Page 4 of Kin of the Wolf

“I still don’t know why he dumped you in a ditch. You’re valuable, aren’t you?”

“I think his minions were responsible for the dumping,” Duncan said without answering the question.

When he’d first reappeared, it had crossed my mind that Abrams had let Duncan go so that he would return to me and, when Abrams activated that magical device again, be close enough to get the artifacts back from me. The case, at least. I’d returned my mom’s medallion to her.

“Technically, they may have been Radomir’s minions,” he said. “I didn’t figure out which one of them was in charge.”

“They seemed like a team.”

“An odd team, yes.” Duncan looked in the fridge.

“To answer your question, I don’t know why Augustus would want the case. He might have come to kick my ass, and I happened to be studying it when he arrived.”

Except that he’d looked at it very intently. And with avarice in his eyes. An odd emotion for a wolf, even a werewolf. I couldn’t deny that our human halves were integrated into our being and made us different from non-magical animals, but we weren’t our normal selves when in wolf form.

“Did you mean to do that?” Duncan asked. “Study it as a wolf?”

“Yes. I had a hunch doing so might reveal something.”

I hadn’t told him about the vision I’d had weeks earlier, that I would be able to see and sense more about the case if I looked at it while in my wolf form. It hadn’t been until last night, with the full moon creeping closer, that I’d been able to change in a quiet moment when I wasn’t threatened or angry or protective. Usually, it took strong animalistic emotions or the moon’s power to allow the wolf to come out.

I’d hoped to see much more—to understand more—about the case. Seeing it glow had been vaguely interesting, but it hadn’t enlightened me.

I would have to return the artifact to Bolin, my intern and a fledgling druid, to study. To study and to protect from thieving cousins. His father had a safe, and I doubted anyone in my pack knew where his parents lived.

“Did you learn anything from your scrutiny?” Duncan asked, peering into the fridge. “And when you saidleftovers, did you mean this tub of Greek yogurt? Or these three slices of cheese?”

“I guess I haven’t shopped for a while. There’s bacon we can cook though. Iknowyour carnivorous werewolf genes won’t mind that.”

“Ah, yes. I do love American bacon. Even when it isn’t smothered in chocolate. There aren’t, by chance, any of your bars in here, are there?” He looked into the dairy bin.

“No. You store chocolate at room temperature, not the fridge.” I opened the cupboard to show him my stash. “As to the rest… I saw the case glow, but that’s it.”

“I also noticed it glow and felt its power. Alotof power. What did you say the inscription translates to?”

Having read the words enough times to have them memorized, I recited, “Straight from the source lies within protection from venom, poison, and the bite of the werewolf.”

“It sounds like it’s something to thwart our kind, not help them.”

“I thought learning about it might reveal something about the lost bite magic.”

Duncan looked at me.

“Themostlylost bite magic.” I arched my eyebrows.

When he’d first told me his story about magically being created in a lab by Abrams, who’d used DNA gathered from a long-dead werewolf found frozen and preserved under a glacier, I hadn’t entirely believed it. Since then, I’d witnessed him change into the bipedfuris, the powerful two-legged form that had been lost to werewolves for generations. It was as the bipedfuris that one could bite a human and transmit the magic of our kind.

When Duncan didn’t respond, I shrugged. “My mom has lamented that our people have lost that power, that there’s not as much magic in the world or in werewolves as there used to be. Since the bite can’t create new werewolves, we are, like other magical beings from times past, dying as a species.”

“I don’t know if that can be changed. It sounds like the case, or whatever is in it, protects people byundoinga werewolf bite.”

“I know. I just… have a hunch.” I took a frying pan out of a cabinet and set it on the stovetop for him. “Do you want black coffee—an Americano?—or a latte?”

“Un café allongé.”

“Black, it is.”

As I pulled shots, inhaling the scintillating coffee aroma, I debated my hunch and if I had any evidence for it. Other than the wolf on the lid and the mention of bites in the inscription, nothing indicated the case should have significant meaning for our kind. And Duncan was right. The words implied that the artifact would be for staving off werewolves rather than returning their magic to them. Was I grasping at straws? And, if so, why?

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