Saviour

Chapter Eighteen

EIGHTEEN

    
     My brain processed the words slowly, as if I had just woken up from a hundred year long sleep.

There were a few times in my existence now where I can recall exactly the moment I felt as though my life had flipped upside down with unforeseen revelations.

"You're my what now?" My voice was verging on shrill with the news Bee had just hit me with.

She looked a little sheepish at the news she had just practically slapped me with. There were now so many questions that whirled through my mind, one after the other.

Why had I never met her? I mean, surely if she was a witch and also my grandmother, she would have been able to look past the prejudice of the coven and the pack for our family.

Yet, here we were.

My mother had never spoken of her; and I swore I had never been to Astoria in my life... and yet, for some reason I felt as though this little house was as familiar as the pack house back home.

"I don't understand." My eyes drifted away from her pleading ones and I focussed on the room around me. It definitely looked like it had recently been used, so Bee must still be a practicing witch. And that also meant that I couldn't trust her; Grandmother or not.

The candles that I was sure never stopped burning had long ago created mounds and puddles of melted wax, adding to the effect that my grandmother was a witch.

"How do I know that you're not lying?" I asked her skeptically. The more that my mind mulled this situation over, the more that it seemed unlikely that Bee was actually my grandmother.

It wasn't normal for Werewolves and witches to be so closely related these days. On one hand, it would explain why my mother and I were so much stronger in our magic than most pack doctors. On the other, that would mean that I was a quarter witch.

Bee sighed, "I know this is hard for you, Halle. And I know what is at stake here for your family."

Reminded of the situation we were in because of a coven she still belonged to, I glared harshly at her. She wasn't my family. My mother, father, and all of my pack members were. Both mine and Greyson's.

"Tell me what happened between you and my mother." I all but demanded, trying to keep the bitterness out of my tone. I was trying very hard to be objective in a difficult situation; something my father had hounded into my head in the years of training I had done with him.

Bee sighed as she slowly walked around the pentagram-like symbol that had been scrawled onto the floor.

"It all started a long time ago. It was unheard of for Witches and Werewolves to be together in those times... and we could be burned at the stake for it depending on the mood of our coven leader."

I stared at her with wide eyes. "That's barbaric." I practically growled out.

She nodded with sad eyes. "I lost many friends and family back then. In those days, the Witch population was thriving. They didn't see the problem with putting people to death simply because they could. It wasn't until our birth rates dropped dramatically and the coven began to struggle to survive that the hangings, beheadings, and being burnt at the stake was outlawed."

"Thank god it was." I shivered, thinking about the horrible things they had gone through.

She nodded sadly, "That doesn't mean it stopped though, child. It was just conducted in secret instead of out in the open." Bee seemed to shudder visibly at the memories.