Page 36 of Pack Ruin
Glen’s simple question was filled with compassion. He could probably hear my wolf already howling for Brand as we left him behind.
“Try to keep up, Glenda,” I retorted, pushing my way out the side door. We both ignored the rasp in my voice.
The sunlight was bright as I stepped out into it, but the sunhat hid my face. No one walked us to the truck; they didn’t want anyone to see them aiding and abetting Glen’s “escape from the pack jail cell,” which was the cover story if the Council came down on Samuel or Brand before they managed to complete the Alpha handover.
Of course, Ida had kissed and hugged me plenty of times, and packed us all sorts of food for our journey. Verona had stuck a stack of required shifter reading in my bag, but she’d shared more than that the day before. After Samuel had brought me back to the library and handed me over to her, she’d givenme priceless information. And after she’d shooed him back out, she’d given me something else. Weapons.
Her words rang in my memory as Glen started the truck and drove us down the gravel road toward the nearest town.
“I’m breaking a number of Council laws right now, Flor,” Verona whispered, as she locked the library door behind us. “But I need to share a few things with you before you leave tomorrow.”
“What do you mean?” Did she have more contraband books for me?
“I gave you a book. Now I need to give you an explanation that no one else older than you, and no one who ever attended a Conclave, would be able to share: the reason why even speaking of the Western pack was forbidden.”
My jaw dropped. I’d assumed, from our conversations, that she couldn’t speak openly about them either. Wasn’t she under the same command as the rest? She was plenty older than me. “How can you…”
Her smile was sly. “I wasn’t at the great gathering after the war, when all the remaining shifters agreed to never speak of the Western pack again. So I wasn’t personally bound under the Council’s command. I never attended a Conclave after that, either, when that particular command was reinforced by all the Alphas. I knew better.” She sighed. “Samuel figured it out, of course. He commanded me not to speak of Western. But his Alpha command for me is no longer in effect.” Her lips twitched. “I love a loophole.”
I loved the sneaky way she thought, and told her so.
“Thank you. As the Centralis librarian, I have a sacred duty to share knowledge to help our pack.”
“Centralis?”
She walked me back to the locked cabinet and pulled out an assortment of things, laying them out on the table.“Thatwas our pack’s name, years ago. My mate warned me that the backlash against magic would be severe, after the fighting ended. We were… broken, by the way the remnants of the Western pack had allied with the Russians and betrayed us, as well as the weapons they used to attack us.”
On the table in front of us, she had placed a small, plain-handled silver knife, a book, and something in a narrow leather case. I wrinkled my nose at the stench wafting up from the knife.“They used silver?” For some reason, my wolf paced restlessly at the thought.
“Yes, but more importantly, they used magic. They were the only pack in North America that had magic wielders in their ranks. They’d been punished for this after the Betrayal—that’s what many called the disastrous Southern Conclave four decades ago. At the end of the war, the victorious packs decided defeat wasn’t enough. They chose to eradicate them.”
We both sat in silence for a few heartbeats, thinking of that. An entire pack, killed. That would have been just before I was born. Not all that long ago. Had Samuel been a part of that decision? Had Margarette, or Bradley?
I didn’t ask. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Verona went on. “The Council Head at that time was Bradley Hillier’s father. He commanded the packs to round up and execute every single Western shifter that they could find, even the prisoners of war. Any who were left were named rogues, and the Council ordered them to be killed on sight.”
Even if it made me sick, that made sense. But I didn’t understand why there’d been a command that no one could speak of them. I asked Verona, and she snarled.
“Fear makes people stupid. And stupid people do stupid things, like burn books. As if you can burn ideas with fire. Destroying these books would only mean that the next time magic wielders come against us, we will be defenseless.”
The way she spat the words magic wielders made me think of Grigor. Was he one of the ones we’d fought against? He was Russian, and he definitely used magic. Was he the enemy? My enemy?
Verona was still talking, so I shook the worry away.
“You know that pure silver blades are not legal for anyone other than Alphas and their mates to wield. There really aren’t many in existence; the metal is too soft to be practical. But if a metalsmith is clever, and wraps silver around the steel…” She pulled on gloves before showing me, picking up the small, plain dagger that I assumed had been made the way she described, then slid it into the spine of a book on Alpha ascension rituals.
I peered at the book. You couldn’t even see the knife inside, and the scent of silver was completely suppressed by the binding and the flap of leather she pulled over the top. “Nice.”
“Lethal,” she corrected. “Use the knife if you have to, but read the book as soon as you can. Remember that knowledge is one of the strongest weapons you can possess.”
Del had told me that. I nodded as she picked up the leather case and pulled out another small item, which looked like a metal dowel, or a fancy pen. On one side, it had a button like a pen, and it was silver colored, but it didn’t have that awful odor that made my stomach turn. “This one is more dangerous than the knife. It’s pure steel on the outside. But when you push this…” She pressed the tiny button to one side and then up, and a narrow silver blade, almost as thin as a needle, popped out.
“Ugh,” I said, fanning my face. It now smelled incredibly potent.
My wolf began pacing faster, panting, wanting to run far away from the odd blade, but I knew I might need this. I needed every weapon I could get my hands on, if I was going back into Southern.
I reached to take it from her, but she pulled it away quickly. “Not so fast. This blade is exceptionally dangerous. The silver is pure and brittle, made that way on purpose. If you stab someone with it, the metal will fragment inside their body. There’s no shifter alive who could survive this.”
