Page 16 of The Awakened Wolf

“No,” he said. “I felt him die. My wolf. His spirit left me with this form, but it’s hollow and nothing fills the hollow. I don’t want to eat or drink, or sleep, or wake. That’s why I know I’m not going to get better. I don’t even want to.”

I looked at Kiana, still stunned. “He needs a doctor.”

They both said, “No” at the same time, and then my father added, “What will be will be, Elyse. Everyone has their time.”

Yeah, nope. Plans to get Jayla in to see him began whirring in my head. There was no way I was accepting, ‘Everyone has their time.’ I wasn’t sure what was making my father accept it, other than that he’d never fully healed from losing my mother and never fully bonded with either of us. But that didn’t explain how he’d lost his wolf—if he even had.

My gaze traveled back to my sister. She leaned forward in her seat, her hands awkwardly holding my father’s. Her cardigan gaped a bit at the neck, exposing the birthmark that mirrored my own. My eyes traced the four symmetrical dots. How had I not seen the resemblance to a fanged bite all these years?

Holy Halo.

An idea slammed into me, and I was jumping up and fumbling at my father’s robe before I’d even let it fully explode.

“Elyse!” Kiana protested, grabbing at me. “What are you doing?”

With a duck honed by years of dodging her sneak attacks, I escaped and pulled open my father’s robe at the top, exposing the marks from her bite. The four punctures over his right clavicle were still unhealed, but rather than suppurating like a diseased wound in a human, they’d shriveled into dry, purpling puckers, surrounded by darkening flesh.

“I knew it,” I murmured, as both my father and sister shoved me back.

With an insistent tug, Kiana pulled me several steps away from Father, saying something about shaking sense into me, that I must have become overcome with concern for his condition. Dazed, my mind kept circling around what this must mean.

Mirror twins.

One with the mark of Chann, able to birth the wolf.

And one with the mark of Marrak, able to murder the wolf.

“What in the name of the Gods is wrong with you? Have you lost your mind?” My head bobbled as she shook me, and I snapped back to the moment, gaping at her with equal parts horror and wonder.

“You did it.” I pointed at her shoulder. “You have the mark of Marrak. You killed Father’s wolf.”

For the first time that I could remember, my sister was speechless. Her mouth worked, jaw opening and closing as it changed its plans over and over, but nothing came out. For a full ten seconds.

“You’re insane,” she finally sputtered.

“No, it makes total sense,” I said, halfway smiling from the sheer pleasure of figuring it out. “I have the mark of Chann. My bite creates the wolf. You have the opposite mark. You thought you had no power, but you have the opposite power.”

She scoffed, letting go of my upper arms in a half-shove, her voice rising. “Please. Now you’re making things up. None of the Old Stories say anything about Marrak having a different power than Chann. And how could Marrak have broken off and grown his own pack if he did?”

Her arguments were valid. Yet I knew I was right. I didn’t know why the Old Stories failed to mention Marrak’s lupicidal capabilities, or how he grew a pack without having the bite of creation like Chann, but what had happened to my father was proof, as far as I was concerned.

“Will one of you please tell me—” Father interjected, the boom of his voice belying his weakness. “—what in the name of Leto you’re talking about? About your bites creating and killing wolves? Am I hearing that right?” He tugged at the satin lapels of his robe, cinching the knot at the waist. “And why does my youngest feel the need to disrobe me without consent?”

If I weren’t already filled with trepidation over what I’d learned, concern for my father’s future, and frustration with my sister’s intentional misunderstanding, I’d have bloomed crimson from scalp to toes. I didn’t know if I’d ever heard my father use the word disrobe. As it was, my emotion-making-machinery was too busy to focus on silly feelings like embarrassment. Because if I was right, the implications for me, Kiana, and shifter kind, were overwhelming.

Then the important part of what he’d said, the genuine confusion wrinkling his brow, registered, and I turned back to Kiara, heart pounding. “He doesn’t know? About me? And Evan? How can he not know? Where did you house my—uh, the new shifters?”

I had to stop thinking of them as mine.

But seriously, where were they? I hadn’t seen them, or Evan, at all since I’d been back in the Bronx high-rise.

Oh Gods, I never should have trusted her.

They’re around…

Oh, finally a new subject you’ll talk about?

My wolf went back to sulking, but in my periphery, there was now a sense of beings, of living things. Their energy was distant but vibrating. I’d noticed the sensation, more like the waft of an intermittent breeze than a persistent aura, when we were in the subway station, but I’d been so freaked out I thought I was imagining it. Then when I was at the Plaza, it was so faint I’d thought it was gone. But now it was back, brushing against me gently in waves.

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