"What?" I squeaked the word out between hearty laughs. My shoulders pitched so hard, my breasts jiggled and elbows bounced into my mattress.
"You. Are. A. Werewolf." She spoke each word slowly and deliberately, as if enunciating each helped me absorb them more effectively.
Her efforts fell on deaf ears, absorbed into the belly-aching laughs that rolled out of me one after another. Anna's unamused expression blurred as my eyes watered. I squeezed them closed, my torso hitching as my laughs pitched higher into hysterical squeaks.
"That that's hilarious," I choked out with a gasp. As my shoulders heaved and lungs burned, my stomach curled inward and spine rounded. My knees tucked, I was one round of laughter away from falling off my bed.
They're joking.
A sharp pain stitched in my right side, jolting my eyes open. I took a few deep breaths to recover my oxygen level.
They have to be joking.
My knee-jerk reaction was that I needed to join in on the joke. "Like in the movies?" I tossed out. "Watch out for a full moon? Hide your silver?"
"It's not like that," Elena spoke up, her eyes serious as stone. "I'll help you understand the best I can."
Hearing her soft, almost angelic voice, my eyes widened then narrowed as suspicion pitted itself in my stomach. Neither showed any amount of amusement or teasing manner in their expressions; they gazed back at me with eyes set and mouths firm, but jaws relaxed.
They look... completely serious.
As their seriousness penetrated and dissolved my laughter, a shudder trickled down my spine. Silence weighed down on me as I sat up straighter and mouth gaped. "Are you serious? What about the mafia? The pharmaceutical company's drug front?"
The more I spoke, the more I sounded like the ridiculous one. My cheeks cooled and skin tingled, like the blood drained out.
"Mafia?" Elena's furrowed eyes shifted to Anna's.
"Zira," the condescension in Anna's voice was so thick that the shudder lifted up between my shoulders. "Your father's company makes medicines for the country."
My laughs dried up in the back of my throat. "There's no such thing as werewolves."
Unlike diabetes.
Which, since I was thirteen until now, I was told I had. I believed I had it, even from the simple fact I had no other reason to believe otherwise.
"Have you ever known your father to joke?" Anna crossed her arms over her chest.
She has a point.
"No." I looked down at my hands and clutched them together. "So... I don't have diabetes?"
How is that possible? Why all the bloodwork, the tests?
My blood chilled at the thought of any worse conditions. Goosebumps raised on my forearms as I hugged them around my stomach, which rolled with nausea.
"No." Her mouth tugged into a firm line. "The injections were to delay your natural cycle from starting."
Anna's words felt like a bucket of ice water tossed onto me. Any lingering remnants of my laughs dried up in the back of my throat.
"What... Why?" My wide eyes stared at her so long that the edges stung with dryness. I studied every inch of Anna, every gray hair perfectly pulled into her bun, crisp corners of her nursing uniform, fine lines etching the corners of her mouth and eyes whether she smiled or not.
Realizing I studied a complete stranger chilled right into my bones. Trembles vibrated my lower lip and my breath hitched.
How could this woman, who I've known since I couldn't remember not knowing her, willingly manipulate my body daily like this?
And what kind of father would instruct her to do that?
My brain had a hard time wrapping itself around this idea. Physical manipulation of my body for God knows what purpose seemed so cruel that the idea was incomprehensible.
As if teenage hormones on their own aren't bad enough.
A slow glow sparked inside the chill that had taken over my body. My blood surged faster in my veins, warming my body with an internal rage that simmered the longer I sat, hugging myself. I drew down my shoulders and, by the time my eyes lifted, a hardened glare burned out of them. Anna stood but Elena's lips twitched, puckering inward.
"Normally, werewolves first shift at fourteen, after the onset of menses." Heat crept into my cheeks at the antiquated word. "Thanks to your father, your onset was... delayed."
Tightness ticked my jaw but my voice came out in a strangled squeak, "How? Why?"
"For your protection," was all she replied. Her mouth pulled into a tighter line, like a physical barrier of information that hung in her dilating pupils.
She could not, or at least would not, share any further explanation. Whatever secrets she held in that vault of a mind, her mouth kept effectively sealed shut. The realization sunk like a weight into my stomach. My arms still hugging my stomach, I coiled my hands into tight fists.
My protection? Against who? Or what?
I knew of two kinds of protection, physical protection against a dangerous threat, or self-preservation like how parents withheld information from a child they felt was too young to comprehend the gravity of the information.
Given those definitions, I couldn't understand how this 'protection' fell under either category.
Feels more like lying to me about my own body.
The personal violation pricked hot tears into my eyes, which I blinked until my lashes clumped.
My reactions elicited none further than Anna's emotionless tone, "You would not have been able to select a mate until you were eighteen anyway, so your father thought it best to delay the transformation until as late as possible."
Father knows best...
I gazed at her until her impassive expression blurred under hot tears that rose in my eyes. I had no understanding about any of what she spoke about. A flicker of doubt surged a random thought into existence, almost as if my mind hadn't thought it up.
Whatever was in that syringe must have been manufactured in his labs.
"So... I don't have diabetes?" I blinked at my supposed nurse caretaker.
My repeated question seemed like a silly point given the larger, unexplained circumstances that I assumed were related to the heaviness hanging in Elena's sympathetic eyes. At this moment, I couldn't get past that minute issue since Anna jammed those needles into me for false reasons... for years.
Mentally, I wasn't capable of processing the possible reasons behind that simple action.