Page 17 of Fate Unchained

“Right.” He studied her. “Is that a librarian of some sort?”

She nodded curtly.

It figured. She had the wide-eyed, blinking look of someone who spent a bit too much time out of the sun. “With all that reading, you should have read more about the danger of snowstorms.”

She didn’t answer, but her lips tightened.

Out of all the women in Ulterra, the rune chose a librarian who knew nothing about the outdoors. And he was stuck with her for a month.

If his pack brothers wanted to let a mate trap them into a life stuck looking after another, all the power to them. He wasn’t interested. Not one single person—immortal, demi-immortal, or otherwise—walking this earth was trustworthy. He’d seen it proven over and over again. First with his mother, then with the pack falling apart after they’d thought their Alpha died. He relied on himself. End of story. He’d started life that way, and he’d end his life the same.

Having a soul again was shitty. He could shift back into his human form, which might be interesting, but that was all part of making him more vulnerable. There was a reason Wulf, the first Alpha, made the choice for all vulk to stop having souls. Only when they were strong—soulless—could they kill all their enemies, including the souldrinkers, the leshak.

“A bibliosoph, huh?” The paper he’d wrestled away from her remained in his hand, forgotten after the rune arrived. He looked at it now. “Where did you get this? Why did you tear this one page out?”

Her eyes flashed. “I would never tear a page out of a book.”

He raised it to his nose and inhaled. The stench of sulfur stained the pages, so strong it masked Lilah’s scent even though she’d just held it.

His brows rose. This wasn’t what he’d expected. Sulfur meant spawn. What was Lilah doing working with spawn? The sulfur also masked any other scents. Like who, other than Lilah, may have also held the page. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew where this page came from.

He scanned the words again. The letters danced like they always did, but he thought about what Lilah said about helping a boy with a similar problem.

Growing up, he’d been laughed at. Mocked for being the big, bad vulk who couldn’t manage a few words. Or told he didn’t need to read. All he needed to learn was how to kill so he could protect Ulterra. So, despite loving stories, he mostly stopped trying to read. That didn’t mean he didn’t like listening to stories, especially when Juri was telling one of them.

Lilah hadn’t laughed or mocked him. She’d said reading for him was possibly like figuring out a code. He squinted down at the page.

It didn’t contain typeface like a book; it was handwritten, the sentences sloping slightly because the writer hadn’t written in a perfectly straight line.

“What is this?” The words were all nonsense, a mix of letters and numbers.

Lilah came and stood next to him, her arm brushing his. Her faint, floral scent floated into the air, and he breathed it in.

She wasn’t afraid to be near him. He shifted a little closer, and she didn’t move away.

Lilah pointed at the weird words with numbers inside. “This was the original writing. It’s all coded, but not by a rune. You see this a lot with hidden messages. It was another layer of protection the author used.” She pointed at the tiny writing above each line. “Before I got this, someone had already worked out the code and translated each passage. I verified its accuracy. That’s what I read to you.”

His stomach sank. Only one book was like this in all of Ulterra. His hunch was right—this wasn’t a book, it was a grimoire, and the exact one he was looking for. A necromancer named Hoyt was the last to have it, and before he died, he’d been working on its translation. “This isn’t your handwriting? You didn’t do this?” he asked, just to be sure. But he already knew.

She shook her head. “No.”

So how had Lilah gotten this? The grimoire was stolen by one of Hoyt’s necromancer friends, a shadowy figure who ran a group of magicwielders called the Dark Cabal. If she had it, she must be one of their numbers.

Her fingertip rested on the odd symbol at the bottom of the page. It was the same symbol that had leaped forward when she’d formed the cage. “What is that?” He pointed at the image, the side of his finger brushing against hers.

“It’s a rune. It’s visible now, but it wasn’t before. I used my power to call it forward. Whoever translated this page before, couldn’t see it, or they didn’t know how to call it forth.”

“You can work with runes?” She hadn’t moved away, and he bent closer to her, examining the paper again. The words swam, but he finally found the sentence he was looking for. He placed his claw on it. For she was one of the zorzye, and a wyrdstaave, and when she spoke the particular magic of her kind, they affected him. Lilah had affected him all right. She’d trapped him, and now he was bound to her. “You’re a wyrdstaave?”

She shrugged. “Possibly. It’s a skill someone with magic is born with, but I’m not a magicwielder.”

“No. You’re a zorzye.”

Of course she was a zorzye, otherwise the rune wouldn’t have shown up. The zorzye were the true mates for the vulk, but their numbers dwindled after Wulf made his choice. They were the lightwielders, wielding a white light at night. Exactly as Lilah had when she’d worked with the rune to trap him.

He rubbed his mouth. She was also the one this grimoire was saying could slay him.

He straightened. No zorzye was going to best a vulk, no matter what her skills were. And he was going to get her to tell him everything.

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