Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

DAKOTA

T he door to her childhood home swung open with an eerie silence that pricked at Dakota’s skin. She stepped over the threshold, half-expecting to be ambushed by the past or accosted by the present—by someone, anyone telling them they were trespassers in a place she had once belonged. But there was nothing. Only the stillness of the old walls and the faint whisper of history hanging in the air like the remnants of a long-forgotten perfume.

"Too quiet," she murmured, her voice barely rising above the sound of their careful footsteps.

"Like the calm before the storm," Landon agreed, his presence a reassuring warmth at her back.

Dakota led the way, navigating through the dimly lit hallway, each step deliberate, as if the wooden floors might give away more than just the creak of aged timber. The house felt like a hollow shell, its heartbeat lost to time and conflict, leaving behind only the echoes of what used to be.

They made their way to the basement, where shadows clung to corners and the musty scent of disuse permeated the cool air. There, shrouded in darkness and dust, was her grandfather's trunk. Its surface was etched with scratches and scars—evidence of secrets it had kept and journeys it had endured.

"Let's get this upstairs," Dakota said, her words slicing through the heavy silence.

Together, they hoisted the trunk, the weight of it less burdensome than the weight of her swirling thoughts. The ascent back to the main floor was punctuated by the soft grunts of effort and the shuffle of their feet.

"Should we put this in the truck?" Landon asked when they set the trunk down with a thud that seemed too loud in the silent house.

"Good idea. We might need to leave in a hurry," Dakota replied, the reality of their situation settling on her.

As Landon opened the front door to clear a path to the vehicle parked outside, a chill wind whisked inside, carrying with it the scent of imminent rain and the distant rumble of thunder—a prelude to the tempest that was surely on its way. Dakota couldn't shake the feeling that this was more than just a retrieval mission; it felt more like a confrontation with her past that she needed to resolve before moving forward.

Their movements were swift but calculated, ensuring the trunk was securely placed in the back of the truck, hidden under a tarp that flapped slightly in the growing wind. The sky had turned steel-gray, clouds roiling above like an omen.

"Whatever comes next," Landon said, his voice low and steady, "you need to remember you are not alone. I’d like to think that your grandfather sent you to us."

Dakota met his gaze, the intensity of his eyes grounding her amidst the storm of uncertainties. She nodded and knew that for the first time since her grandfather had died, she wasn’t alone. She realized that even when she’d been with her ex-fiancé, she had never felt as though he had her back. She wondered if somehow, fate hadn’t sent her to Copper Canyon Ranch and to those who lived there.

Back inside the house, with the trunk safely stowed away, they were ready to face whatever lay waiting within these walls.

Dakota's boots moved across the hardwood floor, her steps as stealthy as a wolf's prowl. The shadows of the house clung to her like cobwebs as she made her way to her grandfather's study, which held memories and secrets of a happier time. Landon followed close behind, his presence both a comfort and a reminder of the peril that might be waiting for them.

The study door creaked open, and Dakota hesitated on the threshold. The light spilled through the window, bathing the room in a warm glow that seemed to cast everything in a different light. She could feel the presence of her grandfather as if he was reminding her that she belonged here. She could almost hear the echo of his voice, the rustling of papers, the tap-tap-tapping on the keys of his old typewriter that he preferred over any electronic device. He’d had a computer, but usually used his trusty typewriter.

"Let's start with the desk," she suggested, her tone betraying none of the emotion that stirred within her. "My grandfather kept all his important documents in there."

Landon nodded, his hands already delving into drawers and rifling through files. Dakota joined him, sifting through stacks of papers, searching for something—anything—that might lead them closer to the truth of her heritage. But it was clear her ex had rummaged through the papers, leaving a trail of disruption in his wake.

"Damn him," Dakota muttered under her breath, her fingers brushing over a leather-bound ledger that seemed out of place amidst the disorder. She flipped through it, finding nothing but numbers and dates, the mundane residue of her grandfather’s financial affairs.

"Over here," Landon called, holding up an ornate key he'd found tucked away in a false bottom of a drawer. "Looks like it could be for a safe or a lockbox."

"Keep it. We might need it later," she said, her mind racing with possibilities.

Dakota's gaze landed on the computer sitting on the desk, its screen as black as the night outside. A sense of urgency gripped her; time was not their ally. She reached for the power button, and the machine hummed to life, rousing from its slumber with an electronic whir.

"Come on, come on," she murmured impatiently as the login screen appeared.

Her fingers tapped out her grandfather's password, but the computer rebuffed her with a cold denial. A knot tightened in her stomach. If not the familiar password, then what?

She closed her eyes, summoning memories of her ex, his habits, his quirks. Her fingers moved again, tracing patterns of association and shared history. On the third attempt, she held her breath, watching as the screen blinked?—

Access granted.

A mix of triumph and trepidation surged through Dakota. The digital landscape before her was now an open book, yet the words it contained could rewrite her entire existence.

"Got it," she said, more to herself than to Landon. Her heart thudded unevenly as she navigated through folders and files, each click a step deeper into the unknown.

"Anything?" Landon's voice was a tether back to reality, his warm breath ghosting over her shoulder as he leaned in to see the screen.

"Still looking," she replied, her voice barely above a whisper. Her search was methodical, a hunter tracking her prey through the dense underbrush of data.

And then, she found it—a folder cryptically labeled 'Legacy'. Dakota's finger hovered over the mouse, as if the weight of centuries were bearing down upon her. With a click, she opened the door to the past, and the secrets of her bloodline began to spill forth like whispers from the shadows.

The cursor blinked expectantly, a silent companion in the dimly lit study as Dakota scanned through the digital maze of her family's legacy. The room held its breath, walls lined with leather-bound secrets and dusty tomes that told of ancient times and hidden truths. A sliver of moonlight snuck through a crack in the curtains, casting its glow over the mahogany desk.

"Here," she murmured, her fingers pausing over a folder marked with a depiction of a very officious-looking seal. She clicked, and what appeared to be her family tree unfurled across the screen like an old map charting the course of her bloodline. Each branch was meticulously detailed, names and dates etched in virtual ink, but it was the divergence several generations back that snagged her attention—a split from a greater lineage that seemed to pulse with a significance she couldn't yet grasp.

"Look at this." Her voice was hushed as if afraid to disturb the past, and Landon leaned closer, his presence a comforting warmth at her side.

"Your family line... it's like it's been cleaved in two," he observed, his deep voice laced with wonder. His finger traced the point of division on the screen, lingering on the space where history had forked into obscurity.

Dakota nodded, swallowing the tightness in her throat as she opened another document. The scanned pages of a journal appeared, filled with scratchy handwriting that curled around the edges of the paper like vines. She squinted, decoding the words that spoke of banishment and forbidden love, of a great, great grandfather who cast out his own flesh and blood for uniting with a woman cloaked in the whispers of witchcraft.

"Other supernatural beings..." she read aloud, the words tasting strange on her tongue. There was a chill that danced down her spine, a realization that her heritage might be more entwined with the paranormal than she ever imagined. She looked up at Landon. "Forbidden?"

He nodded. “Very. If your ancestors were wolf-shifters, or shifters of any kind, taking a witch to mate would have been forbidden.”

“By who?” she asked.

Landon grinned. “Who knows? It’s just one of those things.”

"Well, it looks like it was very forbidden," Dakota confirmed, her gaze still locked on the journal's faded script. Ancestors who shunned the mystical, who rejected the very essence of what she might be—it painted a picture of a family torn apart by fear and misunderstanding.

She felt Landon's hand brush against hers, a silent gesture of solidarity as they stood on the precipice of discovery. With each document, each piece of history unearthed, they were peeling back layers of a curse that had shadowed her lineage for far too long. They turned back to the glowing screen, where the whispers of the past beckoned.

Dakota's fingers trembled as they traced the lineage on the screen, following the line that diverged sharply from her own. The silence of the room was thick, punctuated only by the soft hum of the computer and the distant howl of a coyote under the waning moon. Landon leaned in close, his warmth at her side both comforting and electric as they delved further into the arcane history.

"Here," she whispered, clicking on a faded image that seemed to pulse with an energy of its own. It was another page from the journal, the handwriting more agitated here, as if inscribed by a hand gripped with fury or fear—or perhaps both. "This must be it."

The text was cryptic, words skirting around a straightforward description. It appeared to be a curse, not overly specific but suffused with dark intent, woven into the bitterness of exile. Dakota read aloud, her voice a hushed echo in the study, "And so shall the line of my kin be shrouded from their truth, their wolfish hearts concealed by the veil of my ire, forevermore hidden..."

Landon's hand found her shoulder, squeezing gently. "A curse?" she murmured. "She cursed them because they cast her out?"

“Wolves don’t do well on our own. I know people talk about the ‘lone wolf,’ but within our community, those who can’t get along and aren’t committed to the safety of the pack as a whole are a danger to the pack and are cast out. I know it sounds harsh, but it is the way our kind and those of our purebred brethren have survived.

"More than just the ones who banished them," Dakota corrected, leaning into Landon's touch unconsciously, "but their descendants. Me." Her heart pounded like a drumbeat, a rhythm that seemed to carry the weight of centuries.

"Until one of us is accepted by her kind..." Landon trailed off, the implication dawning on him as well. There was a gravity to his presence, a resonance that filled the space between them with unspoken understanding.

"Accepted by witches, or something else supernatural?" Dakota pondered, her mind racing as she connected the dots. Pieces of her past started to click into place, a mosaic forming from fragments she'd never known were part of a larger whole.

"Or wolves," Landon said softly, his breath warm against her ear. "Your great, great grandfather might have been more than just a man with a disdain for witchcraft."

Dakota stared at the screen, the family tree that now seemed to contain more than mere names. It held secrets, identities lost to time and magic. "Are you saying he was a wolf-shifter?" she breathed.

“That would be my guess.”

"And if he was... then I am, too."

He nodded; the stillness of the house seemed to press in around them, the shadows deepening as though reacting to the unveiling of ancient truths. The air itself felt charged, waiting for something momentous to occur.

"Hidden from you by a curse," Landon said, his tone laced with wonder and a tinge of sorrow for the years she had lived in ignorance.

"Until now," Dakota mused, her mind reeling with the implications. The pieces of her identity, once jagged and disjointed, began to form a cohesive whole. The curse was the missing link, the final clue that explained the yearning she felt when the moon was full, the instincts that seemed to guide her without reason.

Dakota's fingers trembled as they hovered over the keyboard, the soft glow of the computer screen casting an otherworldly light in the dim room. Her heart thrummed a rapid rhythm, echoing the suspense that filled every crevice of her grandfather's study.

"Until now," Landon repeated; his voice broke through the silence, deep and resonant.

She turned slowly to face him, the realization cascading over her like the first heavy drops of a long-awaited storm. She had broken the curse without even knowing it—the barriers erected by ancient grievance, crumbling at her unwitting command.

Landon watched her, his presence a grounding force amid the chaos of her revelations, a solid truth in a maelstrom of questions.

"Without realizing it, you've done what none of your ancestors could," he said, his tone imbued with a sense of reverence, laced with an undercurrent of something more, something akin to desire—for understanding and for connection.

The air around them was filled with the magic that swirled invisibly between them. Dakota felt the pull of her lineage, the call of the wild that had been muted for so long, now yearning to be acknowledged.

"Your blood," he continued, stepping closer, his cowboy boots soundless on the thick rug, "has been accepted by those of us at the ranch. By me."

Dakota's breath caught as she processed his words, their meaning sinking into her bones. The Copper Canyon pack—Landon and his people—had unknowingly fulfilled the condition of the curse. For the most part, they had welcomed her into their midst, had recognized her as one of their own.

All that remained was for her to accept what they offered, to embrace the legacy that had been waiting dormant within her, to let the wolf that had been hiding in the shadows step into the light.

"Accept?" Her voice was a mere whisper, the ambiguity of his statement sending a shiver down her spine that was not entirely due to fear. There was a seductive undertone to his words, a promise of things unsaid that set her senses alight.

Landon's hand reached out, stopping just shy of touching her. She could feel the warmth radiating from his skin, the electric charge that seemed to dance between them, begging to bridge the gap.

"Accept the truth of who you are. Accept your heritage, your power. Accept me as your mate, your protector in this new world you're about to enter."

The moment stretched between them, laden with anticipation and the sweet ache of possibilities. Outside, the wind picked up, howling against the walls as if heralding the rise of a new era.