Pack Ruin (The Splintered Bond #3)

7. Ancient History

7

Ancient History

FLOR

S till in the long nightgown, I sat with a book on the table in front of me, one so old it was handbound and handwritten, staring at a picture of a wolf I knew. Brand’s other grandmother—his mother’s mother—stood behind me, her baleful glare burning a hole in the back of my head.

Samuel had escorted me into the library, introduced me to his mother-in-law, asked her to allow me free run of the space, and fled like a coward. She’d introduced herself as Verona Prestwick, warned me that she would tear off my hands if I so much as wrinkled a page of any book in the room, and then gone utterly silent.

Watching. Lurking, more like a dragon guarding its hoard than a wolf.

To be fair, she looked like a tall, skinny, older female version of my Mountain mate, her eyes the exact shade of brown his had been. She had a few wrinkles on her neck, but none around her eyes, like she’d stopped smiling a good long while back.

She’d sniffed at my gown and peered at the dangling tag on my ear, but said nothing about the still-present odors of Brand’s and my morning activities. I would have excused myself to change and shower, but for some reason, this felt similar to the time I’d come upon a mountain lion in the woods of Southern. Like it was smarter not to attract attention to myself for the moment.

After a few minutes of reading the book she’d given me, one that was all about my mysterious black wolf, I figured how I looked or even smelled was the last thing that mattered. My Grigor was famous. Well, infamous. He’d killed more shifters and humans than I was comfortable thinking about, especially since the phrase “wiped out whole villages” popped up a few times in reference to what they called his Reign of Terror.

In the 1500s.

Fuck a damned duck.

If it was my Grigor, he really was too old for me, by a few hundred years at least. I peered at the illustration of the original Grigor in human form, which was identical to the man I’d seen naked in the woods in Ontario, wondering why the eyes on the page seemed to follow me. The words beneath him were simple, but I read them again, my gut twisting.

After killing his father in retribution for the death of his mate Anya, Grigor Dimitrivich rained down terror on both shifter and humankind, often slaughtering entire villages in a berserker rage. Born of a sorceress and an Alpha, he was as powerful as he was corrupt. The first War Council was established to defeat him, but when the European shifter army assembled, Grigor rendered ten thousand shifters unconscious in a burst of power, then vanished.

I knew the important part was about the War Council, and the whole sorceress mother thing, but my eyes kept returning to the name: Anya.

He had a mate. Had she been a true mate? Had he loved her? It had been over five hundred years since she’d died. Shit, could he still love her?

Ugh, I was pathetic. I glared at his picture, wondering how the hell I’d ended up mooning over the world’s most evil witch wolf.

“Do you even know how to read?” Brand’s grandmother snapped at last from behind me, each word icy.

That terrible flush of shame rushed through me, like it always had whenever I was teased about not knowing as much as others. Back at Southern, I would have stayed quiet, or maybe apologized. But I was Brand’s mate—which might have been the problem, come to think of it. She didn’t think I was worthy of him.

I wasn’t. But he’d claimed me anyway.

I looked up from the illustration of Grigor. “I do know how to read, Granny Verona,” I said, liking her flinch at the word Granny. “Not very well, to be honest. They kicked me out of school after ninth grade.”

“What?” Her eyes narrowed, and I knew I was flushing red, but I held her gaze.

“After I turned fifteen, I had to work if I wanted to eat. I didn’t get to go to school, or have books of my own. Well, I had a few. Old paperbacks, moldy ones that the other shifters had finished.” I gently closed the cover of the book, stood, and carried it back to the shelf. “I would have given an arm for the chance to read all these. A chance to learn the history of our kind, to be able to learn firsthand what the pack law really said, and not just the parts Alpha Callaway read out loud.” I thought about the library back at Glen’s pack, the sheer number of books there. “If I was ever rich, I’d probably spend as much money on books as food.”

“You weren’t allowed to have books? You didn’t have a library at your pack?” She sounded as shocked as Margarette had been when she learned about the unranked not having food privileges.

“Of course not. Can you imagine what would have happened if we’d had this?” I waved at the rows of books, all neatly shelved, filling the room from floor to ceiling, then rested a hand on the stack that Verona had been reading when I came in. She’d told me she was hunting for information about shifters with white eyes, and the topmost book was titled Legends of the Moonblessed . I itched to read it, and all the rest. I needed the knowledge that was collected in this place. “These aren’t just books, Verona. They’re power.”

She scowled, then sighed. “Damnit, I didn’t want to like you. Every shifter within a hundred miles knows you’ve let more than one male claim you, which has not happened in”—she stood, sliding a book out of the stack and opening it to a page marked with a silk ribbon—“one hundred and forty-three years, to be precise. And those shifters were identical twins, which kept the packs from executing them. Some excuse about twin souls. Though they did cast them out.”

My throat tightened. “Is this pack planning to cast me out? Cast us out?”

“Over my dead body, and as many of theirs as I would take out if they tried,” she muttered. “No, whatever happened to my grandson’s eyes has set the rumor mill going, but kept anyone from thinking there’s a sinister connection.”

I frowned. “Because they’re the color of the moon?”

Her stern expression softened as she pulled up a chair next to mine. “Not only that. This pack knows him and his family. We’ve followed the old ways for a very long time, or tried to. They trust us to explain how all of this—your bonds, his eyes—is the moon’s will.”

I wasn’t sure it was, but she snapped her fingers, instructing me to read over her shoulder as she found a page in the Legends tome, and I obeyed. “The Legend of the Moonblessed Alphas.” I read aloud, and she listened with her eyes half closed.

“Once upon a wolf moon, in the coldest winter the world has known, a pup was found outside the borders of a pack, alone and freezing. The Alpha Mate brought him into the pack, and nursed him alongside her own pup. The pups were inseparable.

When the two brothers grew old enough to shift, they went into the wilderness with the Alpha, who taught them to take fur and run with joy beneath the moon. Smaller than his brother, the adopted pup fell behind as they ran for the first time in wolf form.

That is what saved him.

Far ahead, the Alpha and his child were set upon by traitors to the pack, and though he fought with all his strength, the Alpha was murdered. The traitors also left the Alpha’s pup for dead.

No one but the moon saw the wolf that found his dying brother. No one but the moon witnessed his pain.

And when the adopted brother prayed to the moon for help, no one knew how that help arrived.

But when the two brothers returned to the pack, one was a wolf with midnight fur, the other a bright white, with moonblessed eyes, and both shared a bond as Alpha.

They ruled until the mountains crumbled, and the seas rose and washed away the forest, and the moon cast its shadow over the sun.”

I stopped reading. “It’s a fairy tale.”

“Yes. This one is the only reference to moonblessed eyes I’ve found in two days of searching.”

“Is it enough to keep the pack from wanting to burn me at the stake? I already got that reaction from Northern.” I tried not to let how much that had hurt show on my face, but I wasn’t sure I succeeded. Verona’s eyes flashed dark, and her lips tightened.

“I would imagine you did. That pack is all muscle and no memory of what we were given in the first place. And what is required of us in return.”

“What is required, Verona?” I asked bluntly. “I don’t know much about who we are. Shifters, I mean. I don’t know enough, and I want to learn. I need to, for Brand.”

The woman’s face remained every bit as stern, but her gaze was filled with something like acceptance. “I’ll teach you.” Then she actually smiled. “But perhaps you could put on some clothing first.”