go into that surgery with a leg and coming out without one, knowing that she was the one who’d put me in that position. I saw the guilt that ate away at her from the inside, every day of her life that she had to look at me. How could I hate her? She’d done what she thought was right.

The same way you tried to. The same way Irvine has done.

I shook my head. “I don’t hate you.”

Her tears flowed freely now. “I just wanted to protect you. Because I knew that you had the genes that would make you desirable to them, that one day would attract you to one of their kind, maybe even have a child of your own with one. I thought … maybe if you hated them enough, you wouldn’t have to go through what I’d been through with you.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hands. “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. I was afraid to love again, and so I channelled that fear into anger, and I channelled that anger into you.”

My mind reeled. Everything I’d been told about my life was wrong. My father … he wasn’t this terrible beastly werewolf with a taste for my blood. He loved Mum. He loved me. He left me because he loved me. He’d tried to do the right thing, too.

“Irvine found him,” I whispered.

“Who?”

“Richard, my father. Irvine – that’s the wolf – found him and brought him to London. He was living in a sewer under London. He cast himself off from the world because of all the guilt …” I brushed the tears from my eyes.

“Richard?” Mum’s eyes widened. “You saw Richard?”

I nodded. “He tried to speak with me, but I … I didn’t want to hear it.”

“Can you find him again?” She leaned forward, her eyes sparkling, even through her tears.

She still feels something for him, I realised. Even after all these years. Even after all her work trying to destroy shifters, she still cares for my father.

I buried my face in my hands. It was all messed up. Everything was completely messed up.