Chapter Sixty-Six

Two Hours Until the Full Death Moon.

“Wait here. Keep yourselves out of sight. You’ll get a signal when it's time to come in.”

“And what exactly will that signal be?” Cassius asked me.

“You'll know it when you see it,” I promised.

“And the coming in part?” he asked, his eyebrow quirked. “We have to be officially invited in by someone who lives there, remember?”

“I’m officially inviting all of you in,” Aimes assured the three vampires.

The burns on Cassius's wrists were already fading, but they were still pretty gnarly-looking. He winced whenever his shirt cuffs brushed against his skin. They all did, though they tried to hide it just as they hid themselves beneath their cloaks, in the shade of the trees growing thicker near the base of the mansion’s foundation.

Night was just beginning to fall, the setting sun stretching pink and purple ribbons above the treetops behind us.

“Are you ready?” I asked Aimes.

“As I'll ever be.” He kept any other thoughts to himself.

I nodded to the vampires clustered nearby before following him through the dense, almost impenetrable growth surrounding this part of the mansion.

My feet weren't touching ground. Years of vines and shrubs, fallen leaves, maybe even dead animals formed a thick carpet underfoot. Not a bad thing, really. It muffled the sounds of our approach.

The vine-covered wall up ahead didn't look too promising, but Aimes swore there was a door there that led straight to the dungeon. According to him, the pack used to transport prisoners using that door, using boats when the river was swollen enough for sailing.

“This part will be tricky.” Aimes stepped toward the riverbank, surveying the current and its speed. “Because it's going to want to drag us out. We have to be quick, decisive.”

“Sure. No big deal.” The last time I took a swim in this river, I’d nearly drowned.

As if sensing my thoughts, Aimes lightly touched my elbow. “I can use my wolf this time. You can hold on while I swim. You’ll be fine.”

“I don't want to drag you down.”

“You couldn't.” He cupped my cheek, rubbing it with his thumb and wearing a tender smile. “Not even if you tried.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m ready to get wet.”

“Oh, I love it when you talk dirty to me,” he growled, making me bite back a giggle.

Of all the times for him to make a sex joke.

With a sly wink, he shifted. I quickly shucked my clothing and stuffed them into my waterproof pack so they’d be dry once we entered the mansion. Then, as I shivered, both of us headed into the river.

The water was freezing, forcing me to focus solely on holding on to Aimes’s fur. If I didn't think about the temperature, I couldn't feel it. Or so I told myself. It was a good thing I didn't have to swim through this, because I wasn't sure my body would be able to handle the cold and keep moving quickly.

Keep a tight grip! Aimes told me.

He had everything under control, cutting us through the water with his powerful strokes, while I held on for dear life and offered up a prayer to anyone listening.

We emerged from the river shivering, dripping, but we made it without getting swept away. Aimes shifted back to his human form, yanked the towels from my waterproof pack, draped them around me, and gathered me into his arms so the two of us could share body heat in the shadows of the mansion’s walls.

“So far, this is my favorite part,” I managed through chattering teeth while darting my eyes around for trouble.

“I was carrying precious cargo on my back.” He kissed the top of my head, which was about the only part of me that was still dry. “We need to be quick about this. Do you think you'll be okay to move?”

Not even close. But after changing into my dry clothes and wringing most of the water from the ends of my hair so it wouldn't leave trails of drips in the mansion, Aimes began searching the wall, trying to find the door beneath the ivy that covered the stones. I couldn't help but start losing hope as minute after minute went by with no success.

What if he was wrong? What if the door was plastered over? What if—

“Found it.” He cleared some of the ivy away to reveal a wooden door set in the stone.

He then found the circle of rusted iron serving as a pull and dug his feet in to brace himself before tugging on it, straining from the effort. Finally, the door gave way and swung open. It creaked loudly, but he stopped as soon as there was space for us to slip inside.

The smell hit me all at once, disgustingly familiar. I hated being back here, in such an unhappy place. I had too many foul memories of these dungeons.

“Follow me.” He took my hand, moving fast, his feet practically floating over the floor.

We headed toward a stairway at the other end of the rows of cells, all currently empty. There were no lights in the stairwell, but Aimes moved like it was second nature. At the top of the stairs, there was an intersection of two narrow passages.

“This way.” Aimes took a left turn.

I’d never been in this direction before. We stayed close to the wall, holding our breaths as we crept along.

Up ahead stood a large, vaulted entryway, with a stone arch carved with a Latin phrase along the top. Once we drew closer, I could read the words. Virtus et Scientia.

“Virtue and knowledge,” Aimes whispered. “Ironic, since there's not much virtue in this pack.”

Considering how empty and dusty the library was, I had to wonder how much knowledge there was in the pack, too. Other than Stride and a spying Annecy, how long had it been since the last visitors came to this almost sacred space, where the silence was so dense it felt heavy?

I was psyching myself out. Letting my fear color my perception.

Stop it, Harlow. Keep it together.

“Where's the restricted section?” I hissed, looking over my shoulder at every other step I took.

“Back here.”

The light from the rising death moon granted a little illumination, streaming from windows that stretched twenty, maybe thirty feet into the air. This was the kind of place I could have lost myself, spending hours in happy solitude with all the good shifter books.

Were there actual fictional shifter books here? A question for another time.

We headed toward an iron gate at the far end of the room.

“Let's see if it's still here.” Standing on tiptoe, Aimes ran his hand over the narrow ledge above the gate.

Meanwhile, I kept a lookout, staring across the room, to the arched entry and the darkness beyond. How long did we have until someone found us?

“Got it.”

I turned my head to find Aimes holding a small key. He unlocked the door, lifting it slightly so the hinges wouldn't squeak badly.

“Well, that was easy,” Aimes whispered, pointing to a small table inside. “Stride must have left these here.”

On it were three books, the thickest of anything else along the two rows of volumes kept behind the gate. One of them had no title, just carvings of the moon phases. When I traced my fingers over the worn leather, the skin all along my arm tingled.

“This is it,” I said, and something in my gut told me I was right.

My pulse hummed, my breath coming in short little gasps that had nothing to do with fear. It was the sense of landing exactly where I needed to be, doing exactly what I needed to do. Finally, we were on the right track.

Without cracking open the pages like I wanted to, I recited the spell Ostera had taught me—the Spell of Enchanted Restraint. “Lock the words, bind the tale. With mystic threads, let magic prevail. Secrets hidden, pages sealed. By this spell, all knowledge concealed.”

Threads of energy emerged from my fingertips, weaving themselves around the book's cover and gilded pages. The threads interlaced into complex patterns, resembling an intricate web of shimmering light. The book lifted off the table, suspended in magic, and then dropped down again with a thud as the light vanished.

“Yes!” I double high-fived Aimes, quietly of course.

That was exactly what Ostera said would happen. Until a counter spell was recited, Stride and Connolly wouldn’t be able to use this grimoire ever again.

“One Alpha at a Time: A History,” Aimes whispered, reading another book’s title. He picked it up and spread it open with one arm supporting it. “This is the first volume, up through the fifteenth century.”

“The pack goes back that far?”

“And much farther than that.” Rather than open it from the front, he opened it from the back, which brought us to a bunch of blank pages until we found the last recorded entry.

“Look at this.” He ran his finger over the place where Connolly's name had originally been recorded as pack Alpha before being scratched out and replaced with the name Darrion Jackson. “Connolly's brother. My adoptive dad.”

He caressed the name lovingly, solemnly, like touching part of his own history, and I reached out to rub his back. Connolly had done so much damage to both of us, and I hated him for it.

My own dad, a complete monster. I would never get over it.

“There should be more written about him,” Aimes rasped, running his finger down the page. “He was a great Alpha.”

“Well, he wasn't Alpha long enough to warrant much of an entry,” a cold voice said from the other side of the gate. “That was by design, of course.”

Every part of my body seized up. Still so full of arrogance, even more so because he figured he'd pulled one over on us.

“Oh, hey, Connolly,” I said evenly before lifting my gaze from the pages and staring him down.

I wasn't going to cower. I wasn't going to act like I hadn't expected to be discovered.

He wore a silk dressing gown over the top of silk pajamas. I guessed Annecy hadn’t destroyed his things during the brief time she’d lived in his rooms. Compared to our damp, bedraggled state, he was every inch the superior being. At least in his own mind.

“Now, now.” He clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “You know who we really are to each other. Couldn’t you call me Dad?”

Nausea boiled my stomach, hot and bitter. “How about ‘sperm donor’ instead?” I asked, using air quotes just to irritate him.

He raised a single eyebrow. “Defiant to the end. That's my blood in you. It called to me from the beginning—I knew straight away there was something special about you. I admit, it took longer than it should have to come to the conclusion of your true identity. Though I suppose the odds were always in favor of me running into one of my progenies eventually.”

“So you made it a habit? Impregnating women after you seduced them?” I snapped.

“And what if I did? I spread my seed far and wide, and those she-wolves were fortunate to carry it inside them. As your mother was.”

“Did you kill my mom?” I demanded.

His smile chilled me to the core. It held a wealth of information, history, and sadism.

“I don't know what you mean. In fact, it was mating with your mother that nearly got me killed. I am what you would call the wounded party.”

“Because you were banished?”

He did his best to appear unaffected, but he wasn't that good. His eyes widened a fraction before he could control himself. “So you know about that.”

“You were punished because you mated with my mom?”

“She was the final straw. My brother and the so-called pack council came to understand I was doing more than sowing my oats.”

“You were trying to create a weapon,” Aimes said matter-of-factly. “Isn't that right? That's why you went to the Moon pack. Because you knew they were powerful.”

“I went to many packs, but yes. And I was successful, wasn't I? I had Stride from another pack. I had you.” He had the nerve to smile at me, only this time it was different. This time—as much as I didn't want to see it—I noticed what might have passed for tenderness.

It wasn't real, I knew that much. It was his twisted version of genuine feeling.

“At any rate, I worked my way back into my pack’s good graces over time. I even managed to lull my stupid, useless brother, Darrion into believing we could still be family after he'd betrayed me. He was enough of a fool to believe me because he wanted to. He wanted to feel better about the decision he'd made to banish me from the only family I'd ever known.” He shrugged, smirking. “He soon came to regret it.”

“What exactly did my dad regret?” Aimes demanded. “Banishing you or trusting you?”

Connolly narrowed his eyes. “Your sense of humor is a delight,” he said coldly.

“You killed him, didn't you?” Aimes asked.

Connolly bared his teeth. “What of it? I also saved your adoptive mom from financial ruin, which you seem to have conveniently forgotten.”

“She was miserable because of you!” Aimes shouted.

I settled my hand on his arm before he could do something stupid like lunge at Connolly.

“And you were going to rule the pack through Stride if you couldn't do it yourself,” I concluded.

It was all so pitifully simple and diabolical at the same time.

“Enough history.” Connolly folded his hands in front of him, his gaze steady, level, focused solely on me. “This is what the humans like to call a one-time-only sort of offer. You are my daughter, and as such, you can be Alpha. We can easily unseat Stride. It will take nothing. He is weak, foolish, more like his uncle than me. I did everything I could to harden him into who he needed to be, but even I was unable to prepare him.”

“And let me guess,” I said with a nod. “You would want to be my right-hand man. My trusted advisor. And I would be your mouthpiece.”

He wrinkled his nose like he was offended. “Why do you have to put it so inelegantly? You've spent too much time among the humans.” He chuckled, shrugging slightly. “I admit, I searched high and low, and that coven’s location spells are mostly misses. She did a good job hiding you.”

“I’ll be sure to pass on the compliment,” I deadpanned. “And as for your little offer, the answer is no. I would rather do literally anything else than allow you the chance to have that power.”

His smile soured and then collapsed into a tight line. “You would reject your own father?”

“It seems I already have.”

“I'm unsurprised, though disappointed. I did think you were more intelligent than this.” He stepped aside, allowing a single guard through the restricted section’s gate. “Put them in the dungeon.”

We didn’t fight him off because it would be a waste of time—there were another two guards waiting, watching like they were ready to jump into action if we made things difficult.

But what Connolly didn't understand, because he was too full of himself to see it, was how easily I'd led him to this. He was still too proud, too full of himself, to notice that this was all part of the plan.

And he'd just played right into it.