Mated to my Stepfather
Author
Daphne Anders
Reads
1.0M
Chapters
41
Ava, a twenty-year-old college student and half human, half werewolf hasn’t spoken to her mother in years. Ava’s mother’s latest husband, Alpha of Blackthorn pack, Lucas Blackthorn calls Ava one day with troubling news: her mother has died. But nothing prepares her for the truth that begins to unravel the moment she meets Lucas face to face. He’s her mate.
Difficult News
AVA
“This is Lucas Blackthorn.” The voice was smooth, rough, tense, but it ignited something inside me just by hearing it. I froze in place, my hand shaking as I held the phone against my ear.
I knew the name. Not well, but enough. My mother’s new husband. The man she married after disappearing, again, from my life. I had never spoken to him before and never met him in person, but in the most literal sense, he was my stepfather.
There was a breath on the other end of the line. Then, softly but firmly, he said, “I’m calling with…difficult news. Your mother passed away last night.”
The words didn’t register at first. They just sat there, shocking and silent. “She—what?”
“She died peacefully in her sleep.” His voice didn’t shake. It didn’t crack. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”
I stared blankly out the coffee shop window. The trees outside swayed gently in the wind, and students walked past in groups, laughing. But I was underwater.
Floating. No: drowning.
I hadn’t seen my mother in years. When I turned twenty last year, she didn’t even bother to call. And now she never would again.
“I thought you should know,” Lucas continued. “The funeral is tomorrow evening at the Blackthorn Pack house in northern Oregon. She’d want you to come.”
Pack house. The words echoed somewhere in the back of my mind, stirring up half-buried memories: of sharp teeth and soft howls, of the way my mother would stare at the moon sometimes like it was speaking only to her, of the life she chose over a life with me.
My voice came out stiff and unaffected, even though I was wrecked inside with feelings I couldn’t even comprehend. “Okay.”
“I can send someone for you, or give you the address if you’d prefer to come on your own.”
“I’ll drive,” I said.
“Very well. I’ll text you the coordinates.”
There was a long pause. I thought about hanging up but didn’t.
“She asked about you, near the end,” he said. “She hoped you’d come.”
I said nothing in response.
“I’ll let you go,” he said finally. “Safe travels, Ava.”
He hung up before I could think of something, anything, to say. I stared at my phone for a long time after.
***
I didn’t cry: not in the car, not while packing, not even while staring at the old photograph I kept at the bottom of my sock drawer, the one of her holding me as a baby, her face tired but bright, her wild golden hair tangled in the wind.
She’d been gone so long already. She used to say the wolf inside her was always louder than the world around her. That it pulled her away from the ordinary. That’s why she left my father; that’s why she left me.
I told myself for years it was all right, that I didn’t need her. But now, as I stared at the Oregon wilderness unfolding outside my windshield, I realized I hadn’t believed that. Not really. She was my mom.
I drove north for hours, farther into the wilderness and farther from my old life. Out of the city, away from everything familiar. The pine trees thickened, taller than they had any right to be.
The Blackthorn territory wasn’t listed on any GPS. I had to use the coordinates Lucas had texted, typing them in manually.
The road narrowed to gravel, then to dirt. Mist crept in through the trees. Moss hung from the branches.
By the time I pulled up to the towering gates, I let out a heavy breath. I stepped out of the car, gravel crunching under my black leather boots.
I didn’t know what I expected: maybe a gatekeeper, or a guard. Maybe even Lucas himself. But there was no one.
The gates creaked open as if responding to my presence. Automatically. Silently.
Beyond them, the road stretched upward through trees older than time itself. The forest loomed on both sides, vast and dense. The air was sharper here, and thinner. I could smell the pine on the breeze.
I followed the winding path until it opened into a clearing. And there it was. The Blackthorn Pack house.
It was more fortress than home. It rose from the earth like it had grown out of it: wood and stone, massive timber beams, arching rooftops with a thick-cut ridge.
I parked at the edge of the driveway and sat in the car for a full minute, heart hammering, breath unsteady. I was half-wolf, half-human, and at that moment I didn’t feel like I belonged to either side.
No one came out to greet me. No one even looked out a window. I felt like an intruder at my own mother’s funeral.
My fingers trembled as I grabbed my overnight bag and stepped into the dark night.
The front door loomed ahead, carved with symbols I didn’t understand. Spirals. Claws. Crescent moons. Wolves.
I raised a hand and knocked as loud as I could. Nothing.
I waited, then knocked again. Still no answer.
Then the door creaked open slightly, revealing the interior of the pack house: warm, silent, and unwelcoming.
I hesitated. Then stepped inside.
The scent hit me first. Pinewood, ash, fur. Old smoke. Wet earth. My mother’s scent lingering in the air.
The entryway was empty. Beyond it, a long hall stretched into view. Dark wooden floors, animal pelts on the walls, and tribal relics.
I clutched the strap of my overnight bag tighter and called out softly, “Hello?”
No answer. The silence was too complete. I didn’t know if I was welcome here.
A single note lay on the wooden table by the long staircase. My name was written on it in black ink.
Ava, your room is at the end of the hall. The funeral is at sundown tomorrow. Rest well.
No signature, but I knew who it was from. Lucas. My stepfather. My mother’s husband.
There were no photos of my mother on mantels or tables. There were no faces peeking from doorways. Only the sound of the wind against the windows and the darkness outside pressing against the light within.
I followed the hall to the last door, my boots echoing on the hardwood floor.
My room was simple: warm enough, equipped with a bed, a wooden dresser, and a small window that overlooked the endless tree line. Moonlight spilled across the bedding.
I set my bag down but didn’t sit. I stood there for a long time, arms wrapped around myself, staring at nothing.
This place wasn’t home. It wasn’t grief, not exactly, that filled me. It was the hollow ache of something unresolved. A wound that had never really healed.
I didn’t know who my mother had been in her final years. I didn’t know why she’d stayed away, why she hadn’t called, why she’d built a life without me.
But I was here now. And tomorrow, I’d bury her in a place I’d never been, among wolves I’d never known.
I hadn’t yet seen Lucas. It struck me as odd, considering he had invited me here and was supposed to be my stepfather, but my mother had mentioned that he was the leader of the Blackthorn Pack, and I was sure he had responsibilities of his own to handle.
It was seven o’clock in the evening, and I was lying in bed, feeling every bit the half-breed I was.
I didn’t know how to be a wolf. I wasn’t accustomed to a pack house, and the few times I had tried to shift, I was helpless. I couldn’t even bring my wolf fully forward. I was more human than anything else, even though my wolf stirred inside me.
Every creak of the old pack house seemed magnified in the dark. The wind scraped against the wooden walls like it had claws, and the distant howl of wolves, real wolves, not half-breeds like me, pierced the night.
I lay on the unfamiliar bed with eyes wide open as the quilt twisted around my legs.
Part of me wanted to believe that I was just tired, just disoriented. But under my skin, something hummed restlessly. It was a low thrum in my blood that had nothing to do with caffeine, but perhaps had to do with something else.
It was the land. The air. The silence. It all felt…expectant.
I rolled over, hugging a pillow to my chest and trying not to think about the scent that still clung to the room. Her scent. My mother’s. Elle.
Even just thinking her name tasted like regret.
She always disappeared and she always came back thinner, quieter, with eyes a little more distant. She was never built for normalcy, and certainly not built for motherhood.
My dad once said she had a storm in her soul: that she never stayed in one place because she wasn’t meant to. He said it gently, like it was a kindness. But it didn’t feel kind. It felt like abandonment.
My stomach growled loudly as I rolled onto my side. I hadn’t eaten since that morning, before the call.
Before the world tilted.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes, hoping the ache would dull. It didn’t.
There was a soft knock on the door, and I jumped in response. The door creaked open an inch, and I caught the glint of a tray.
Then a voice, low, velvet-edged, broke the silence. It was him. “May I come in?” Then the same scent from earlier drifted into the room, sharp and intoxicating, and made my pulse spike.
Pinewood. Ash. Fur. Old smoke. Wet earth.
My face warped in confusion as I lifted my nose to the air and was met with Lucas’s steady gaze. And I knew it then. The scent belonged to him.
My mother’s husband. My stepfather.
Lucas.
