Page 16 of Pack Ruin
“For what?”
“For witchcraft. Or worse.”
“We’re not witches.” I hesitated. “At least, none of the Heirs are.”
His eyes grew wide. “Are you saying?—”
“No,” I interrupted. “I’m not. But Dimitrivich was there in Northern, using magic. Saving her with it. I think... I think he was there, his spirit was there, when Luke was dying. I recognized his energy, when I went into her soul and?—”
Dad was across the room, with a hand over my mouth in a heartbeat, stopping me. His eyes blazed fire, and he infused his voice with Alpha power. “You willnevertell anyone how yousaved her. Not a word of going into her soul. Only the moon has the power to do such things. Not you. Not your mate. You will never speak of what happened to another living creature—never, do you hear me?”
I waited for the Alpha compulsion to take hold, but it didn’t. It felt like his command slid off me, albeit slowly, like sap dripping down a trunk. But I nodded, and he pulled his hand away. I managed to find my voice again, but only asked one question. “Why?”
His eyes were filled with fear when he replied in a whisper, “What do you think magic is, son?”
“How would I know?” I stood, anger making my limbs tremble. One of the only times Dad had ever shouted at me in true anger had been when I was young, asking about magic. I hadn’t understood how the Russians could have killed so many of our strongest shifters. I’d shifted the week before that, and had scented something peculiar on a run. Following my nose, I’d found a gentle woman living in the center of our packlands, who never spoke, except to plants. She’d looked young, but her eyes had been ancient. She’d made me tea, given me my first carving knife, and then I’d watched her use magic to heal a sparrow’s wing.
When I’d asked Dad about her, he’d warned me not to speak of it again. So I’d snuck into our pack’s library and looked for books on magic. When Dad caught me there, trying to get into Grandmother’s locked bookcase, he’d ranted about dark magic and how many friends had died because wolves had allied with witches.
He hadn’t needed to teach me about that. I had grandparents left alive, but many of my friends did not. At Northern, that generation had been killed almost entirely, the loss of their wisdom almost as painful as the dwindling numbers of children.
What did I know of precisely why they died, though? Of magic? Close to nothing. I’d been sheltered, I realized, in a way that weakened me. Perhaps all of us had.
“Nothing,” I admitted at last. “No one speaks of it. I saw it used at Northern, by the Russian Ivan, but if there is more than one kind… How would I recognize it? How would I know what it looks like?”
Dad bared his teeth, a fierce smile this time. “I can’t answer that. But I know where you can find out.”
I said it for him. “The library.”
Grandmother was chidingFlor as we pushed open the thick, hard-carved door of the room that had always been one of my favorites. “Listen, girlie, you need to put your whole name here in the book. It’s our family tree, and you’re in it.”
I bristled at Grandmother’s tone, but when the door was wide enough, I relaxed. She was standing in front of Flor, who was seated at one of the library tables with her back to the door. As Grandmother placed a pen on the table, she graced my mate’s lowered head with a smile.
A smile.Dad and I both stopped in our tracks and exchanged glances. Grandmother almost never smiled, not after my mother’s death.
I could tell that in our bond that Flor knew I was there, but neither woman so much as turned to acknowledge us. “I hate my middle name,” she grumbled, ignoring the pen. “No one ever knew it besides my mom and my… my old piece-of-shit Alpha.This can be a fresh start, right? If I don’t write it here, it doesn’t exist.”
Grandmother spoke softly, glancing up at me. “Names have power, Flor. Those who follow the old ways know more about that than you young, restless shifter packs.”
“The old ways? I keep hearing vague things about those, whatever they are.” My little mate sounded suspicious.
“The old ways are how the pack was meant to be structured. When shifters follow the old ways, the pack as a whole thrives. It’s why our pack still has children being born every year, why we haven’t lost the moon’s favor like the others.”
Flor sniffed. “Beggin’ your pardon, but I’ll withhold judgment. The last time a pack bragged about its amazing structure, it turned out to be Northern. The unranked there were treated like trash.”
“Until you arrived,” I agreed, crossing the room and greeting Grandmother with a kiss on her cool cheek. “Where’s Grandfather?”
“Out teaching the young ones how to track,” she replied, then turned, giving a slight bow of the head to Dad. “Why have you come to the library, Alpha?”
Grandmother hadn’t always been formal around Dad, but since Mom died, she’d changed. I was almost certain it was her way of keeping her grief from showing. Grandfather coped with his by vanishing into the woods.
“Brand needs to read everything our library holds on the… forbidden topic.” He had to work his mouth to get the last two words out.
Grandmother hmphed and stalked across the room, opening the locked case I’d tried to open all those years before, and pointing imperiously at the books and objects behind the doors. A faint scent of silver drifted out of the cabinet.
Dad obediently went to gather the books Grandmother indicated, then carried a small stack back to the table. He set them down as if they were venomous snakes instead of three dusty books.
“What are those?” Flor asked as I wrapped an arm around her. Not touching her felt wrong. In fact, as soon as I felt her skin under my hand, a surge of strength raced through me, as if I’d just shifted into my wolf form.
