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19

Ander ducked his head and passed through the doorway. The inside of their house was similar to Salem and Bethany's, but the walls were decorated with the antlers of many stags, all brought down by Mateo, no doubt. And speaking of Mateo...

"Have you gone out of your mind!? Why are you letting it in!?" he shrieked, raising his crossbow.

Sarah calmly approached her son and placed her hand in the crossbow's line of fire, barely an inch from the bolt's poisonous tip.

"What the hell, Mother!?" Mateo tried aiming over her hand, then under it, but Sarah kept pace with every movement.

"I asked you to put that away, Mat."

Mateo lowered his crossbow, but he didn't put it away, or even unload the bolt. "I don't understand. Why are you protecting him?"

"I don't know if... Yes, maybe you should hear this, too. It wouldn't be right of me to keep something like this from you."

"What on earth are you talking about!?"

"Please be quiet, Mat. I don't want your father barging in on us. I suppose I'll have to tell him, too, sooner or later. But I just can't handle that right now. The two of you will be difficult enough as it is."

"Tell us what!?"

"Ander, please sit down. You too, Mat." Sarah motioned him towards a bench on the far side of the room that looked just big enough to support his weight, but Mateo would have none of it.

"No!" he said, pointing his crossbow at Ander once again. "You get the hell out of my house! If you take one more step, I swear I'll -"

Ander reached over and grabbed the crossbow out of Mateo's hand.

"Hey!"

"You know, I am getting awfully tired of you pointing this thing at me," Ander said. He considered crushing the weapon between his hands, but it seemed a shame to destroy such a clever contraption, so instead he snapped the bowstring in half with one hard tug of his finger. It made a rather satisfying 'toink!' sound, which did nothing to lessen Mateo's ire.

"You bastard! I'll kill you!" He made a grab for his crippled crossbow, and Ander didn't even try to keep it out of his reach. Without a string, the worst he could do was try and stab him with one of those stubby bolts, and Ander didn't think he'd be stupid enough to try something like that against an opponent whose reach was more than half his height.

Ander wouldn't let his guard down, though. If Mateo reacted that way over a simple bowstring, there was no telling what he might do if he found out that Ander had convinced Salem to call off the wedding. Of course, he had no intention of telling the little whelp any of that. He would find out soon enough.

Sarah sat down quietly in the middle of the bench, her hands folded in her lap. "If you'd just put that accursed thing away when I asked you, that wouldn't have happened," she said as Mateo inspected the damage done to his precious crossbow.

"This is nothing. I can restring this in half a second, and then you'll be sorry, Wolf!"

"Mateo," Sarah said, rubbing her forehead. "I swear to all the gods up in heaven that if I have to ask you to sit down one more time I will -"

"Fine!" Mateo grudgingly sat down next to her, his arms folded across his chest, the crossbow still clutched in one hand.

After only a moment's hesitation, Ander sat down on her other side, wondering if Sarah had chosen the spot in the middle purposefully to act as a barrier between them.

Ander expected her to start talking, but she didn't. He looked down at her hands and saw them nervously twisting the fabric of her dress; clockwise, counter clockwise, clockwise again, the tendons across her knuckles rising and falling with each twist.

"Kai?"

"Don't call her that," Mateo said spitefully.

"It's all right, Mat," Sarah said. "I'm just... trying to think. What I should say... where I should begin... what will happen after..."

"Maybe you should just answer his damn question and get it over with. Tell him he's wrong. Tell him you have no idea who his father is. Why the hell would you? Tell him to get out."

Sarah shook her head. "That's not true, Mat."

"What do you mean?"

"I was so stupid back then. I didn't know what I was doing."

"Mother? You're starting to alarm me..."

"It happened twenty-five summers ago. Me and your grandparents had a massive row, I can't even remember over what. Something stupid, I'm sure. Me and my parents lived far away on the outskirts of the village back then, practically in the Cora's shadow, and I would often go into the woods to get away from them."

Ander was surprised to hear her call the mountain by its Wolven name, but she continued before he could comment on it, and he didn't want to interrupt her.

"I'd usually never venture deeper than the first twenty trees or so, but on that day I was so angry that I just kept walking. I didn't even realise how deep I was going until I reached the foot of the mountain. I remember how I felt, walking along its curves. Sandwiched between the mountain on my left and the forest on my right, it was like I had discovered my own little niche where I didn't have to worry about my humdrum life. A place where I could go to dream the silly daydreams of a vixen who hasn't even entered her twentieth year yet. And then I found it, the gap in the mountain, cut so cleanly it was as if a giant had taken an axe to it. It might even be the same one you and Kiana came through, Ander."

That sent a chill down Ander's spine. The last time he went through that pass, he was barely conscious, teetering on the brink of death, his arms dripping blood with every mechanical step. Soon, he would have to walk through that pass yet again, bearing the scars of that night.

"You have to understand, I didn't intend to run away or leave my home. Nothing of the sort. I was just curious... I had no idea what lay beyond that dark wound in the mountain, and the thought of seeing a place no one else in my family had ever seen was like a Siren's call..."

And so Sarah began her story...