#Chapter 44 My mom is still alive?
Rachel POV
Bella & Rachel’s Apartnt
Paper surrounded us in piles stacked so high it was as if Jack and I were barricaded behind a paperwork partition. Only I didn’t feel safe behind the wall. All I felt was suffocated.
"We need to go over what we do know."
I looked at Jack, laying down the sheets I held, "Okay. I can go for a regrouping session. I need to get my head back on straight because honestly? I feel as if everything I’ve ever been told in my entire life has been a lie."
Nathan wanted to petition to join Full Moon Pack which was the ho pack of House Lewis. He offered the protection of his Alpha House to fight against the Alpha House claim House Wright of Moonrise Pack had on my child.
Neither house seed to have any physical ties to ; all the houses I had thought were my birthright also seed to have no real connection to which made an orphan in a way I’d never been before.
"Patrick Flores is not your biological father. You don’t share any blood with him. Ethan got the sample from his house. Our lab ran it. There’s nothing to put you and Patrick together as blood relations which ans your connection to his ho pack -Harvest Moon Pack- is nonexistent. You could pledge there, sure, but being a Harvester won’t protect you from either Full Moon or Moonrise."
I nodded my understanding. I was dazed from too much information, but I hadn’t gone stupid. I knew I wouldn’t gain anything by pledging to the pack where Patrick’s oga house originated.
All Harvesters were known for was their relentless pursuit of greed. I didn’t want anything to do with that on a personal level or a professional one. Their Alpha House wasn’t even large enough to get a seat on the Alpha Council.
"We know, for a fact now, Elena Campbell is your mother’s legal birth na. She was the only daughter of the Alpha House -House Campbell- of Moonglow Pack. They sit on the Alpha Council. I’m completely confused about their Alpha right now. He’s Richard Campbell who was born Richard Estes of House Estes. They are an Alpha House of a smaller pack under the control of Moonglow Pack. According to everything I’ve found? He married your mother, took her house na, and beca the Alpha by bloodright after their mating ceremony."
"So my mother had another husband before Patrick?"
I can’t imagine my mother getting a divorce. Her mating to Patrick was a nightmare, but she had been utterly devoted to him and he had cared for her in a way he could only care for his fated mate.
"That’s the thing---I can’t find where she divorced him."
"How did she marry Patrick if she was already married to this Richard? Are you saying her marriage to my father wasn’t legal?"
Jack shuffled through the papers in front of him until he found what he wanted and then he offered it to , as he explained, "No, no, no. See here? This is the matebond license. It’ cos with a bloodright petition which shows he entered into a one-way blood exchange where he was bled into House Campbell. There is no marriage license for Richard and Elena. They were mated in our courts, he was bled in to beco Alpha of her house, and she was issued a death record saying she died in a car accident."
I looked the form over and saw Richard Estes and his house titles listed out followed by a long litany of agreents which went with transferring power to a new Alpha. I got tired reading all the things he agreed to in order to take the Alpha seat of House Campbell. I was particularly struck by the fact he had to cede all connections to his ho house in order to beco Alpha of House Campbell.
"He ceded connections to House Estes. Does that an he can’t recognize his parents anymore?"
"That ans he can’t recognize any mbers of his birth family," Jack corrected, "If he sees them, he has to treat them as if they are strangers. He can show them respect since they’re an Alpha House, but he can’t call them by family titles or he will offend his new house, House Campbell."
"That sounds terrible," I admitted as I tried to imagine putting my family into the position of being strangers, "Does this an---he’s probably my father? Richard Campbell who used to be Richard Estes?"
"Yes. I filed for a DNA test through the Alpha Council, but his na is on your official -and original- birth record. There’s another strange thing going on with House Campbell. I don’t know how to explain this one---when were you born?"
I reeled off my birthdate without thinking too much about it. My child would be born in the winter. Would I have a baby before Christmas this year?
"Well, you were born in September and Richard Campbell issued a birth announcent in July of the sa year for another daughter Linda Campbell. The family calls her Lindy. She’s the heir to House Campbell. Her status as the heir of the house ans she’s the way to inherit the Alpha seat."
"How is that possible? Could my mother have been pregnant with twins? Is it possible to deliver one twin early then carry the other to term?"
I had been reading books about pregnancy since accepting I would have my baby. There were stories of won who had given birth under all sorts of circumstances. So won gave birth without ever having known they were pregnant; so mothers carried twins thinking they were having a single birth until suddenly they delivered two babies.
I’d never read of a woman giving birth to twins on separate dates months apart, but it seed as if it might be possible. Twins didn’t have to share the sa amniotic sac. They could develop wholly separate with their own support structures so if we weren’t identical, Linda and I could be twins though I couldn’t explain the two month gap between our births.
"Honestly? I’m not a dical guy. I don’t know. I do know your mother did not die in a car accident so the entire death record is falsified. I think they faked the girl too."
Jack looked anxious talking about it. He had developed stress lines around his eyes and his forehead seed permanently furrowed these days as he sifted through the legal nuances of my life.
I wanted to tell him he could stop, but I couldn’t lose his help. My baby needed whatever protection I could grant him or her. I would have to apply for a position with a pack before I gave birth or I would lose my child. I knew it as surely as I knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west.
"You think she wasn’t born because of the accident?"
"No. I think she isn’t your mother’s child at all. I think Richard got her sohow and switched her out for you because your mother left him for whatever reason she did."
Jack spread his hands helplessly because we had no idea why Mother left her family behind. There weren’t any helpful diaries or journals filled with her thoughts we could pour over. No one had been close to my mother while she was with Patrick and Patrick himself was a first-rate liar so nothing he said could be trusted.
"Could Patrick have had anything to do with my mother’s fake death record?"
Nodding, Jack agreed, "It’s very possible since he also has a fake death record for your mother only his is for Elena Flores since they were married in a human ceremony where she took his na."
"So my mother has died twice? Both tis the record fake?"
"Yes---and if I’m being really honest? I don’t think she’s dead at all. Rachel, I think your mother is still alive."
The floor seed to drop from under and I felt as if I were floating in a universe where the laws of gravity no longer applied. Dizziness swept over until I had to close my eyes to try to get myself under control again.
How many tis a day did I wish my mother were alive?
I couldn’t fathom a world in which my dream ca true and my mother was returned to .
There were so days when I woke up with the mory of her gentle smile as the only lasting remnant of a dream I had to wake from to live in a world where she was gone.
Ethan didn’t even rember Mother very well. He had been so young when she had died.
"I rember her being sick though. Jack, she was really, really sick. We had a hospice nurse. She died at ho. They took her body away in a---in a bag."
I felt sick thinking about it. I choked just saying the words.
Jack gave a concerned look as he almost apologized with his explanation.
"I think they faked it, Rachel. All of it. I don’t know why, but I really think your mother is still alive."
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