The settlement's heart beats slower than the periphery. Here, the cabins are larger, built from darker wood. But the silence here is deeper, too—respect or dread, I can't tell which.
Grogan leads the way. He hasn't touched me since the lodge, since I pulled their threads and felt the architecture of us, but I feel his attention constantly now, a warm weight at the back of my neck.
The others flank me—Rhett's massive presence to my left, Jarek's clinical observation to my right, Theron and Hrollok behind us like mismatched bookends of charm and bile.
We stop before a structure that dwarfs the others. Two stories of dark timber and stone, with solar panels on the roof and a satellite dish half-hidden by ivy.
But the windows are dusty, the porch sagging, the garden overgrown with weeds that have choked out the flowers. A leader too ill to maintain appearances, or a man too tired to care what appearances cost anymore.
"Remember," Grogan murmurs, his hand on the door handle, "he is old. His strength is... variable. But his word remains absolute until the solstice proves otherwise."
"Is he going to try to kill me?" My voice comes out steady. I'm not sure when I learned to fake that particular steadiness, but it feels like armor now.
Grogan's gray eyes meet mine. "No. Thorne is many things, but he is not cruel without purpose."
The door opens into warmth and shadow. The cabin smells of woodsmoke and old books, of medicine and wolf, of time running out.
The main room is cavernous, lined with shelves holding artifacts I don't recognize—claw-marked stones, ancient texts, the skull of something that was never quite natural.
By the fire, a skeletal figure sits wrapped in furs and blankets despite the August heat.
Thorne Whiteclaw is dying. There's no gentler way to see it.
His skin stretches paper-thin over bones that have grown too prominent, too sharp. His hands, resting on the carved arms of his chair, tremble with a palsy that speaks of systems shutting down one by one.
White hair, thin and patchy, clings to his scalp. He looks like a strong wind could scatter him across the stones.
But his eyes. His eyes are amber, sharp as broken glass, and they snap to me the moment I cross the threshold.
"Come closer, girl." His voice rasps like dry leaves skittering across concrete. "Let me see what all the fuss is about."
I move forward. The men stay at the edges of the room—respect, protocol, or caution, I don't know.
My bare feet make no sound on the worn rugs. When I reach his chair, I don't kneel. I stand, letting him look up at me, letting him see the girl who was supposed to die but didn't.
Thorne studies me for a long moment. Then he lifts one trembling hand. "Your hand."
I give it to him. His skin is hot, feverish. The moment our palms align, something jolts through me—not the warm pulse of the bond I share with my five, but something older.
Colder.
A recognition that bypasses my conscious mind and speaks directly to the old scar on my collarbone.
Thorne's eyes widen. Just a fraction—enough to tell me he felt it too.
"There's something sleeping in your blood," he murmurs, his thumb tracing a pattern across my knuckles that might be accidental or might be ritual. "Something dormant, confused."
He tilts his head, amber eyes narrowing.
"Something that shouldn't be there if you're what your grandmother claimed you were."
My throat tightens. "What was I supposed to be?"
"Human." He releases my hand, but the sensation of his examination lingers, like ice water in my veins. "Pureblood Holloway. A blank slate for the ritual to wipe clean."
He sinks back into his furs, exhausted from even this small effort, but his gaze remains cutting.
"The ritual was designed to fail, girl. The stone in that clearing has drunk Holloway blood for three centuries. Your great-great-grandmother. Your great-aunt. Every daughter of your line for ten generations died on that rock, their lives given to pay the treaty price."
The fire crackles. I hear my own heartbeat, too loud, too fast.
"They knew," I whisper. "All of them. Every woman who raised a daughter in my family line. They knew what they were sending them to."
My knees want to buckle. I lock them. I think of Margot's cold gray eyes watching me drink that tea. Of her thin smile when I finished the cup.
Fourteen years. Fourteen years of her looking at me like I was a burden, a debt, a ghost of the son she lost. And all that time, she was waiting for the night she'd send me to the stone to die like all the others.
"Why didn't I die?" The question tears out of me, ragged around the edges.
"That," Thorne says, "is the question that should be keeping you awake." He looks past me, to where Grogan stands shadowed by the doorframe. "You ask if she has Alpha potential. What I sense is... different. The magic in her is stirring. Like a door being tried from both sides."
Grogan steps forward, his composure cracking slightly. "Can she stabilize the territory? Can she hold the coalition together?"
"I don't know." Thorne closes his eyes, his breathing shallow and careful. "What flows through her veins isn't standard lycanthrope blood. It's something older, or something newer. Something... borrowed." He opens his eyes again, pinning me with that amber gaze. "Your mother, girl. What do you know of her?"
I blink. "She died in a car accident when I was four."
"Convenient." Thorne's lip curls. Then he trails off, coughing into a handkerchief that comes away stained. "Find out what she was hiding. The answer isn't in the Holloway bloodline. It's in whatever entered it."
The room spins.
My mother. The photos Margot burned. The stories she never told.
I have two memories of her—laughter that sounded like wind chimes, and hands that smelled like lavender. That's all. That's the entire inheritance of love she left me before the tree wrapped itself around their car.
"She was human," I say, but it sounds like a question even to me.
"Go," Thorne waves a trembling hand, dismissing us. "I need my strength for the full moon, and you've taken enough of it."
He sinks deeper into his chair, suddenly frail again, suddenly just an old man dying by a fire. But his words hang in the air like smoke.
I turn to leave. Rhett moves to support me, his massive hand hovering near my elbow without quite touching, ready if I fall.
At the door, I pause. "Thorne."
"Girl?"
"If I am what you say. If there's something else in my blood. Does that make me more dangerous? Or less?"
The old Alpha's amber eyes gleam in the firelight.
"It makes you unknown," he says. "And in a world built on tradition, unknown is the most dangerous thing of all."
I step out into the afternoon sun. The five of them surround me immediately, their bonds pulsing with questions they don't voice. I look at the mountains, at the endless green that hides so many secrets.
My mother had secrets. I guess I do too.