Sydney
It’s 4:00 AM when I finally roll off my bed, wondering where the hell I am and how I lost an entire day. My body feels light as air as I walk downstairs in the dark in search of a drink of water, maybe even a cup of coffee, and find that I’m not alone.
Cosette sits at the kitchen table–an informal setting with four chairs–and looks up at me as I shield my eyes from the sudden onslaught of light.
“You survived,” she smirks, straightening up and shifting her weight to face me.
“You should have woken me up yesterday afternoon,” I grumble, leaning against the kitchen island. I run my hand over my face, pinching the bridge of my nose as my body slowly comes back to reality.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she says, clicking her tongue. “There’s a bag of potato chips and some fresh coffee waiting for you.”
“Salt and caffeine,” I hum to myself, rubbing my eyes.
“The best cure for migraines. Or for hangovers.” She eyes me with a slight grin on her face.
“I’m not hungover.” I walk across the kitchen under the glow of Cosette’s soft overhead lighting. She hates what she calls “big lights,” and my home is, therefore, full of lamps and candles.
I’m thankful for the dimness as I pour myself a cup of coffee and grab the bag of potato chips off the counter.
But then I hear a soft coo.
I glance at Cosette over my shoulder. “I was wondering why you were up at this hour.”
Cosette adjusts the baby’s weight against her shoulder while he tries to lift his neck, fails, and squishes his face into the side of her neck instead. “Dalia’s visiting her parents this weekend in Winding Gorge. She just left for the train station.”
I sit across from Cosette and… Blake.
I feel a bit of pride at the fact my suggestion was the name Sarah went with, but I hide the color rising in my cheeks by lifting my mug and drinking deeply. The caffeine blooms through my veins, shedding the lingering ache in my skull. “That’s right. Her younger sister is getting married.”
“So young, too,” Cosette says with a frown. “Seventeen. Can you imagine?”
“We should send flowers, nonetheless.”
“I already have. Funeral flowers.”
“Cosette,” I laugh, unable to help it. Cosette looks smug, but tired, as she gently strokes Blake’s back. He’s rather wiggling this morning, however. “Let me hold him.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You’ve been blacked out for almost a full day–”
“I’m fine, and you look like you could use a cup of the coffee you just made.”
Cosette relents and places Blake in my arms before striding across the kitchen, talking about how long Sarah spent in the atrium yesterday, what they had for dinner, and how Sarah sat in the formal living room downstairs for hours with Blake, cozied up in front of a roaring fire, before she finally went to bed around midnight.
But my focus is on Blake. I haven’t seen him this close before. I did lift him out of Sarah’s arms and stick him in his car seat, but other than that, I’ve kept my distance.
He’s warm and solid in my arms but feels impossibly small. Fragile. Breakable.
I have a sudden flash of memory, thinking of when I literally threw my young cousin–Brie–through the air like she was nothing more than a football in hopes Kenna would catch her, and instinctively tighten my grip on the baby in my arms.
He looks like Sarah… I think. He’s only ten days old or so, but the shape of his eyes is remarkably like hers, not that I’ve been looking at them closely or anything.
His hair is slowly turning from dark brown to something paler, more red, but it’s probably just the amber-hued glow in the room all around us.
He wraps his tiny hand around my thumb and briefly opens his eyes–still the color of all wolf shifter newborns. I hope, deep down, he has his mother’s eyes.
Because they’re the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen before.
“Sarah’s flowers will be here by 7:00 AM,” Cosette says somewhere behind me over the sound of a knife she’s sharpening.
I finish my coffee, forgoing the chips. I feel fine. I feel about as good as I think I can feel as I slowly stand up with Blake in my arms.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Cosette asks as I start to walk out of the kitchen. “I’m just about to start breakfast!”
“He’s falling asleep. I’m going to put him to bed, and then I have to meet Ryan in Silverhide. I won’t be home until later this evening.”
Cosette frowns at me and sets the knife down on the cutting board. She jabs a finger at the baby swing I hadn’t noticed in the corner of the room. “Do not walk up those marble stairs in the dark with that precious angel in your arms, Alpha Sydney. You look like death.”
“It’s always a pleasure talking with you, Cosette,” I grumble, resigned to following her orders.
She’s the real Alpha here, at least in my house.
Blake pouts as I clip him into the swing. He’s rather cute, I have to admit.
* * *
Ryan yawns from the passenger seat of my truck. I glance at him, catching a glimpse of the windblown, gray landscape beyond his window. We’ve been driving for four hours, covering so much ground that our father’s territory is coming to an end right before my eyes.
Shifting would have been nice, especially after spending an entire day in bed, but this journey was far too long to do on foot.
The rocky landscape fades in a rush of thick fog that turns the dreary morning into something out of a creepy nightmare.
But then lights come into view.
Ryan straightens up as I drive my truck along a bumpy, ill maintained dock and right onto the back of the ferry.
“Where exactly are you taking me?”
“I told you it would be a long trip,” I sigh, blinking a few times to adjust to the sudden rush of fluorescent lights. A few other trucks are in front of us, parking in the snug lower portion of the boat. Box trucks, mostly, running supplies to the network of rural islands off the western coast of Crescent Falls.
Ryan gets out of the truck with a groan. I follow him upstairs to the deck where we drink coffee and watch the fog roll out to sea. It’s still morning, close to 10:00 AM, but the sun has barely risen over the watery horizon when the ferry makes its first stop.
Ryan crosses his arms as he looks over the railing, watching the trucks disembark.
“This is about Sasha, isn’t it?”
I nod. I’m thankful Ryan rarely asks questions about my motives for anything. He’s always along for the ride.
We pass another island, then another, everything a wash of gray and white against a bitter winter wind. Most of these islands only have a single pack calling them home.
Finally, we depart the ferry and drive out onto a flat, slightly hilly island with white-washed homes dotted over a three mile or so area.
There’s a single roughly paved street leading through the center of the townsite, but the only thing open is a bar.
Even the clinic, in the same dreary row as a feed warehouse and small grocery store, is closed, shuttered against the winter wind.
“Lively place,” Ryan says, tucking his hands in the pockets of his jacket.
Two wolves ghost past us, their gray coats blending into the fog.
But the eerie silence cracks as we reach the bar.
I duck inside, finding myself cloistered in pale wood paneling and the scent of beer and fish on the grill behind the shabby front counter.
A few men sit near the bar or around high top tables. A trio of wolves accepts brown paper bags of what must be an early lunch from the bartender before brushing past us. Everyone looks at me and Ryan. Everyone is dressed in rainwear, thick sweaters, and waiters.
This place–Mononoke Island–has only one trade.
Fish.
Which is why I find it hard to believe a couple lives here and runs a group home for young children.
I doubt there’s even a school in this pack.
“Long way from the city, boys,” the bartender says as Ryan leans against the bar. “What can I do you for?”
“Too early for a pint?” Ryan asks me, arching a brow.
I give him a dismissive look and turn back to the bartender. “I’m looking for a property nearby. I need to speak to the owners.” I give the bartender the details Sarah told me–how the house was two stories high and painted white with yellow shutters. How there were two large barns with horses, cows, pigs, and sheep. How the couple that ran the group home grew pumpkins, etc.
The bartender nods, leaning an elbow on the bar. “Aye, well, you’ll be looking for the Havisfield property, then.”
“How do we get there?”
“It’s about a mile from here on the far side of the island. You’ll be wasting a trip, though.”
“Why’s that?” Ryan asks, cracking open a peanut shell and popping the contents into his mouth.
“The Havisfields died a few years back. The missus went first then Rodney. Poor old bastard. They’re buried at the temple up the road. The properties’ been empty for some time now, five years or so.”
Ryan gives me a look, cocking his head toward the door. “Do you have archives in your temple?” he asks the bartender.
“‘Course. Every birth and death is accounted for, though we see more of the latter. Not many kids in these parts anymore.”
I rap my knuckles on the bar in thanks and follow Ryan outside.
“So, there’s no chance your missing girl is here, then, huh?”
“She’ll be here,” I tell him, and we make a quick walk through the only street in town which leads directly to a derelict temple of the Goddess.
A cemetery sits below the fog as I push open the wrought iron front gate and step through it.
Ryan makes a choked noise in his throat as he trips over a low-lying headstone. “I can’t see anything.”
I squint up at the sky before we walk up the temple steps. It’s dark, cloudy. Another unforgiving winter day.
But I feel like I’m running out of time with this mission. Every day that passes is another day that Gabriel is on the run and another day he’s free and able to hurt my family, and Sasha, if she’s still alive.
Part of me doesn’t want to believe she’s dead, but as I look up at the mural of the Moon Goddess–painted in her wolf form, with her beasts on either side–I think maybe it’s best she’s gone. Sure, the last six months of my life would have been wasted on finding her.
But she would have been tortured by Gabriel if he’d found her first.
And she would have been a prisoner of the allied kingdoms if I’d found her instead.
Ryan looks around as I walk up to the altar where a huge leather-bound book sits on its surface. Inside, written on paper yellowed with age, hundreds of names are scribbled spanning back nearly a thousand years.
It takes us several minutes to find Mr. and Mrs. Havisfield. Both passed away within the last five years. But neither had children.
“Look,” Ryan says, pointing to the top of the page. I scan up, and my breath catches in my throat.
Sasha.
The entry doesn’t have a lot of information, not even a last name. Only that she died on May 10th the year she turned ten years old.
I look at Ryan. He blows out his breath and steps back, taking a picture of the faded ink. “Can your captive confirm this is the same Sasha you’re looking for?”
I frown at Ryan. I’ve told him very little about my situation at home, and I don’t plan on telling him much else. Hell, he doesn’t even know Sarah’s name.
“I plan to formally interview her, get the details I need to take this evidence in front of the commanders and make it official.” I take a picture of the book as well.
But when we turn toward the door, the sun is peeking through the clouds, and the fog is receding back into the hills.
I have to be sure. A name in a book doesn’t mean much without physical evidence.
And I find it twenty minutes later beneath a gnarled tree. The flat, wide rock is overgrown with dead, frozen grass, but her name is etched into its surface.
Sasha was just a child. She came here, hidden by her own father, to keep her safe and even then…
Ryan stoops, picking something out of the grass. He hands it to me, and I turn it over in the palm of my hand.
It’s a necklace. A tiny moonstone rests in the center of a bronze full moon no bigger than the tip of my thumb.
And on the back, the letter S is inscribed beside the letter G.
I feel sick to my stomach as I slide the necklace into the chest pocket of my coat.
This is confirmation enough.
Mission completed.
Ryan’s phone rings. He blows out his breath and lets it go to voicemail.
“Who was that?”
“Hadley, again. She’s worried about a shop owner in the NZ that she’s friends with. Hasn’t seen her in days, and James won’t let her go look for her, for obvious reasons. Some woman named Sarah. I said I’d go out on patrol for a while after I got home from this.”
I turn to my brother. “Hadley is friends with Sarah?”