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“It’s a ceremonial blade, and it’s kind of what I expected to see,” Levi said as he moved around me to the other side of the table. “Our mother said there’d be tools.”
He picked up the next scroll to examine it.
“This shows two paths diverging.” Levi traced the lines until they went off the sheets.
The beast was on one path. The wolf was about to cut her off.
“Two possible outcomes?” Johnny entwined his fingers with mine, pulling me into his side.
“Looks that way.” Levi, so focused on the scroll that he didn’t seem to notice Levi’s move into my space. He picked up the last scroll we had. It showed the black wolf standing on the dead body of the beast. “Triumphant.”
“But there’s another outcome if there’s another path,” I said, unwilling to accept the version of events that the last picture laid out. “This says twelve of fifteen. There are three pictures missing.”
“Looks that way,” Levi finally looked up, noted how close Johnny and I were then scowled. “We need to find the other scrolls.”
“Which are where?” Somewhere impossible to get to, I was sure.
“Italy. In the vaults of the scholars,” Levi said. “I think that’s where we’ll find Kane, too. If I were him, I’d have gone there. He’ll want to know how the story ends.”
“How would he know that there are two paths?” I recalled Kane’s final words to me. How he’d said he wanted to get the truth. “He hasn’t seen these scrolls.”
“He probably has, though,” Johnny said, surprising us both. “He once told me that Dominic invited him to his house for dinner once—when we were all young, and Kane had just formed the pack.”
Of course! Dad had always felt Kane was on his way to success. He would have offered support, encouragement. “My father could have shown him these scrolls.”
“I think he did…because he told Kane that in a few years, the Duke brothers would be an integral part of the Larsen conglomerate.” Levi shuffled the scrolls together, gently placing them in a neat pile. “At the time, Kane thought he meant some kind of business deal, but now I’m realizing that he meant something bigger. He advised Kane to start hunting down the rest of the scrolls.”
“My dad knew. He knew what was going to happen. All of it.” I stumbled back a step. “That means Kane knew, too. He knew about the three bites.”
“Kane didn’t know. He would have told me, if he had figured it out. He just said that your dad showed him a bunch of ancient artifacts…papers, a blade. Your dad only let him take a quick look, not enough time to study and understand them,” Levi said. “He mentioned it to me like your dad was quirky—not like, this is tied to our family’s prophecy.”
“The stories your father told you…” Johnny turned me toward him. “He was trying to tell you—”
“Fairy tales…”
“About your destiny,” Johnny finished.
“So this is all inevitable? No avoiding it?” I didn’t know why, after everything that had happened so far, I was still in denial.
“Looks that way.” Levi pointed to the scroll. “But there’s an alternative ending, and somewhere deep down in his thick skull, Kane knows it. He’ll want to figure how it ends so he can make sure it works for us.”
“How it could end,” Johnny said.
“How it will end,” I said, motioning for Levi to come to me. “Let’s go get Kane. He and I are due for a heart-to-heart.”
It was time for me to get my man and put our own twist on how this story would end.
