#Chapter 245: Welcome Home

Agnes I hadn’t been here in years. Eight years, to be exact. I hadn’t set foot on the Blake estate since I had been a lonely, frightened, grieving young mother who just wanted to find her daughter. Wolfless, childless… Just less. Lesser than Ava. Lesser than my stepmother. What really hurt was that the estate looked almost completely different. Once, it had been a magnificent structure of red bricks and climbing ivy, a testament to my family’s ancient heritage, passed down through the generations. Now, it looked like every other fucking cookie cutter mcmansion out there. My stepmother, it seemed, had erased everyone who came before her. She’d cut down my mother’s well-loved flower gardens, replacing them with perfectly manicured grass. She had removed the painted shutters, switched out the stained glass windows with cheap plastic. The brick had been covered with white siding, and the old ceramic roof replaced with dark gray shingles. I didn’t even want to