Chapter 102

AURORA

After Trajan told me Evander was still on Broken Forest land, looking for signs of the twins, I worried. I wanted him to call Evander back. He said he knew Evander would return if I ordered it, but this was something he thought the younger wolf should be allowed to do. I was so overwhelmed by everything else I was dealing with; I didn’t have the heart to say no.

Trajan went to rest, and Dane took me to his office. “I’ll be directing the pack’s search efforts. If you can think of anything else to do, do it from here. Please.” His eyes dropped, and he wouldn’t meet my gaze. “You and the twins are all I have left, and you’re all I have left that I can protect here and now.”

I could hear the desperation in his voice, so I agreed. I already knew what I wanted to do, anyway. Wolves weren’t the only creatures humans whispered about that lived on this land. There were others: witches, vampires, darker, more unknowable things. It was time to see what they knew, and what it would take to get their help.

I’d managed a decent list of the local supernatural creatures when my phone rang. It was my grandmother. I didn’t dare ignore it. I straightened my hair and opened the video call. “Grandmother. What can I do for you?”

Her thin lips were pressed tightly together, making even more wrinkles around her mouth than usual. “You’re to meet with Alpha Coleridge. Alone.”

A chill went down my back. “You know what he tried to do.”

Her face softened, and she sighed. “Yes. I know. If I were there, I’d have him gutted and demand Fall Line appoint a new Alpha. Unfortunately, our reach in the United States isn’t as strong as I would like it to be. But if you succeed, it will be.” Then her gaze sharpened again. “Though success seems less likely now that resources are being diverted to search for our kidnapped heirs. What the hell is going on over there, Aurora?”

It was my turn to press my lips together. “A lot, Grandmother. Plots deeper and older than any I expected.” I hesitated, then asked a question that had been burning the deepest parts of my mind like a hot coal for weeks. “Grandmother, Esther Reed says she knew my mother. That Celeste DeVere may have… sold me to them.”

Outrage flooded my grandmother’s face, turning her old, papery cheeks red. “How dare you suggest such a thing! My Celeste would never. If you dare breathe such a terrible rumor to anyone else, I will cut you off immediately, do you hear me?”

I felt like she’d punched me in the stomach. But at the same time… her rage was oddly reassuring. I hadn’t known my mother, but Grandmother had. If she said Celeste wouldn’t sell her baby to the Reeds, I had to believe it.

“What happened to send my mother here?” I asked. “Did she say anything to you about having contact with the Reeds?”

“I don’t see what any of that has to do with your missing children or anything we’re dealing with now,” my grandmother snipped.

I would have laughed if I didn’t know that would make her hang up the phone. “Grandmother, it has everything to do with what’s happening now. Somehow, I ended up with the Reeds. That means it’s likely that my mother had contact with them at some point.”

“Well, how did they end up with you?” she asked. “Did they adopt you? Find you in the woods?”

“They always told me I was their birth daughter. They even tried to lie about it once they knew I’d found you. Which means I haven’t exactly been able to get the story from them.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’ve searched for official adoption records before, back when I was living with you. There are none. However they got me, it had to be done illegally… whether with my mother’s consent or not.”

I didn’t add that last part. It would only make Augusta angry.

“Well… I didn’t speak much with your mother at that time of her life,” my grandmother said. “If someone did, it would have been that useless son of mine.”

“Uncle Winston?” I said.

Augusta DeVere had three children: Celeste, Gemma, and Winston. Celeste was my mother, her oldest. Gemma, the middle daughter, was the mother of that evil bitch Lillian. Winston, the youngest and only son, was Evander’s father along with his older brother, Lorcan.

“Yes, Winston. Though I don’t know what use he’ll be. He’s half lost his mind, anyway. Filled it with useless facts about rocks, instead. Idiot.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll call him and see what he knows.”

Grandmother’s face got all pinched again. “If you must. But first, like I said, Holden Coleridge wants a meeting with you, but that brute Dane Montague’s wolves won’t let him anywhere near you. Give him the meeting he wants. Now. We need Fall Line’s wolves if it comes to war with Blue Ridge once we have the relic.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I spoke very carefully. “You don’t plan to take the relic from Dane, do you?