Page 86 of Mysteries, Menace, and Mates

Jake nodded. “And whenever that conversation took place, it sounds as if they already knew about the prophecy.” He gazed at Orsini, who was muttering under his breath as he scribbled notes. “I hope he discovers more about it.”

“This is excruciating,” Seth whispered. “He’s holding what could be the equivalent of a shifter bible, you know that, right?”

He laughed. “I feel the same way, but patience, okay? Let the man work. Haven’t we made enough earth-shattering discoveries for one day? For all we know, this could be Ansger’s diary.Youknow the kind of thing….Got up. Had coffee. Brushed my teeth. Walked the dog. Ate lunch.” Except his gut instinct told him what Orsini held in his hands was far more consequential than that.

Brick snickered. “Okay, that’s funny. And they didn’t have coffee back then.”

Jake peered up at him. “That’s allyouknow. Coffee beans have been around since about eight hundred AD. Okay, so we didn’t start roasting them and drinking it until the fifteenth century, but—”

“You need to hear this,” Orsini interjected.

The tremor in his voice was enough to bring about another carpet of goose bumps.

Jake brought his chair over to Orsini and sat facing him, Seth on the floor at Jake’s feet, Brick behind him.

Orsini leaned against the seat cushions, the sheaf in his gloved hands.

“This tells the story of how Ansger and Elric met, thus corroborating theMissal of Godwin. It seems to have been written at the end of Ansger’s life. He and Elric—who became his husband—lived to a ripe old age, and he continued to be friends with both shifters and humans. He and Ansfrid ruled together, lords of their land, and when Ansfrid died first, Ansger was devastated. So were their subjects. It was a time of great mourning, for humansandshifters.”

“Then what happened? How come we’ve become nothing more than a myth?” Jake figured something cataclysmic had to have taken place to have wiped the knowledge of shifters from the minds of men.

“I don’t have the answer to that question. But I did learn something I had not known until now.” Orsini looked Jake in the eye. “The brothers… they were both tigers.”

Seth’s breathing hitched. “That fits. If you saw through Ansfrid’s eyes….” He swallowed.

“What—that my family line descends from the brothers?” Jake still found that hard to swallow.

“Hey, if Aelryn can trace his line all the way back to Ansfrid, then I don’t see why you can’t do the same.” Brick cocked his head to one side. “Don’t youwantto know?”

“Can we discuss this some other time?”

The urgency in Orsini’s voice grabbed Jake’s attention.

“You found something about the prophecy.” Jake’s chest tightened.

Orsini nodded. “Everyone knew about it, or that’s how this reads. In fact they were waiting for it to come to pass. They felt as if it would be soon. Much like in the human book of Revelations in the Bible, predicting the second coming. All the believers thought it was imminent.”

“But what were they waitingfor?” Brick asked.

“It seems the prophecy had something to do with the future of shifters. There was no indication of when it would happen, only that an event would occur that would herald the way to peace between shifters and humans. And as I’ve never seen any mention of this, I can only assume the event hadn’t come to pass. From what you witnessed, it hadn’t happened by the time of their conversation. They must have given up waiting.” Orsini’s eyes widened. “Perhaps this is where man found the only references to shifters—in a prophecy long forgotten.”

“But does it say what the event would be?” Seth demanded.

Orsini paused. “That’s the interesting part.” He walked over to the casket and laid three sheets on the layer of fabric, then stared at the remaining sheet in his hand. “This speaks of mates, as Jake did. In fact it’s the first mention of mates that I can recall seeing in these artifacts.”

Jake drew in a deep breath. “We’ve always assumed there were mates in the past, but that somehow they all disappeared, becoming merely a myth.” A myth so lost in the past that all shifters assumed it might not even be true.

Orsini shook his head. “No. We got that all wrong. TheChroniclestell of a mystic who met with Ansger after his accident. He told him a time would come when all peoples of the world would find the ones fated to be with them. Note I said peoples—it doesn’t say just shifters. And he was very specific about one thing—mates came in threes.”

Jake gaped at Orsini. “Then whatever was in this prophecy, it must have happened. It seems like everywhere I look, there are triads of mates appearing.”

“But that isn’t even the interesting part—thisis.” Orsini held up the remaining sheet. “The emergence of mates would have a beginning, and that would be marked by the arrival of the first triad.” He held it out to Jake. “Tell me this is a coincidence.”

Jake stared at the painting on the thick paper. “Oh my fucking God.”

Seth moved in to take a closer look. He blinked. “But…. No. It can’t be. This has to be a mistake.” Brick peered over Seth’s shoulder and made a strangled noise.

“Jake said he saw Berengar staring at a painting in his vision.” Orsini met Jake’s gaze and shuddered out a breath. “I believethisis what you saw. It’s an image of a triad. As for why Berengar appeared so agitated, maybe he saw this and believed that somehow he was part of the prophecy. An understandable conclusion to arrive at, given the evidence.”

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