Page 5 of Alpha's Fate

“Yeah, for sure.” He agreed, nodding at me. “If it’s in the book and relevant it needs to be found anyways. It’s a clue at least even if it has nothing to do with the Unseens. You found it for a reason.” I nodded in agreement, placing the book back in its place in the preservation quality box so it didn’t get damaged any further.

“I’ve got nothing to do today. My day was set up for research and I think this counts as research.” I grinned at him and he nodded.

“Much more fun research too.” He agreed. He grabbed the backpack he carried everywhere for the sake of this exact scenario and we were off, headed out to the woods. It was unlikely we would find anything today but maybe we’d get a miracle and find it. I tucked my notebook and a few pens into the bag so we’d have those with us as well as our clothes. Once everything was safely stored we left the mansion with a promise to my assistant to finish up the paperwork when we got back.

We made our way to the tree line and into the forest a ways away before we stripped and shifted. It was easy to avoid places we had already been- if the picture of the effigy was right we would have noticed it if we’d seen it before. It was one of those things you didn’t miss even when you were running the forest at top speed. Although I wasn’t sure how large it was, depicted next to the tree I could tell it was large enough that we would be able to see it. It would stand out against the wood and leaves that littered the forest floor.

We searched for hours. The sun was beginning to get low in the sky, casting long shadows through the trees. I had to admit it made me nervous, knowing that something was out there moving in the shadows. Now here we were surrounded by shadows, the darkness spreading slowly as we worked.

Weston got ahead of me at some point. We’d agreed on a signal if we were to get separated and find ourselves with either one of the strange shadows or the stone graven image. As I was running I looked off to the side, veering off the path to look at it and see what it was. I was almost certain this was it. Once I approached I knew for sure- although it looked nearly identical to the drawing in the book I could see there was writing on it. I howled to let Weston know that I had found it and where. He came galloping toward me and dropped the backpack on the ground in front of me before shifting back into a human. I did the same, dying to get closer and get a better look at the thing.I quickly dug in his bag for my notebook and pen. The script on the stone was recognizable to me- it was an ancient form of Shifter writing. I couldn’t read it but with my father’s texts it was possible that we could translate it.

“We’ve got to get back. They’ll be missing us and we can’t translate this out here.” Weston said, and I nodded in agreement. We packed up the bag again before we shifted and took off at full speed back to the compound. It seemed like forever before we actually got there, and it took moments for us to dress and fly up the stairs to my office. Neatly stacked on the desk was a pile of paperwork I decided I’d complete later. It was too much for me to deal with in that moment.

We worked for days. Noses in books while Yari took care of most of the logistics of running the pack. We all knew this was important and we needed to get through it no matter how long it took. There was something there, something that connected the stone to the Unseen pack. We needed this information if we were going to be able to proceed.

“Okay.” I said finally, flipping through my notes. “Okay, so it looks like a riddle that needs to be solved.” I was annoyed. Of course, it wasn’t straightforward. Then again if it were it wouldn’t be a prophecy, it would be an essay, so I wasn’t exactly surprised. “Whoever wrote it was probably talking about things happening from their time, so we’ll have to keep looking in these god forsaken books for correlating information.”

“Well, what’s a few more years of studying some ancient prophecy carved on a stone in the woods which seems to be written by a madman?” Weston’s voice was light and teasing, urging me to laugh. I giggled at him, shaking my head. He wasn’t wrong, though. Who knew how long we’d need to search for the events referred to in the prophecy? But poring through the texts had my brain working already to make the connections between the riddle and the reality of the past.

I had the thing written out, translated as best I could.

‘A curse is cast upon the wood

The blackest light will split the stone

For best or worst beneath the mud

An unseen force will stand as one’

It was inane and vague, but I guessed all prophecies must be.

“Wait, the blackest light?” Weston asked, flipping the pages of one of the books with his gloved hands. “I saw something about black lightning or something in here, some picture. Hang on. I’ll find it.” He said, and I looked over the desk at his book, watching him shuffle through it and then move onto the next book. “It’s one of these really old ones,” he explained, flipping until he found what he was looking for. “Here, look.” He handed over the book and I took it, flipping it so it was right side up. I read over it, checking the date of the book. It was absolutely ancient for the US, penned sometime before Pennsylvania was actually settled. I wondered if it could be Native shifter ancestors. The language was entirely in the ancient Shifter languages so it could also be a translation of an oral story- I just wasn’t sure. Ultimately, I decided that the exact date and time didn’t matter. The drawing depicting the dark lightning and swirling clouds above seemed to be exactly what we were looking for. I read the whole page as quickly as I could, looking for the possible reasons for such an ominous drawing.

“It seems like this is some kind of cataclysmic event… maybe the beginning of the magic in the forest. Maybe something darker, like the curse. Right? It says here that to whoever wrote this there was no context about who caused it, but that the source was undoubtedly magic in nature. Someone must have done this.”

“That makes it sound like the source of the curse. Maybe the magic spread as it wanted which is why parts of the forest arebenign and protective, but other parts are darker and scarier.” Weston suggested.

“Maybe the grove is just part of the curse. I mean it killed someone; we saw it. Maybe it’s just placated there.” I said softly. “We need to go further in.”

Chapter six

Weston

This was a different kind of mission than we were used to. We’d be going into the forest deeper than we ever had before with only our notes and the prophecy to go by. I had no idea how long we’d be there searching for clues or whether we’d find anything at all. To be honest there was no guarantee we’d even be walking out of the forest safely. Or at all.

While we were gone, we would leave the clan in the hands of a kind of council headed by Yari, my Beta. I trusted her implicitly and I knew that if anyone could deal with the dissenters it was her. She’d probably shame them into compliance, honestly. Something we could count on, finally- someone we could rely on to just help us, no strings attached. Yari had even spent a good amount of time making sure Cora and I took breaks to eat and sleep while we worked endlessly on translating the prophecy. Although we still didn’t fully understand it we now had a jumping off point to work off of.

We spoke on and off about the prophecy as we walked. It was for this very reason we chose to walk instead of shift and run. It was important that we made some sense of it all. Our first conclusion was that the calamity was in the future. How far we didn’t know, but with the Unseen making themselves known we thought it was likely going to happen soon. There seemed to be no other reason they’d suddenly make an appearance if something wasn’t going to happen in the near future.

The unseen forces we didn’t even have to discuss. It was fairly clear to us that it had something to do with the mysterious new pack at our gates. Those with the ability to bend shadow to their will and move unseen through the forest. What we couldn’t figure out was the line about the mud. ‘For best or worst beneath the mud.’ Neither of us understood what it meant, but no matter how many times we tried to figure out what it meant we just couldn’t land on a solid solution.

We made our way off of the beaten path, walking farther into the woods than we ever had on foot like this. Generally we were running around as wolves, feeling the air in our fur and just taking in what we passed enough to avoid obstacles. Now as we walked, we noticed more. The color of the leaves was so vibrant here, the canopy thick above us. The dappled sunlight that touched the forest floor around us and as we stared into thesoft beams of light we saw drifting motes of green, like glitter tossed into the air in slow motion. It reminded me of fairy dust, the stuff talked about in my favorite book as a child. They seemed to have their own glow, though, rather than reflecting the light. Maybe they were all around us, we just couldn’t see them without the help of the sun shining down upon them.

There was rustling in the leaves beneath our feet, sounding as if tiny animals were running from us, but we never caught sight of one. Nothing in it made me fearful, though. There was nothing unsettling about the sounds of life around us. Occasionally we did see larger animals, but things seemed to be different about them than usual. The raccoons we saw seemed to be shining with a silvery light, the birds were brilliantly colored, and the most striking were the deer. They were covered in a pale green color that mimicked the motes in the sunbeams and seemed to glow subtly. Their eyes were bright and keen and their antlers looked like wood covered in moss and lichen with small mushrooms protruding from them. A veritable display of the connection between earth and her creatures. They were stunning. Cora and I had shared a look of wonder at seeing them, her reaching out to take my hand.

The deeper we got the more fantastic the world got. The afternoon sun was drawing the shadows long, but not unnerving. They were soft and drifted slowly as if reflected on water. Nothing like the writhing things we’d seen that first day the Unseen had made themselves known to us.

The soft loam beneath our feet thrummed with life and I realized we’d been walking for hours without a break but I didn’t feel tired in the slightest. I only felt drawn deeper into the woods. As night fell the sunlight was replaced by brilliantly white shafts of moonlight brighter than I thought possible this deep into the forest. The trees were so much taller and denser that it seemed implausible that the light could be anything but a guiding light.Something to urge us onward and upward, deeper and deeper. I felt like I should have been nervous but I wasn’t.

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