Chapter 17 Choices that change everything

Quinn Shalom's POV...

I was the child in Aliza's memory. An angry, entitled child on the verge of a fit.

"Now Aliza, it is important for people who are blessed like us to help those who are struggling." Aliza's mother was admonishing me for being grumpy and complaining about the boring charity affair the day before.

I snarked back, "Daddy says let them make their own wealth."

My mother scowled, and said tiredly, "That is easy for him to say because all his wealth came from his grandfather. He didn't have to make it."

"Daddy goes to work every day; he works very hard so we can have nice things," I argued, defending him with the words I had heard him say so many times.

"Your father has never had to work for anything, Aliza. He sits in his father's old office and gives orders about things he does not understand. He is not the person you think he is. Someday you will understand." Aliza's mother walked away from me.

Angry at her disapproving look, I took a tray of petit fors for her morning teatime meeting from a table and sat in an empty room eating them. I got crumbs everywhere but I didn't care. I ate them all then felt sick. I threw up all over an expensive Turkish rug and left it. Cleaning was what maids were for. As the child Aliza, I went to my room without telling anyone I ruined the rug and slept until it was time to go riding.

The afternoon outside air was so hot when I came in from my riding lessons early. My stupid pony couldn't run fast enough, no matter how hard I whipped it. She wheezed and huffed in the heat like the wretched creature she was. I want to fly, like the boy I saw in the Black Stallion movie. The house was cool and quiet.

I undressed myself, plotting how to get my father to buy me a better horse and wondered where the maid and butler were off to. While I showered, I begrudgingly recalled the argument Mother and I had over breakfast. I figured my mother was probably in her office talking with some person about money for her charities or something, usually she wanted me with her when she did stuff like that unless I had lessons.

Turning off the water, I wished we had a pool like the penthouse in New York. I wished we lived there more and hated my mother a little more for making us live in South Carolina for most of the year. As I finished dressing, I heard a scream and the sound of something giant growling, followed by several gunshots. My father had always told me not to go out into the woods beyond the fences because wolves lived there. Terrified, I ran to my parents' bedroom thinking one had gotten into the house. There was a safe room in the back of mother's closet. I could hide there.

I stood, frozen in the doorway of my parents' bedroom. My mother was dead on their bed. Her head hanging off the side, blue eyes staring blankly as blood from the cut across her throat dripped down her golden hair onto the white carpet. A monster I had never seen was laying on the floor with several bullets holes in its chest oozing blood onto the cream plush. It was the strangest and most terrifying thing I had ever seen. Like a giant dog, but also nothing like my father's hunting hounds. Its wolf-like face was distorted with giant fangs protruding from a long snout, and its hands were paw-like claws. It was still moving, fur sinking into its tanned skin. I watched as its body slowly became more and more human looking until a naked man lay on the carpet in a pool of crimson. His eye and part of his head were holes leaking blood.

I heard water running in the bathroom, so I crept to the door trying not to look at my mother or the man. I saw him. My father getting out of the shower, the white tiles stained pink from him scrubbing blood off his body. He had several long, parallel scratches down his chest. He dabbed antiseptic on them, cursing about those dogs and that he would kill them all.

I was so terrified he'd kill me next that I ran and hid in my secret playroom in the attic, praying it was a nightmare. The butler found me and took me to my room somewhere around midnight. In the morning, the maid dressed me and took me to breakfast with my father.

They never spoke of that day, only saying she left them. Aliza never saw her mother again and chose to hate her.

I inhaled and looked at the sleepy woman as her eyes fluttered open. Galen leaned over my shoulder, "Now you know." Galen walked around my chair and perched on the edge of her desk. "Good evening, Princess." His wings looked larger, menacing as he declared, "You can lie to yourself and the world about everything you are, Aliza, but the truth is that you are just a scared little girl who refuses to accept the truth about your mother's murder and clings to the lie of your father's nobility."

"Guards!" Aliza shouted.

Galen looked at his nails as if bored, "No one is coming to find you this time either. Queen Quinn has a few questions for you."

"I know what you did, dark one. I know you cursed your brother and that is why you are changing to look like..."

"Galen took his blessing back," I snapped at her. "Gerard is the one you should be afraid of." I was still in shock from watching the day of her mother's murder through her eyes and the feeling of her blame of her mother for it all. I made myself breathe out then in and stated, "I am sorry your mother was murdered by your father, but it is no reason to hate all non-humans, to want us all dead just because she had a werewolf lover."

"You don't know anything about me!" Aliza shrieked. "I'm glad she's dead, just like your mongrel children are dead."

My wolf snarled in my head and I felt my claws start to push out the tips of my fingers as I panted to stay in control. After a moment, I asked, "Did you ever tell my husband that?"

"Yes. He knew I was going to have them both sterilized after he left you and we had pure human children," Aliza sneered, and her beauty became the ugliest thing I had ever seen. It was like I could see the color of her soul and I blinked rapidly as she laughed at my expression. "I loved him, and he loved me. He never lied to me like he did you. He lied to you for years, even tried to have you sterilized, because you were a mongrel before you were bitten and changed."

"Are you certain about that?" Galen chuckled and pulled Kenneth's letter to me out of the pocket of his duster. "Perhaps you should read this."

"No," I wanted to snatch it away from him, but my body remained sitting in the chair as though relaxed.

"Let her read the truth, Queen Quinn. Let her see what true love is. She never had and will never have his love you did," Galen boasted as he held the letter to her. "Let her see who the unloved monster really."

Aliza's hand trembled as she read the pages and I feared she would tear it to shreds as tears began to leak from her eyes. Her gasping inhales made my heart ache for her because I knew her heartache. I had lived it myself, alone on a snowy winter night. I had shifted and run out into the night to howl my grief. I wondered if she would scream or cry, I wondered if it would be loud enough to drown out the cicadas and crickets.

'You shouldn't feel sorry for her,' my vengeful wolf reveled in the scent of her suffering.

'I can't help it. I loved him too,' was my pathetic answer. I still loved him even if part of my resented and hated him for his deceit and for what he did to Molly.

"No... Troy loved me!" Aliza threw the pages across the desk at Galen. "You Fae, you think you're so clever to make people see and feel what you want so you can feed on their emotions... Well, I won't do it. I won't be afraid of you. You won't get to savor my misery."

Carefully, almost reverently, folding the pages, Galen shook his head as he retorted softly, "I'm not that kind of Fae, you mistake me for my brother." He held them out to me. "Ask your questions, my queen."

I put the pages in my pocket as I stood. "Where are you growing the Samhain Elm to make the Dust of Rage with?"

"I don't know what you are talking about," Aliza insisted but her red-rimmed eyes and alkali scent revealed the lie but also the tart scent of confusion.

I still wasn't used to the werewolves smell everything part of my life now but I was glad to have the ability as I realized she didn't know the whole truth about the chemical weapon, so I explained, "Dust of Rage is what the Dark Fae from medieval times called the Project Elm Street chemical weapon. It is made from the sap and pollen of a specific type of elm, a tree that they burned the forest of Ireland to make extinct." I watched her carefully as I spoke. "There are many ways to propagate elm trees. You would have needed hundreds to get enough sap and pollen to spray the Colorado Front Range like you did on the Revelation Night... Where are the Samhain Elm trees?"

When she did not answer, I grabbed her throat, "Tell me and I won't tell the world it's your fault two million died." As I studied her smell, I realized she didn't know about the trees.

"Troy couldn't have loved you like his letter claimed... He made love to me several times a week when he was away from you. It was the best sex I ever had," Aliza taunted me, her scent revealed her half-truth, but she couldn't hurt me.

Galen laughed loudly. "You're a poor liar."

"Stop it! I love him and he loved me!" Aliza protested. She believed that, I could smell it and see it, but Galen chuckled malevolently, shaking his head.

"Yeah, I know all about how much you loved Troy, but funny thing is you never called my brother his name while he was pounding you senseless," Galen chided derisively. "And Troy never said he loved you, did he? He would say, 'I know,' when you said it to him and occasionally, 'I do too' but that's not the same as I love you, is it?"

Shaking in her futile rage, Aliza glared at us. "Troy's dead and I was the last one he kissed so I know he loved me," Repeating herself, she seemed so proud that she had an affair with a married man, but she smelled bereft, then she insisted, "I'm glad your kids died. I'm glad your mate tore your son in half, and you had to shoot your own daughter before he fuked you half-to-death. Troy deserved better than your mongrel family. Just kill me and get it over with, Quinn."

All my sympathy for her heartache evaporated with those words. I didn't want her dead, so I restrained my wolf, refusing, "No."

"No?" Both she and Galen looked surprised.

"You need to live so the world will see how ugly you really are. I want you to spend the rest of your life knowing you will never be able to prove to Troy you loved him after you betrayed him and his children to death at the hands of the nonhumans affected by the Project Elm Street chemical weapon. I want to you never forget his letter to me confessing what he did and that he never loved you. You're not saving humanity, Aliza; you're helping him to enslave it."

I felt the same righteous anger I had when I cursed Will to live a long life with his guilt and grief over Molly. I wanted her to live forever with the ache of betrayal that I had carried since a week after the Revelation Night. Her wide eyes betrayed her heartbreak as tears leaked from them. I walked back to the balcony doors because I couldn't stand to look at her anymore. My wolf was fighting me. My wolf ripping her to pieces would be too quick a death for her crimes against human and non-humankinds. It wanted to attack her, but I knew a better way, a more human and far less humane way to destroy her and her empire of hatred. I refused to become what she was, a monster made of hate and fear.

"Let's go, Galen. She doesn't know where Gerard has the trees stashed. She doesn't know what is really going on." I felt so tired as I stepped outside. Standing outside, I inhaled the night air to get the stench of her lies out of my nose.

Galen smiled smugly at Aliza and declared, "There is something about Troy you need to understand, Princess Pawn. That letter was his absolute truth. Everything he did, he did for her, not you. He wasn't a Fae, but he could see how corrupted your soul is, just like I can. What would your elitist daddy dearest think of you and my brother? Probably the same thing he thought about your mother and her lover before he killed them. He'd probably cut your throat too."

"Get out!" Aliza hissed.

He raised an eyebrow, and she threw her laptop at him. As it dented the wall behind where he stood, he sighed, "Poor little, delusional daddy's girl. Killing the world won't bring him back or change that he never loved you." Galen closed the door softly behind him while the glass of cognac shattered against it.

"Where to, Queen Quinn?" Galen asked chivalrously as he picked me up and flew into the night.

"Please take me back to my son... and my mate," I said quietly, looking up at the sky instead of down toward the ground.

The journey seemed so slow and yet faster than when we went. Galen landed and set me on my feet as the ten surviving Ravers of Monarch Mountain surrounded us.

Will shifted to his skin, and scolded, "You should have told us where you were going."

"I needed to find some answers," I responded looking beyond him at Jake as he stalked out of the house toward me.

"And did you?" Jake growled glaring at Galen more than me.

I could feel his fear, worry, anger, and regret like the change in the wind before a storm. He was close to raging so I walked up to him and put my arms around his neck, hugging him, like I did that day in Monarch Mountain when he attacked Richard. Jake stood frozen for a moment then his arms wrapped tentatively around my waist. It felt right to hold him. I had made so many wrong choices since the afternoon of the Revelation Night when I ignored the warnings. Tonight, I had forgiven Kenneth, faced the evil person behind every painful choice he made, and I let her live because I understood there were fates worse than death. More than that, by making the choice to go public with everything, I gave myself permission to move forward.

Looking up into Jake's confused blue-grey eyes, I whispered, "I'm not running and hiding anymore." The sun was rising on a new day, it touched my face as I hugged him. "I forgave Kenneth, I'm forgiving you. I don't want to be afraid and angry forever."