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With the illumination was a mating registration, the bride-price information, and then a few unusual letters. The original recordings were in a runic language none of us spoke, but there was a relatively contemporary Old Norse translation that Demetrius summarized for us. There had been a dust-up regarding the she-wolf and who her true mate was, because apparently, the mate she officially registered with was hersecondmate, not her original mate. A local Alpha had challenged the legitimacy of this second mating (obviously), and the she-wolf’s Alpha father and the she-wolf herself had supplied documentation justifying why the second mating was legitimate. The Chronicler of the day had sided with the she-wolf, stating something that translated tosufficient tears had been shed.
Demetrius was very clear that the Chronicler’s language intended it to be understood that there had been an agreed-upon amount of tears, and said tears had been shed, and since this had been done, this second mating was acceptable. The backstory told by the she-wolf and her father had to have been the origin of the diamond-coated princess wolf and her collar of many colors. Except it didn’t have the happy ending Mikkel had said it did.
The she-wolf princess had found heroriginalmate at a Great Meeting, and he wasn’t politically desirable. Or couldn’t pay a good bride-price. Or both. That part was a bit unclear. The male had sought to prove his worth (if not his wealth) to the Alpha by braiding a collar of many colors for his mate from the banners he had captured in battle, and gifted her fine earrings made of blue shells (limpets) that perfectly matched her eyes, since the creatures in the shell never let go.
The daughter’s Alpha father had not been satisfied and had become enraged at the male’s Alpha had insisted on the mating over his protests. The Alpha had taken it as an insult to his daughter. He attacked the mate with a silver hammer, bashing him on the head and tying him up. He’d also tied up his daughter and then used something the Archivists and Demetrius agreed was best translated as “tears of the blue mirror” to force the wolves to forget each other.
Apparently, it worked… except “forget” didn’t literally meanforget.As in amnesia. Because the account made it very clear that the male losing his memory, wandering off, and not knowing who or what he was was not the intended effect of the tears. His lost memory was blamed on the blow to the head. The account boasted that the Alpha had hit the male so hard with the hammer that it had shaped the hammer like a helmet.
The she-wolf had “forgotten” her mate, but refused to abandon him. She’d escaped her father before the tears could be used a second time and tracked down her (ex?) mate. Except he was convinced he was human and wandered the world looking for his past, while she followed him as a faithful hound, wearing the collar of many colors and keeping the limpets tucked in the braids. At night, while he slept, she would shift to human form so she could whisper his true name in his ear, hoping he’d remember, but he never did. He eventually met and fell in love with a human woman (believing he was human), and the she-wolf, still in wolf form, stayed by his side even through this (clinging to hope he would regain his senses) until the human woman got pregnant. Knowing all hope was lost, and she could not permit hybrids to be born, especially not to a father who had lost all memory of what he really was, the she-wolf had killed them, and placed her collar of many colors and limpet earrings on the human wife before fleeing back to her pack.
She was heartbroken, but her mother convinced her to “take the tears” as her father had originally intended. They selected another mate for her, used the tears, and lived happily ever after.
“In all the reading I’ve done,” I said in the horrified silence after Demetrius finished story time, “there hasneverbeen an open admission about the Gaia-chosen mate being rejected, a new mate being selected, and then held out as fully legitimate. Much less any method to actually legitimize the union. It’s always very circumspect language.”
Demetrius, chin in his hand, raised his eyes to me. “It would seemtaking the tearsorbathing in tearsis a euphemism during this era for using the liquid in the vial.”
“Is there anything about where the vial came from?” an Archivist inquired.
“No. You should research it,” Demetrius said.
I shifted on my stool. I had a pinching pain over both of my hips from sitting too long. “So the records with the limpets are tears-pairs. And the dead bodies in the illuminations must be the discarded mate. Or mates. And with the vial lost, Alphas went back to their political tendencies, just this time… without Gaia’s blessing.”
Demetrius stared at me, unblinking, and more importantly, he didn’t correct me.
“But She gave us the power to do it at all,” I told him.
Liquified god-juice. The sweat from Gaia’s brow, perhaps? Or a sweet poison we delude ourselves into drinking? “It’s how we save the species. Assuming we manage tonotstart a war for control of the vial.”
Because my father would have gone to war for this vial.
And my mother just might have as well.
And the GranitePawdefinitelywould.
Breaking
The flight back to the US was miserable. The fever started, because heat wasn’t just youfelthot. It was an actual fever. And the pain of knowing exactly where every part of your anatomy was as your ovaries tried to erupt and everything got painfully inflamed and engorged and while a human couldn’t smell it, werewolf males could.
I huddled up against the blissfully cool plane window, shivering as flashes of hot and cold ran over and through my body, and prayed I’d stay sane long enough to get off the tin can before Hamid really lost his shit and demanded to take me to the hospital. Because Hamid was giving Demetrius and Searle theI do not trust you lotlook while Demetrius and Searle were giving him thestay out of it, outsiderlook. Hamid looked for a chance to speak to me alone, but Searle and Demetrius kept too watchful an eye.
So I also had to silently pray Hamid didn’t go up to the pilots and tell them to land the plane where law enforcement would greet us with great enthusiasm.
Fortunately, Hamid did not do that, and he just made himself a general pest. Demetrius and the humans were immune to my scent.
Searle was not.
And I wasn’t immune to how my brain tried to trick me into thinking Searle was suddenlyveryattractive and digging up each memory I had of his genitals. What he looked like, flaccid and hard (because morning wood was a thing, and Searle had never disguised that), what they felt like when he held me against him, that—
I shivered and twitched and tried not to moan with despair and anguish, because every memory of Sterling justhurt. Every memory was thelastmemory of our last night in Florida, followed by the knowledge ofhe had walked away.
We landed in Virginia and I managed to get off the plane without Hamid trying to make off with me. They tucked me into the backseat, with Demetrius taking the wheel and telling Searle to stick his head out the window.
Demetrius called Marcella, then called Timothy and told him to find somewhere else to sleep for a few days.
Utterly. Fucking. Mortifying.
Only mated she-wolves went into heat, but the hunger wasn’t just for their mate. The mate wasn’t immune to her charms, but neither was any other unmated male. Heats were aoh hellfor any pack because of the chaos that resulted. Thankfully, they were also uncommon, especially in she-wolves who were regularly shifting, living as humans, or taking MoonDark. Many she-wolves went their entire lives without a single heat, or only once or twice.
