Chapter 164
AURORA
I returned to the pack house as dawn was creeping over the woods, graying the sky.
I told Trajan I was all right.
We both knew I wasn’t.
I went to my rooms. The first thing I did was open the door and check on my children. They were asleep, thank the goddess. The sound of their soft breathing filled me with peace.
I went into the room just to touch their cheeks and breathe in their scents.
When everything else was wrong, being with them centered me like nothing else.
Nothing…except those few times I had been at peace with Dane.
I pushed him from my mind and closed their door softly, then padded to my own bedroom.
There was no way I was going to be able to sleep, not with Dane’s kiss still scorching my lips. Not when I could feel the hot imprint of his hands on my body.
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My fists clenched. Damn the Nameless for tricking us. Damn. him for taking Dane from me.
I did something I’d never done before and hit the wall with the side of my fist in rage.
I hit it just below a shelf that held a box of things I hadn’t gone through since Dane had turned. I was stronger than I thought, because the box jumped and fell from the shelf. Its contents spilled on the floor in front of me.
Sighing at myself, I knelt and started putting things back. It was mostly random junk. An old watch, some jewelry I didn’t wear, that kind of thing.
But that wasn’t all. My fingers brushed the soft leather cover of the old journal. The one filled with symbols.
The one that had tricked us into releasing the Nameless.
I pulled back as if burned, but I couldn’t just leave it on the floor.
Gingerly, I picked it up. It had flipped open to one of the middle pages. As I touched it, I felt a small pop of magic.
The symbols I had struggled for years to read started to unravel before my eyes. I gasped, but before I could react, it was as if they reformed into new words.
They were still written in symbols, but somehow…I could read these words with ease. No struggle. No headaches. Just read
Chapter 164
them, as if I was reading my native tongue.
I flipped to the front page.
This is the journal of Celeste DeVerc…
My heart jumped into my throat as realization crashed over me.
I’d had this journal my whole life. Esther DeVere said my mother gave it to her when she “sold” me to them as a baby.
I never believed my mother had sold me. Not since becoming an adult and realizing what horrible people the Reeds were.
This journal was supposed to be some mysterious relic of the past. No one could explain why I could read it.
Now I knew, as if my mother, herself, had whispered it into my
ear.
This journal was written for me, and the Reeds had tried to corrupt it. They had enchanted it so it wouldn’t just include knowledge my mother wanted me to have–like the ceremonies to identify wolves chosen of the goddess and imbue them with power.
It included the ritual that had freed the Nameless.
The Reeds had always meant for me to do what I had done. They had always meant the Nameless to be free.
I’d known that, but seeing how deep into my past their
I started on the first page. I had never known my mother’s voice, but I was hungry for her words.
I read and read. Celeste DeVere, it turned out, had been a woman on a mission. The goddess had called her. To do what, she never directly said. But it definitely had something to do with the relic, and it was important enough for her to leave behind her family and everything she knew and travel to the United States.
That was where the Reeds had caught her. Trapped her. At the time, she was already pregnant with me.
my
I closed the book with shaking fingers, unable to read about mother’s captivity. There would be time for that, and soon. But for now, this journal spoke more clearly than any source we had about the Nameless, the goddess, and the relic.
As I closed the book, a page from the back fluttered loose. I picked it up.
It was a spell. One written in a different person’s hand. Goddess, now that the book was free from the enchantment placed on it by the Reeds, how many surprises would this book hold?
I picked up the spell and read it. Then I shot to my feet.
A holding circle. A spell Morwen said had been lost.
I would have another chance to rescue Dane.
