I stood back and waited for Daddy to explode, but to my surprise, it was Mama that went off. “What do you mean you’re dating a vampire?”
I gaped at her. She was glancing nervously at Daddy. And I realized, she was pretending not to know about it. To save her own skin, she was willing to blatantly lie. And that was the moment I knew, my relationship with my mother probably wasn’t salvageable. I had to leave. And Mama would have to live with her lies and the consequences. I couldn’t try to protect her anymore.
“That’s right, I’m dating a vampire. A really old one,” I said. “And while we’re at it, are you the one who destroyed Alex’s music school?”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” Mama demanded. She turned to Daddy. “I told you. I told you this would happen. First, Jolene marries a human and then she moved off of packlands to live in that house next to the vampire lady. I told you where that would lead, but no, you spoil that girl! And this is where it leads. The whole pack is ruined.”
“Nothing is ruined,” I told her.
“Well, don’t come crying to me when he bites you and leaves you for dead!” she cried.
“No problem,” I said, starting towards the door.
Daddy caught me by the arm and tried to drag me back from the door. “All you had to do was go along, date Donnie. Even you shouldn’t be able to mess that up.”
“Also, why do you keep saying ‘even you?’” I asked, shrugging him off. “By the way, Donnie is not at all interested in me. He just got married to a very nice mountain lion shifter and they’re ecstatic.”
“The whole world’s gone crazy,” Mama whispered. “But that’s still not as bad as dating a vampire.”
“What’s so wrong with dating a vampire?”
Mama pulled a disgusted face. “They’re unnatural and wrong!”
“We’re unnatural and wrong! I don’t know if you know this, but most people can’t turn into giant wolves!”
“We don’t hurt people!” Daddy yelled.
“Last March Madness, you waited outside an Applebee’s and bit a U of L fan on the ass because he cheered too loud,” I countered.
“This isn’t about me, it’s about you and your ungrateful, lying ways,” he said, he tried to shove me back towards my room, but I planted my feet. “I won’t let you do this. I will lock you in this house until you come to your senses.”
“Is that really how you want to live? Would you really rather have me trapped in your house, instead of just living on my own?” I finished. “Is that really what you want?”
“You know what happened to me when I left,” Daddy insisted. “You know how we were barely accepted back and now you want to put us in danger again? We could get kicked off the packlands right along with you.”
“Uncle Lonnie would never do that to you. As long as you want to stay, you know he’ll let you.”
“Don’t act like I should be grateful for that. I have a right to be here!” Daddy thundered.
“Then why did you leave?” I asked.
“Because I wanted to see what was out there!” he cried. “It was something I just had to do. I was always going to come back. They knew that. I should have been able to do what I wanted, as the Alpha. They should have held my place.”
I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. I may not have been the biggest supporter of pack structure and life, but even I knew that’s not the way it worked.
“And when I came back, they told me I could pick any spot I wanted for our place. Like I would want any place but the farmhouse. I didn’t want to wake up every morning and see what I should have had.”
“I thought they gave you this spot on the outside of the compound,” I said carefully. “That’s what you always told me!”
“No!” he yelled. “I wanted to be as far away from my brother as I could get! I didn’t need his charity!”
My whole life, I’d thought that my parents had been ostracized by the family, that my being born had somehow led to their marriage, their punishment, their unhappiness. They’d told me that they’d been forced to take this spot as a reminder that they were barely accepted back into the fold. But my father had