Page 39 of Way of the Wolf

“Are you still fertile?” Mom asked, the blunt question startling me.

“Er, I’m forty-five.”

She gazed at me, waiting. Did that not answer her question?

“Technically, I guess, but women don’t usually have kids at my age. I’m not sure I could conceive if I wanted to.” And I did not want to. I didn’t even want to have a husband again—amate, as the pack called it. Not after the hurt and betrayal of Chad sleeping around and stealing from us.

“Humanwomen,” Mom said. “Our kind, as long as we eat our traditional diets and bask in the magic of the moon each month, sometimes have longer periods of fertility.”

“I’m not basking in anything, Mother.”

“And that is greatly problematic. As it was when you became mates with that… strange human man. What did you even see in him?”

Yes, it seemed she had indeed been keeping an eye on me, if from a distance. I’d never introduced Chad to her or anyone else in my werewolf family.

“In the beginning, he was handsome and dashing and really into me.” Actually, as I’d learned later, Chad had been reallyintowerewolves. When we’d been dating, he’d figured out what I was, and he’d always hoped he would see me change. A few times, he’d hidden my potions and triedto make that happen. That had beenthe beginning of the end for us, the start of my wariness toward him.

“So mundane. So human.”

“He is that. Why did you need me to have werewolf children? My half-siblings mated and had?—”

“They never had as much power as you, as muchmagic. Their offspring are fine, and they contribute to our well-being, but they are not suitable heirs to thepowerof the pack. You would have been. You stillcouldbe.”

“The power of the pack?”

She’d spoken often ofthe way of the wolfto describe our people’s cultural traditions, but I hadn’t heard her use this other phrase before.

“Our legacy.” Mom looked toward the cabin’s other room, the door open, but only a nightstand and the bed, furs and hides draping the mattress, were visible. “When you were born, I had such joy and hope. You were the most promising of your generation. Ofseveralgenerations. I thought you might be able to do what I never could, what my siblings couldn’t either. Find a way to bring back the magic of the werewolf bite, the ability to become the bipedfuris and change worthy humans into our kind. Wemustfind that magic again.” She spread her arms. “We are dying, Luna. Our gene pool is so limited these days that we must breed with our relatives. It is not ideal.”

“No.” I thought of Duncan, last seen bandaging his wounds, and almost pointed out that it didn’t help that the pack drove out any werewolves that visited from other areas, but that wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Even when one included the Old World—Europe—and the Wild Worlds—other continents—there weren’t that many werewolves left on Earth.

“If you could come back to us,” she said, “and you could accept your destiny, you would be my heir. You could receive… all that I have, all that I have been entrusted with.”

“I don’t want your stuff, Mom.” I waved to indicate the cabin and its contents.

“I speak of more thanstuff.” She frowned sternly at me.

I almost missed her expression because a shadow moved outside the window, making me jump. A wolf loped away into the woods.

Had that been Marco? Passing by on his way to hunt? Or had he been listening at the window? It wasn’t open, but a wolf’s ears were keen. It wouldn’t have mattered.

Mom must not have noticed because she walked into the bedroom, opened a drawer, and withdrew a black-velvet-covered box. It was four times the size of a typical jewelry box, at least for a ring or earrings, but it reminded me of one.

“There are many who want this,” she said quietly, glancing toward the window. Maybe shehadseen the wolf run past. “But in our pack, it has traditionally been passed down from mother to daughter. There was once another artifact that passed from alpha male to son—or whoever became the alpha after him—but that has been lost. Some believe that is when the power of the bite was lost, but that may only be myth. It is not onlyourpack, with our magical artifacts, that have lost that magic. It’s believed that no werewolves left in the world today retain that ability.”

I didn’t know what to say—nobody had ever spoken to me of artifacts or a destiny when I’d been young—so I waited quietly. Mom closed her eyes, rumbling a soft growl before she opened the lid of the box.

A gold medallion on a thick gold chain lay mounted within. A wolf in profile was engraved on the front, its jaws open, its fangs sharp. It wasn’t theexactwolf on the case that Duncan’s magic detector had found, but the similarity struck me. There hadto be a link.

Mom touched a finger to the medallion, and it glowed silver, its illumination similar to that coming from the moon outside.Even from a couple of feet away, I could sense magic emanating from it, power tingling in the air.

She lowered her hand and gazed intently at me. “Touch the medallion.”

“I won’t get zapped and knocked across the room, will I?”

“That only happens to enemies of the pack who are trying to steal it.”

That wasn’t the most reassuring answer. What if, because I took the potion, the medallion consideredmean enemy? My cousins sure did these days.

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