Page 9 of Forsaking His Mate

“We’re cut from the same cloth, you and I, born from the same bloodline.”

I don’t know what that means. “What bloodline?”

“Revna and Torsten.”

I sit up straighter at the name. I recognize it from thestories our pack elders would tell us about how our kind came to be.

It is a nice story, one of my favorites in fact, but it is just that—a story. “Torsten? The same guy who was given the wolf pelts?”

“That’s the one.”

“But Torsten and his pelts are not real.”

“Oh, it’s very real. It’s part of wolf history—your history too. Your mother—and you—are from Revna and Torsten’s line.”

I sit up straighter, wanting answers, even as I fear them. My father told me very little about my mother while I was growing up.

She was never part of my life. I don’t remember a single thing about her, and my father didn’t have any pictures or keepsakes to help me feel connected to her.

I always got the impression it hurt him to talk about her, but I wasn’t sure why.

The only thing I knew for sure was that she wasn’t from our pack, though no one could tell me anything about her, not even the elder wolves, which always struck me as odd.

My mom had a child with their alpha and no one knew shit about it.

But Hester is talking about Mom as if she knew her.

Does she…didshe?

“Do you know my mom?” I can’t keep the hope from my voice.

Hester gives me a sad smile. “No, I’m sorry, Tessa. I don’t, but you are a tau wolf, which means your mother carried those genes too. Likely she will have been one as well.”

What the hell is a tau wolf?

I have heard of many wolf ranks and names—alphas, betas, deltas, gammas, omegas—but never that. That phrase has never once been uttered in my presence. “I’m feeling a little lost here,” I admit. “I’ve never heard of a tau wolf.”

The car rumbles as it descends the mountain pass. I watch the side windows for movement, splitting my gaze between the landscape outside the truck and Hester, but see nothing.

If the wolves I scented are following, I can only hope they have lost our trail when we got into the truck.

“Most shifters haven’t. It’s not something that is widely discussed among wolves or witches.” She leans against the door, resting one hand idly on the steering wheel. “Revna isn’t talked about as much as Torsten, though her role in our existence and the existence of wolf shifters is the only one that matters.” Hester glances at me before returning her attention to the front window. “She was aSeidrin Denmark, born around 700 AD. We’d call her a seeress, a witch in our day, and back then she was feared even by her own kind.” I listen, unsure what to make of it. I’ve never heard about Revna. “We are of her line. We carry her DNA in our blood, making us part wolf, part witch.”

“If she’s a witch, how did we get the wolf part?”

“The story goes that Revna loved Jarl Leif’s son, Torsten. She gifted him a pelt, which enabled him and other wearers to become beasts while they had it on their backs. They could run, scent, and fight like wolves. Torsten used the pelt and over time became more wolf than human. At first, he could only change with the pelt, but eventually, he didn’t need that either.”

I have so many questions about how a pelt could change a human into an animal.

I’ve seen so many of my pack members change intobeasts in front of me that I don’t doubt that it’s possible, but it still sounds weird.

“How?”

“Magic, honey. Revna was powerful and she was in love. Torsten didn’t feel the same. He used her for what she could give him. He rejected her advances, but it was already too late by then. Revna was pregnant, and the babe in her belly was a wolf infused with witch magic—a tau wolf. Torsten didn’t know about the baby until she was born, but that line flourished despite his efforts to end—”

Hester slams on the brakes, her body stiffening. The seatbelt around my body is all that prevents me from being thrown through the windshield. It tightens over my chest, stopping the air in my lungs for a moment before the truck stops abruptly, and I’m flung back into my seat.

My gaze goes to the windshield. Standing in the road, illuminated by the headlights, is a wolf. His head is low, the hackles on his back are raised, and his teeth are showing.

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