Chapter 180: Poached for Profit
Moana
“That’s not all,” Olivia said, looking at me with a sickening combination of sadness and concern on her face that only filled me with dread.
I had already just read that a woman — who was likely Ethan’s mother, judging from the information in the newspaper article — had died under mysterious circumstances around the Morgan family. Not only that, but I had discovered that it was very likely that Edrick had taken my wolf tooth and a lock of my hair to a witch, and he was now putting some sort of potion in my morning coffee.
I couldn’t fathom why he would want to do that, but now that I had read the newspaper article about Ethan’s mother, I was beginning to wonder if that poor woman had met a fate that I was bound to meet if I continued being poisoned.
And now, before I could even process all of this, Olivia was saying that she had something else to reveal to me, as though there was even possibly anything else that could add another layer to this twisted mess.
“W-What else is there?” I whispered, my voice shaking just as much as my hands.
Olivia, with a sigh, reached into her purse again and retrieved something else. It was another folded piece of paper. She hesitated with it in her hands, then looked up at me. “Can I see the tooth again?” she asked.
I froze for a moment, then nodded and handed it back to her. As I did, she opened the folded piece of paper to reveal what looked to be a page ripped out of a book. She put both of the objects in the center of the table. The page had an illustration of a wolf tooth on it, with text all around. Immediately, I could see two words that stuck out to me: Golden Wolf. And now that my own wolf tooth was laying next to the illustration, they looked eerily similar.
“You’re the Golden Wolf, Moana,” Olivia said. She was whispering now, as though she didn’t want anyone to overhear a single word of what she was saying. It instantly transported me back to the night that Ethan told me about the story of the Golden Wolf, and how people would hunt the Golden Wolf if it was real.
But that was just a fairytale.
I let out a wry chuckle and shook my head. “Very funny,” I replied, sitting back in my chair. “But I know that that’s just a story for kids.”
Olivia just stared back at me with a serious expression on her face. My smile slowly faded, and my eyes started to widen.
“It’s true,” she said, pushing the illustration a little closer to me and tapping on a specific paragraph. “Look here. ‘The Golden Wolf will manifest as a pure soul who is thought to be human. They will possess a single tooth, the only link to their true lineage.’ That’s you, Moana. Everything that you told me points to this. And the tooth that you have… Have you looked at it in the moonlight, by any chance?”
I shook my head, still too shocked to speak.
“Try it tonight,” Olivia said quietly. “It’ll glow a golden color, but only in the moonlight. I promise you, it’s true.”
I didn’t know what to say. All along, I thought that this was nothing but a fairytale meant to entertain kids, not a true story. And yet, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. And it made me wonder…
“Do you think that Edrick knows?” I whispered.
Olivia nodded slowly. “I think so,” she replied. “He may have known from the beginning. For all we know, he knew that you were the Golden Wolf when he met you, and that was why he got you pregnant. It all lines up too perfectly with his agenda to produce the best heirs possible. How did you two meet, anyway?”
“Um… I was just walking down the street, and we ran into each other,” I said, not wanting to go into the full details of our fateful encounter.
“And you think that that was just pure coincidence, for you to just randomly run into an extremely famous Alpha CEO in the middle of the street one day?” Olivia said.
My eyes widened. “But I think Edrick is my mate,” I replied. “I thought that was why. I thought it was fate.”
Olivia shrugged and leaned back in her chair. “Maybe. But do you know for certain that he’s your mate, or is that just what he told you?”
Olivia’s words made me think deeply. I had thought that he was my mate, and my wolf seemed to think so as well, but then again… With the way that my wolf had been so sleepy lately, I had absolutely no way of knowing now. For all I knew, Edrick was giving me potions to hide the fact that he wasn’t my mate.
“I… I don’t know,” I whispered, feeling hot tears beginning to prick at the backs of my eyes. “I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore.”
With a sigh, Olivia reached across the table again and squeezed my hand once more. When I looked up at her, I could see a soft, gentle expression on her pretty face. “That was how I felt, too,” she said quietly. “For months, I had no idea what to think or who to trust. But you can trust me. And I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
I had never thought that Edrick would hurt me, but now I wasn’t so sure. What if he just planned on producing a child of the Golden Wolf, and then he was going to discard me in the same way that his father had discarded Ethan’s mother? What if the potions would keep me from being able to fight back and defend myself?
Finally, I looked back at Olivia with tears in my eyes.
“Thank you for telling me the truth,” I whispered.
Olivia nodded, still holding my hand across the table. “If you ever want to escape,” she said, “I’m just a phone call away. I can get you out of there.”
…
Olivia and I finished our conversation and parted ways. She left first, and as I watched her walk down the street through the window of the coffee shop, I couldn’t help but think that maybe I should take her up on her offer.
All of the signs right at that moment pointed to Edrick being up to something sinister. Olivia was right; my first encounter with Edrick had been too perfect, almost as though it was planned. And although I had been beginning to think that it was fate bringing two mates together, I was beginning to think otherwise now.
However, I needed more evidence first before I jumped into anything. I needed to know for sure that Edrick was up to something before I potentially made a mistake by trusting the wrong person.
But I did know one thing for sure: if I decided to take Olivia up on her offer and run away, I was going to bring Ella along with me so that I could reunite mother and daughter once more.
