Page 32 of Alpha's Promise

"Over here," Landon called, holding up an ornate key he'd found tucked away in a false bottom of a drawer. "Looks like it could be for a safe or a lockbox."

"Keep it. We might need it later," she said, her mind racing with possibilities.

Dakota's gaze landed on the computer sitting on the desk, its screen as black as the night outside. A sense of urgency gripped her; time was not their ally. She reached for the power button, and the machine hummed to life, rousing from its slumber with an electronic whir.

"Come on, come on," she murmured impatiently as the login screen appeared.

Her fingers tapped out her grandfather's password, but the computer rebuffed her with a cold denial. A knot tightened in her stomach. If not the familiar password, then what?

She closed her eyes, summoning memories of her ex, his habits, his quirks. Her fingers moved again, tracing patterns of association and shared history. On the third attempt, she held her breath, watching as the screen blinked?—

Access granted.

A mix of triumph and trepidation surged through Dakota. The digital landscape before her was now an open book, yet the words it contained could rewrite her entire existence.

"Got it," she said, more to herself than to Landon. Her heart thudded unevenly as she navigated through folders and files, each click a step deeper into the unknown.

"Anything?" Landon's voice was a tether back to reality, his warm breath ghosting over her shoulder as he leaned in to see the screen.

"Still looking," she replied, her voice barely above a whisper. Her search was methodical, a hunter tracking her prey through the dense underbrush of data.

And then, she found it—a folder cryptically labeled 'Legacy'. Dakota's finger hovered over the mouse, as if the weight of centuries were bearing down upon her. With a click, she opened the door to the past, and the secrets of her bloodline began to spill forth like whispers from the shadows.

The cursor blinked expectantly, a silent companion in the dimly lit study as Dakota scanned through the digital maze of her family's legacy. The room held its breath, walls lined with leather-bound secrets and dusty tomes that told of ancient times and hidden truths. A sliver of moonlight snuck through a crack in the curtains, casting its glow over the mahogany desk.

"Here," she murmured, her fingers pausing over a folder marked with a depiction of a very officious-looking seal. She clicked, and what appeared to be her family tree unfurled across the screen like an old map charting the course of her bloodline. Each branch was meticulously detailed, names and dates etched in virtual ink, but it was the divergence several generations back that snagged her attention—a split from a greater lineage that seemed to pulse with a significance she couldn't yet grasp.

"Look at this." Her voice was hushed as if afraid to disturb the past, and Landon leaned closer, his presence a comforting warmth at her side.

"Your family line... it's like it's been cleaved in two," he observed, his deep voice laced with wonder. His finger traced the point of division on the screen, lingering on the space where history had forked into obscurity.

Dakota nodded, swallowing the tightness in her throat as she opened another document. The scanned pages of a journal appeared, filled with scratchy handwriting that curled around the edges of the paper like vines. She squinted, decoding the words that spoke of banishment and forbidden love, of a great, great grandfather who cast out his own flesh and blood for uniting with a woman cloaked in the whispers of witchcraft.

"Other supernatural beings..." she read aloud, the words tasting strange on her tongue. There was a chill that danced down her spine, a realization that her heritage might be more entwined with the paranormal than she ever imagined. She looked up at Landon. "Forbidden?"

He nodded. “Very. If your ancestors were wolf-shifters, or shifters of any kind, taking a witch to mate would have been forbidden.”

“By who?” she asked.

Landon grinned. “Who knows? It’s just one of those things.”

"Well, it looks like it was very forbidden," Dakota confirmed, her gaze still locked on the journal's faded script. Ancestors who shunned the mystical, who rejected the very essence of what she might be—it painted a picture of a family torn apart by fear and misunderstanding.

She felt Landon's hand brush against hers, a silent gesture of solidarity as they stood on the precipice of discovery. With each document, each piece of history unearthed, they were peeling back layers of a curse that had shadowed her lineage for far too long. They turned back to the glowing screen, where the whispers of the past beckoned.

Dakota's fingers trembled as they traced the lineage on the screen, following the line that diverged sharply from her own. The silence of the room was thick, punctuated only by the soft hum of the computer and the distant howl of a coyote under the waning moon. Landon leaned in close, his warmth at her side both comforting and electric as they delved further into the arcane history.

"Here," she whispered, clicking on a faded image that seemed to pulse with an energy of its own. It was another page from the journal, the handwriting more agitated here, as if inscribed by a hand gripped with fury or fear—or perhaps both. "This must be it."

The text was cryptic, words skirting around a straightforward description. It appeared to be a curse, not overly specific but suffused with dark intent, woven into the bitterness of exile. Dakota read aloud, her voice a hushed echo in the study, "And so shall the line of my kin be shrouded from their truth, their wolfish hearts concealed by the veil of my ire, forevermore hidden..."

Landon's hand found her shoulder, squeezing gently. "A curse?" she murmured. "She cursed them because they cast her out?"

“Wolves don’t do well on our own. I know people talk about the ‘lone wolf,’ but within our community, those who can’t get along and aren’t committed to the safety of the pack as a whole are a danger to the pack and are cast out. I know it sounds harsh, but it is the way our kind and those of our purebred brethren have survived.

"More than just the ones who banished them," Dakota corrected, leaning into Landon's touch unconsciously, "but their descendants. Me." Her heart pounded like a drumbeat, a rhythm that seemed to carry the weight of centuries.

"Until one of us is accepted by her kind..." Landon trailed off, the implication dawning on him as well. There was a gravity to his presence, a resonance that filled the space between them with unspoken understanding.

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