They carried themselves with effortless authority, dressed in wealth, surrounded by an air of power that made them feel untouchable. And now they were claiming she belonged to them, that she was their missing sister. The idea felt absurd, almost laughable, yet no one in the room looked like they were joking.
Then a colder thought slipped in, cutting through her confusion. If what they were saying was true... then the mother she had briefly known, the one Maddison had killed, was she their mother too?
Her chest tightened.
And she couldn’t even ask. Not when she was pretending to have amnesia. Not when a single wrong word could unravel everything.
Her mind raced, grasping for logic, for anything that could make sense of this. If they were truly her biological brothers, then why couldn’t she sll anything from them, none of the distinct scent that marked werewolves?
Was it because their mother had been an Oga, so their scent was very faint... or did it an their father was human? Soone powerful, soone of status, an aristocrat, perhaps?
The questions piled up relentlessly, each one heavier than the last, until it felt like her skull might crack under the pressure. By the ti Ace finished speaking, Ashley remained frozen in place, her expression blank, her thoughts in turmoil, too overwheld to react, too shaken to even begin to understand.
The conflict in Ashley’s eyes didn’t go unnoticed. Every flicker of hesitation, every tightening of her gaze, they caught it all. But to them, it was easy to misunderstand. They assud it was the amnesia, that she was struggling to grasp sothing she simply couldn’t rember.
They didn’t realize the truth was far more complicated, that nothing about this made sense to her at all.
If she had grown up human, perhaps this would have been easier to accept. Humans didn’t understand werewolves; to them, it was all just stories, sothing distant and unreal. But Ashley was the opposite.
She had been raised within a werewolf pack, shaped by that world, bound by its rules. And now, hearing this... it felt just as absurd to her as werewolves would to a human. Because how could a werewolf have human brothers?
Unless... she wasn’t one.
The thought ca quietly at first, then struck deeper with every passing second. If their father had been human, and her mother an Oga — already the lowest, weakest among werewolves — then what did that make her? Sothing diluted? Sothing incomplete?
Her breath caught.
A sharp, almost physical pain pierced through her chest as another realization surfaced, one she had buried for weeks. She had never shifted. Not once. Even after reaching adulthood, even after waiting and hoping and forcing herself through every trial expected of her, nothing had ever happened.
She had always believed it was because she was a failure... a defective werewolf.
But now... What if that was never the truth?
What if she couldn’t shift because she had never been a werewolf to begin with?
The possibility hollowed her out. And with it ca another, darker thought, that maybe her mother hadn’t belonged to the werewolf pack either. That she had only been there out of necessity, hiding in plain sight, clinging to the most dangerous place as the safest refuge.
Ashley’s fingers tightened unconsciously, her body going still as the weight of it all pressed down on her, heavier than anything she had ever known.
Ashley’s mind spiraled, one deduction crashing into the next until she could barely keep up with her own thoughts. Instinctively, her gaze shifted toward the n, her so-called brothers, searching their faces as if the truth might be written there.
They were all strikingly handso, their features refined, almost unreal in their symtry. And yet, the more she looked, the more sothing began to click.
Ace, who seed to be the youngest, had eyes that mirrored hers in a way she couldn’t ignore. It was the first thing that she had noticed about when she woke up, that faint, uncanny familiarity.
Now, looking closer, she couldn’t deny it. There was sothing shared between them, sothing subtle but undeniable, even if the rest of their features diverged, differences that might have co from their father, if what he said was true.
And that thought made her pause.
If they were truly her brothers... then where was this so-called father?
"Then... where is your father?" Ashley asked, the question slipping out before she could stop herself.
"Our father," Ace corrected almost imdiately.
The slight emphasis didn’t go unnoticed. There was sothing in the way he said it, subtle, but firm, that made it clear he had caught the distance in her words, the quiet line she had drawn between herself and them.
Ashley cleared her throat, a flicker of awkwardness crossing her face. Adjusting her mindset wasn’t sothing she could do in an instant; the mistake had co naturally, unfiltered. She forced herself to correct it, even as doubt still lingered inside her.
"Y-yes... our father," she anded, her voice softer this ti. "Where is he?"
The question hung there, carrying more than simple curiosity. Beneath it was hesitation, skepticism she hadn’t quite managed to hide, no matter how carefully she chose her words.
"He..." Ace started, the word stuck on his lips as the answer refused to co easily.
He wanted to explain. More than anything, he wanted her to understand, to accept them, to see them as family. But their history wasn’t sothing simple he could lay out in a few sentences.
It was tangled, complicated, filled with gaps and possibilities he wasn’t ready to confront out loud. The absence of their mother alone raised too many questions. If Ashley had been kidnapped and later found, then what had happened to their mother?
Had she been left sowhere in the country, still searching, still waiting, worrying herself sick over a daughter who never returned?
Or...
The thought pressed harder than he could bear.
What if she was already gone?
Ace’s throat tightened, the uncertainty weighing heavily on him. He couldn’t bring himself to ask, not when the answer might shatter whatever fragile hope they still had. His voice trailed off completely, and instead, he glanced toward his brothers, silently asking for help, for soone else to pick up what he couldn’t finish.
The oldest among them cleared his throat, a deliberate sound ant to draw Ashley’s attention away from Ace. Until now, all her focus had been fixed on Ace, because he was the one who had first reached her, the one she seed to trust, however slightly.
They had all recognized that and, without discussion, left the role of speaking to Ace, allowing him to help her get used to their presence one step at a ti. But now... this was different. The mont their father was brought into the conversation, it was no longer sothing Ace could carry alone.
So he stepped forward.
"Before we get into the more... intricate topics," he began, his voice steady despite the tension beneath it, "let introduce myself and my brothers."
He adjusted his glasses briefly, a habitual motion, before continuing. "I’m the eldest. I run a small company. My na is Apollo." He gestured slightly to the man beside him. "Your second brother, Daemon. He’s a lawyer, handles most of the legal matters for my company."
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