Maria entered the room and, noticing Father, approached him without the slightest hesitation, knelt beside him, and ruffled Kostya's furry head as if she had done it a hundred times before.
"Well, you've certainly made a mess here."
Vladimir visibly relaxed at the sight of her and slid down the wall to the floor, exhausted. With one hand, he unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, as if the tension made it hard to breathe.
"Maria, what took you so long?" he muttered with some irritation after catching his breath, but Mother only waved him off, continuing to look at Father with a strange tenderness.
"The road from Rostov to Xerton isn't exactly pleasant, you know. With your wealth, you could've sent a helicopter."
Vladimir gave a nervous chuckle.
"This family already attracts far too much attention, even compared to the families of wealthy oil businessmen who gladly moved here for the sake of their precious children and a handful of promises."
"Well, that answers who placed the oath on Max," Stas concluded, tensing even more after Maria's arrival.
"Who?" I asked in complete confusion, and Stanislav gave a short nod toward Mother.
"Maria, of course."
"Long time no see, darling," purred the woman whose voice was painfully familiar to me, though now I barely recognized Maria. She looked exactly the same as the last time we met, except her tear-streaked face had noticeably brightened, and the dark circles under her eyes were hidden beneath a thick layer of foundation.
What frightened me was the deliberate calm with which she stroked the head of the huge wolf now lying obediently before her, seeming completely relaxed under her gentle fingers. Father looked nothing like the animals I had seen before in the kennels. Was this what a fully realized werewolf looked like—one who knew how to control his strength?
I knew in my head, from talks with Kostya, that Maria understood well the difficult fate and burden Father carried with his head held high for the good of society, refusing to believe that being a werewolf was a life sentence. Yet seeing, in person, how calm and almost proprietorially she behaved around him left an indelible impression—one that shook my already fragile inner world, which still hadn't found peace since our move.
"Mom, what are you doing here?"
"Answering for past mistakes. I never should have let you go to Xerton, but what's done can't be undone. And now I have to pay for it." Maria suddenly grabbed the wolf by the scruff like a misbehaving pup. "And you should've called the moment you realized the seal was weakening!"
The werewolf whimpered guiltily. His paws carried his body softly closer to Maria. A pink tongue appeared, sliding along the edge of Mother's free hand.
"Don't butter me up!"
"What seal?" I asked, and the black wolf, like a talkative husky, began making inarticulate noises that, in his opinion, probably explained everything perfectly.
"Wouldn't you rather, you know, turn back to normal first and then talk?" I tried to ask as gently as possible, but from the sidelong, disapproving glare the massive wolf gave me, I understood I had failed.
Nevertheless, a series of small cracks sounded, and Father's body began to shrink, increasingly taking on the shape of a man. His fur, as if in reverse playback, retreated piece by piece under his skin, and I wondered whether that covering always lay beneath, waiting for its moment, or whether it simply vanished as if it had never been there. So many questions about the creature I was myself—yet so few answers.
"Your mother," Father began when Maria draped a jacket over his shoulders and handed him pants so he could dress, "tried to make sure the fate of a werewolf would never touch you. As we can see now, she didn't have much success."
Maria pressed her lips in displeasure.
"Actually, I did. For seventeen years, the seal kept the wolf in check, and we'd already let our guard down. There was no hint that the spirit would surface anytime soon—but the moment we let you go back to that cursed city, everything went downhill. The seal's been broken—and so brutally at that!"
Mother gave me a critical once-over from head to toe.
"Quite the unexpected style change." She gestured toward my entire outfit, and I hurried to explain, realizing how strange it must seem to her after so many years to see me in brand-new, stylish clothes, knowing my devotion to second-hand finds and practical choices.
"It's not mine. I had to borrow it from the girls."
"It suits you very well." Her lips curved into a tender smile, but only for a moment. Very soon her brow furrowed, and her gaze grew intense, as if she were looking right through me and seeing something hidden from everyone else's eyes.
"You've certainly caused quite a stir here," Maria exhaled, then came closer to me and, with a familiar gesture, tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. Her fingertips brushed my cheek as she did it, and I realized I felt much calmer with both my parents nearby.
"Have you had any visions yet?"
"More like very strange dreams."
"Has anyone tried to speak to you in them?"
On the one hand, I wanted to tell Maria everything—something told me that Mother was surely capable of helping—but under the Smirnovs' roof, I felt constrained. It was unpleasant to realize that the silence settling in the room was inevitably tied to the fact that everyone present had turned into a pair of ears, catching every word on the fly. I had never liked being the center of attention, and moreover, I had never tried to change that, so my whole body wanted to shrink, as if that way the piercing gazes would have a harder time latching onto the small me standing in the middle of the room.
"Yes. I call her Darkness. Though it turns out 'she' is actually a 'he,' and today Kaandor started speaking to me even while I was awake."
Mother's fingers tightened on my shoulder.