Chapter 156

BELLA’S POV I had never felt such a potent mix of emotions that threatened to sweep me off my feet and drown me. Looking at the man—at the werewolf—before me, I couldn’t understand how I wanted to slit his throat and kiss him at the same time. When my mother married my stepfather, I asked her countlessly how she could stand being married to a werewolf, a creature that should only have existed in fantasy novels and movies. She’d told me simply that he was her mate. It made even less sense to me. Were werewolves in such short supply that they needed to find their mates among humans? I didn’t wholly approve of their union. But I saw how happy my stepfather made my mother, so I swallowed my reservations. And when Ceecee was born… Well, I figured werewolves weren’t so bad after all. That was until… An enraged scream tore out of me, and I flipped the table next to me, sending all the tools and bottles shattering to the floor. The memory of what had been done to me, the torture I had suffered