Chapter 129

Dane didn’t stick around after his pronouncement. After one more long look at me, he left the infirmary.

Eventually, Celia came back to stay with Evander. I asked her to alert me immediately when he woke, even if it was the middle of the night. He knew about the twins. We had to find out what. And if that failed, Dane was right. We knew where the Reeds would be on the night of the new moon, and they would have our children with them.

I waited for Holden to make good on what he had said, that I was going to be punished. But since that moment, he’d been quiet. That was worse than anything else he could have done. Without the twins and Evander to distract me, I had way too much room for fear.

I didn’t see Dane for days. It was strange because I’d been without him for five years and survived. Now, his absence was a sharp ache in my chest.

Chapter 129

Trajan knew. He worried worse than Dane and stuck as close to my side as a burr caught in a wolf’s fur. It was so strange to think that if things had gone according to our original plans, way back when I’d first arrived in Georgia after being gone so long, Trajan and I would have been the only two Alpine wolves here, anyway.

The twins and their daring escape and flight from home had brought them and Evander, and now all three of them… I couldn’t think about that. The ceremony was only days away. Even though I knew I had no wolf, and the children had no way of hearing me, I tried to reach out to them at least a hundred times a day. “Mommy is here. I’m thinking of you. I’ll save you.”

It didn’t help, knowing how the Reeds had treated me as a child. From the haunted look I’d seen in Dane’s eyes, it seemed he felt the same. It was so strange to think that my family had kidnapped him, had him in the same house as me, and I’d never known. Of course, with as little as I remembered, maybe it wasn’t so strange.

The night before the new moon, I hardly slept. I tossed and turned in my sheets, thinking about the next day and what it might bring.

Chapter 129

Evander still hadn’t woken, but otherwise there was nothing wrong with him. So we kept doing our best to give him food and water, and we waited. But the moon waited for no one, and now the time to take the relic had arrived. This was everything we had been working for. What we did today would hopefully end the scourge of shadow monsters that, rumor had it, were making their way through the countryside. They were attacking surrounding packs more and more frequently. If we didn’t stop this, the Council would start breathing down our necks soon, demanding answers.

As much as I hated it, I suspected the reason they weren’t, yet, was because of Holden. I don’t know what he told his parents about us, or if he’d told them about us. But they did sit on the Council. And if they thought I was their daughter-in-law… Because Holden had forbidden me to communicate with anyone about what he’d done, I couldn’t tell my grandmother, either. But when I spoke to her, I did tell her Holden was gone from Blue Ridge.

“Oh, I know. He told me. But don’t worry, he said he’s still watching. He has his ways. A spy, right there in the middle of them, and they don’t even know.” She winked at me, like that might make me feel better. But I didn’t feel better. I felt like I wanted to throw up. Because the spy was me.

Chapter 129

To say she was excited that we were finally going to retrieve the relic was an understatement. Even though she was a stoic old woman, when I spoke to her the morning of the new moon, she was practically dancing in her chair. “All you have to do now, Aurora, is not screw this up. And get my heirs back, of course,” she said primly. Then she smiled, and it was the first warm smile I’d seen from her in a long time. “Once the relic is retrieved, we’ll use it to bring your wolf back. You’ll be true Luna-heir at last, my love. Just like my darling Celeste was supposed to be.”

I swallowed at the mention of my mother. I wished I could remember anything about her. “I hope she would be proud of me.” “She would,” Grandmother said. “She was always rather easy to please.”

That evening, the pack who were going to take part in the ceremony to get the relic stood on the lawn outside the pack house. Fall was starting to cool the air, and the breeze was scented with pine and dry leaves. Trajan stood at my side. Dane was down on the lawn. He was speaking with Archer. The beta never had caught up to my foster brother. Remington was still out there, somewhere.

Chapter 129

Evelyn was there, as well. Once upon a time, she had been the princess of the Blue Ridge Pack. She couldn’t go anywhere without dozens of people following her, admiring her. Now she stood alone except for the mysterious female wolf who had shown up the night of the ceremony. Dane didn’t even look in her direction. Something felt different about those two, like a final cut had been made between them. I longed to know why, but I didn’t feel like I could ask either of them.

The night was dark. No moon shone. Dane stepped up beside me, as if out of nowhere. His sister, Piper, was with him. “It’s time.” He met my gaze, and there was something in his I didn’t like. “Aurora,” he said, “You’re not going.”