Chapter 13

13

“Come, Luna.” Despite her paleness, Mom’s voice remained strong and authoritative, and she radiated magical power. Her eyes even seemed to gleam as they reflected the moonlight.

I opened the gift box and withdrew a salami log, handing it to Emilio as I passed. So far, he was the only male family member I’d encountered this week who didn’t hate me. At least not yet. I didn’t know how much of my story he was familiar with.

His eyebrows rose in surprise, but he grinned fiercely as he clutched the salami to his chest.

“Disgusting,” Marco said, but he stepped back. He nodded to my mother and made no further move to intercept me.

Emilio sniffed the end of the salami and grinned wider. “ Delicious .”

Marco shook his head again.

“Maybe Aurora was right.” Emilio nodded to me. “Maybe you’re all right."

I recognized the name of one of my nieces, but she and her sister Jasmine had been toddlers when last I’d seen them. I wasn’t sure how Aurora could have vouched for me. Still, I would be happy to learn that the entire family didn’t hate me.

Salami in hand, Emilio trotted off into the woods. He sent suspicious glances over his shoulder at Marco as he went, as if believing the older man would come after him and steal away the snack.

“Emilio is your cousin Leopold’s youngest.” My mother watched as I climbed up to the cabin’s front porch, her eyes hard to read.

Was she pleased to see me? Or had she never wanted to see me again? When I’d left, she hadn’t understood my strong emotions, my unwillingness to accept that losing oneself to one’s werewolf instincts was perfectly normal, but she hadn’t been angry with me. That, however, had been before I found those potions.

“He seems like a decent guy.” I didn’t remark on Marco—or Augustus.

“He’s a puppy, but that’s what happens with the runts.”

I didn’t point out that Emilio had clearly grown out of that runtiness. He’d been big both as a man and a wolf.

Mom stepped back, lifting an arm to invite me into the cabin.

That was something, at least. She glanced at the opened gift box, a few summer sausages and packets of smoked salmon remaining.

Knowing werewolves as I did, I’d opted for the meat-and-fish-lovers package, no pesky sweets or cheeses contaminating the offerings. I did, however, lay two bars of dark chocolate, each spruced up with sea salt and honey-bourbon bacon, next to the box when I set it on her table. After all, Mom had been the one who’d once introduced me to chocolate. Milk was far too anemic and sweet, she’d assured me, but a wolf’s palette could be tempted by the bolder and richer flavors of a good dark.

“You wouldn’t know since you weren’t a runt,” she added, glancing outside before closing the door firmly .

Marco remained in the driveway, as if he suspected I might try to assassinate my mother, and he needed to stand by as her bodyguard. If he cared about his aunt, then I could respect him for that, even if he was being an ass to me.

“No,” I agreed.

Runt-ness hadn’t been my problem.

“You look like you’ve kept yourself reasonably fit.” Mom looked me up and down. “If diminished. Your magic is barely noticeable.”

“I know. I’m sure you know why.”

The whole pack seemed to know far more about me than I would have wished.

She tilted her head as she regarded me. “I don’t exactly. You never came back and explained. I originally heard from your half-brother in Lake Forest Park that you’d married a human and were having children.”

“Yeah. It—deciding to take an alchemical potion that sublimates my werewolf urges—was because of Raoul.”

“I know your grief after his passing was why you left, but…”

“He didn’t pass, Mother. I lost my temper and killed him.”

The blunt words stirred the old memories again. A hunt gone poorly that had led to a heated argument that had turned into a fight under the moon, our jaws snapping, our muscles surging, our fangs sinking through fur and into vulnerable flesh. After all these years, the memory of that night remained sharp, though it sometimes felt as if it had been a dream—a nightmare. If Raoul had been an enemy, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but we’d been lovers, passionate youths who hadn’t cared that we were from rival packs. We’d always thought we would find a way to be together, that we would become mates and hunt side-by-side forever.

“Thus causing him to pass.” Mom shrugged indifferently, as if that moment hadn’t destroyed me and altered the course of my entire life. “If he couldn’t fend you off when your temper was raised, he didn’t deserve to be an alpha and pack leader. Another would have killed him, if not you.”

“He did deserve it, and he… could have fended me off if he’d truly wanted it, if he’d been willing to kill me.”

“You underestimate the power you had then. Even if he loved you, his survival instincts would have kicked in. If he’d been able to best you, he would have.”

I shook my head. She hadn’t known Raoul, not the way I had. He’d been strong, fit, and in line to lead the Crushers one day, but he’d also been a lover and a poet. In his human form, he’d composed music and written lyrics. Unlike me, he’d never lost his sanity in his wolf form, never let his wild instincts get the best of him.

“He did love me,” I said quietly, looking out a back window toward the dark woods. “That’s why it was such a betrayal that I let myself attack him.”

“It was the battle lust.” Mom shrugged again. “We all have it. He shouldn’t have roused your temper during a hunt. We are not humans, my daughter. I see now, as I saw then, that you believed you were in the wrong, but you were guided by your wolf instincts. To establish dominance or keep the peace in the pack, alpha males and females may turn on threats, even mates, at any time. Our blood guides us to show our strength, to make sure the pack knows not to threaten us. I drove your half-siblings’ father out when he didn’t continue to be suitable.”

Sometimes, I wondered if that was what happened to my father too, but I couldn’t remember him at all. She’d told me before that he had been a lone wolf passing through, an intriguing one-night stand. Whether that was the truth or not, I didn’t know.

“We must keep those who make the pack strong,” Mom continued, “not those who are liabilities. That is the way of the wolf.”

“We live as humans most of the time, Mother. In the world of humans, it’s a crime to kill another person, a crime punishable by death.”

She made a disgusted noise and chopped the air with her arm. “Being forced to live in their world does not mean we can be bound by their culture and laws. We have our own ways. And their world is killing us, their ever-expanding population encroaching on nature and destroying the Earth’s magic. Our magic. We can’t even become the bipedfuris—the in-between form—and add new blood to the pack anymore. It’s been centuries since I’ve heard of one of us succeeding in that and in using a bite to turn a man or woman, to bring a new werewolf into a pack. When you left to mate with a human and have human children… Luna, those boys should have been werewolves. The world doesn’t need any more humans. That you didn’t mate with your own kind, especially when you were so powerful…”

I didn’t argue because I understood her disappointment. I couldn’t regret the birth of my sons, nor could I imagine having stayed with the pack, but I knew why she was upset.

“I always hoped if I gave you time and space, you would one day return, that the call of the moon would bring you back. I didn’t expect…” Her eyes bored into my back as I continued to look out the window. “These potions… What exactly have you done to yourself? Your magic doesn’t seem quite as dead as Augustus said, but I can sense, as I said, you are diminished.”

I made myself turn and face her. “Like I said, the potion sublimates the wolf and the urge to turn.”

“Yes, but are the effects permanent?”

“No, I have to take it every month, ideally before the full moon. I’m…” I glanced toward the woods again, the silver light filtering through the branches. “I’m due.”

“So it’s not irrevocable.” Hope flickered in her eyes. “If you stopped consuming it, you could return to us.”

“That’s technically true. ”

“Then you must. The pack, the forest, the hunt is your destiny.”

I shook my head. I’d chosen my destiny years ago. Of course, with the boys gone—the boys grown —there was less binding me to my current path, but I would hate to die in a hunt or a fight for dominance with another werewolf—Augustus’s face flashed in my mind—and have Austin and Cameron lose me. Just because they’d started new lives didn’t mean they would never need advice from their mother again.

“Are you still fertile?” Mom asked, the blunt question startling me.

“Er, I’m forty-five.”

She gazed at me, waiting. Did that not answer her question?

“Technically, I guess, but women don’t usually have kids at my age. I’m not sure I could conceive if I wanted to.” And I did not want to. I didn’t even want to have a husband again—a mate , as the pack called it. Not after the hurt and betrayal of Chad sleeping around and stealing from us.

“ Human women,” Mom said. “Our kind, as long as we eat our traditional diets and bask in the magic of the moon each month, sometimes have longer periods of fertility.”

“I’m not basking in anything, Mother.”

“And that is greatly problematic. As it was when you became mates with that… strange human man. What did you even see in him?”

Yes, it seemed she had indeed been keeping an eye on me, if from a distance. I’d never introduced Chad to her or anyone else in my werewolf family.

“In the beginning, he was handsome and dashing and really into me.” Actually, as I’d learned later, Chad had been really into werewolves. When we’d been dating, he’d figured out what I was, and he’d always hoped he would see me change. A few times, he’d hidden my potions and tried to make that happen. That had been the beginning of the end for us, the start of my wariness toward him.

“So mundane. So human.”

“He is that. Why did you need me to have werewolf children? My half-siblings mated and had?—”

“They never had as much power as you, as much magic . Their offspring are fine, and they contribute to our well-being, but they are not suitable heirs to the power of the pack. You would have been. You still could be.”

“The power of the pack?”

She’d spoken often of the way of the wolf to describe our people’s cultural traditions, but I hadn’t heard her use this other phrase before.

“Our legacy.” Mom looked toward the cabin’s other room, the door open, but only a nightstand and the bed, furs and hides draping the mattress, were visible. “When you were born, I had such joy and hope. You were the most promising of your generation. Of several generations. I thought you might be able to do what I never could, what my siblings couldn’t either. Find a way to bring back the magic of the werewolf bite, the ability to become the bipedfuris and change worthy humans into our kind. We must find that magic again.” She spread her arms. “We are dying, Luna. Our gene pool is so limited these days that we must breed with our relatives. It is not ideal.”

“No.” I thought of Duncan, last seen bandaging his wounds, and almost pointed out that it didn’t help that the pack drove out any werewolves that visited from other areas, but that wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Even when one included the Old World—Europe—and the Wild Worlds—other continents—there weren’t that many werewolves left on Earth.

“If you could come back to us,” she said, “and you could accept your destiny, you would be my heir. You could receive… all that I have, all that I have been entrusted with. ”

“I don’t want your stuff, Mom.” I waved to indicate the cabin and its contents.

“I speak of more than stuff .” She frowned sternly at me.

I almost missed her expression because a shadow moved outside the window, making me jump. A wolf loped away into the woods.

Had that been Marco? Passing by on his way to hunt? Or had he been listening at the window? It wasn’t open, but a wolf’s ears were keen. It wouldn’t have mattered.

Mom must not have noticed because she walked into the bedroom, opened a drawer, and withdrew a black-velvet-covered box. It was four times the size of a typical jewelry box, at least for a ring or earrings, but it reminded me of one.

“There are many who want this,” she said quietly, glancing toward the window. Maybe she had seen the wolf run past. “But in our pack, it has traditionally been passed down from mother to daughter. There was once another artifact that passed from alpha male to son—or whoever became the alpha after him—but that has been lost. Some believe that is when the power of the bite was lost, but that may only be myth. It is not only our pack, with our magical artifacts, that have lost that magic. It’s believed that no werewolves left in the world today retain that ability.”

I didn’t know what to say—nobody had ever spoken to me of artifacts or a destiny when I’d been young—so I waited quietly. Mom closed her eyes, rumbling a soft growl before she opened the lid of the box.

A gold medallion on a thick gold chain lay mounted within. A wolf in profile was engraved on the front, its jaws open, its fangs sharp. It wasn’t the exact wolf on the case that Duncan’s magic detector had found, but the similarity struck me. There had to be a link.

Mom touched a finger to the medallion, and it glowed silver, its illumination similar to that coming from the moon outside. Even from a couple of feet away, I could sense magic emanating from it, power tingling in the air.

She lowered her hand and gazed intently at me. “Touch the medallion.”

“I won’t get zapped and knocked across the room, will I?”

“That only happens to enemies of the pack who are trying to steal it.”

That wasn’t the most reassuring answer. What if, because I took the potion, the medallion considered me an enemy? My cousins sure did these days.

“Touch it,” Mom repeated in a no-nonsense tone.

Since disobeying one’s mother was always a bad idea, especially one’s werewolf mother, I braced myself and lifted a finger. When I touched the tip to the cool gold, it didn’t knock me across the room. Its magic seemed welcoming rather than hostile, almost inviting me to lift the chain and put on the medallion. It even glowed faintly, though not as much as it had at Mom’s touch.

“I knew it.” Her eyes gleamed in triumph. “At least, I hoped this would be the case. Others in the family thought it wouldn’t respond to you, but I believed it would. If you stop taking that odious alchemical concoction, I believe it would respond to you as much as it does to me.” She lifted her chin. “It does not respond to Bianca. Augustus’s mate.”

The significance of that wasn’t clear to me. “Did you have everyone in the pack touch it or something? Like a test?”

“Recently, I had a meeting and brought some of the pack in to tell them about the medallion and to see if it reacted to anyone’s touch. Female werewolves who might be acceptable… backups if you didn’t come back.”

I lowered my hand. “I’m not coming back.”

“You must.” Mom closed the lid. “You are the pack’s hope, and to be connected with your own kind is the way of the wolf.” Her gaze drifted to the kitchen, and she walked to a cabinet, opening it, then stepping aside so I could see inside. Containers of prescription drugs were lined up in front of a stack of bowls.

Uncertainty and dread crept into me. “Why did you feel compelled to have that meeting?”

“I have been ill. According to the human doctors that the pack’s wise wolf urged me to see, I have cancer. I’m dying.”

I slumped against the table. I’d been afraid of that.

“The wise wolf didn’t have that term for my disease but agrees that age has crept up on me and that my aura is fading. I seek to set my affairs in order and do whatever I can to ensure the legacy of our line, the continuation of the pack.”

Words wouldn’t come as I stared at her in distress. After so long, I shouldn’t have been shocked that she had grown older, and of course I’d known she would eventually die. But she’d always been so strong that I struggled to imagine her succumbing to a disease that afflicted mundane human beings.

“I won’t take their treatments, their medications.” She flicked a finger toward the cupboard. The row of pills did look largely decorative, like she might have briefly mused over taking them when she’d first removed them from the bag, then decided against it. “That is not the way of nature, of the wolf.”

“If you did receive treatment, would be it be possible to overcome the cancer and live longer?” I didn’t know if I should respect her wishes or try to urge her to reconsider the doctor’s advice. If she had something treatable, she ought to do that. What if it was only stubborn distaste for all things human that led her to shun the medicine?

“I need you to stop taking that concoction and return to the pack,” Mom said without answering my question.

“I… I’m very sorry that you’re ill, Mother. But I don’t think the pack wants me to return.” My cousin’s words echoed in my mind: You smell so human. “Did you know… do you know why Augustus is trying to kill me? ”

“Is he? I didn’t think any of the pack were having contact with you.”

“They weren’t. Until yesterday. Something changed.” I thought of the cameras and the magical case, but we’d found those after Augustus had first called.

Of course, Duncan had shown up about then. He was up to something, but did it have anything to do with my pack? He was an outsider, and Augustus hadn’t seemed to recognize him.

“I am not sure what has changed for him,” Mom said, “unless my telling the pack about my condition prompted his actions. I don’t know why it would, however. And that was over a month ago. When did Augustus visit you?”

Visit. As if we’d chatted over tea and macarons.

“Just yesterday,” I said.

Was that right? It seemed like weeks’ worth of events had passed in the last two days.

“Perhaps, if you come on a hunt with the pack, you could get some answers.” Mom looked toward the window. “The moon is almost full. When it is, the pack will hunt together, as it always does. Emotions will be high, inhibitions lowered, as is always the case when we are in our true form.”

As I well remembered. Still haunted by Raoul’s death, I shuddered.

“Truths might be revealed,” Mom said, watching me.

“I…”

“Don’t take the concoction again. Let yourself remember what it’s like to be a wolf, to be yourself . And perhaps you will find what you seek.”

“I… I’ll think about it.”

“Good,” she said softly, closing the medallion box and holding it to her chest. “Good.”