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Marcella handed me the scrolls. “You may crack them. They were left to you.”
My heart skipped every third beat while maintaining a frantic rhythm as it did its best hapless college student running through the dark forest imitation. I tried to sort out which one to open first. It all started to blur together.
That horrible day. When I’d prayed for her to justdie, but been terrified every single breath would be her last. Howalonewe’d been. Dad had been down in his workroom. Jerron had been at practice. She’d beendying, and they’d never sat with her. They’d gone into their own worlds and left her alone.
“Summer?” Marcella asked.
I realized I’d put a hand over my lips to hold in sobs and the tears were spilling down my face. My hand was soaked. I looked at it without understanding. Tasted tears on my lips. Felt them sliding down my wrist.
“I’m sorry,” I said, voice hoarse. “I was just... thinking about the day she died.”
“Did something unusual happen?” Marcella asked, brow drawing together. “She died of cancer, didn’t she?”
“Yes, yes, she did.” I inhaled through my nose and drew myself up with a shudder. “I stayed with her. Dad was in his workroom, and Jerron had gone to school. It happened sofast. But I... no, I meannow, I can’t comprehend leaving my mate to die upstairs while I’m in the basement pushing papers around.”
“You were with her when she died?” Demetrius asked.
I averted my gaze to the wall, and pulled at some tears while my eyes stung and watered. “Went to get Dad and told him she was dying, to come up, and he didn’t. Went back to her. Don’t remember how long it took. Went back downstairs to tell him. He... justlookedat me. I thought he didn’t believe me. I force-shifted and started barking at him and tried to bite him, and he kicked me across the room. Deserved it, I guess.”
I cracked the seal on all the scrolls. With my tear-blurred vision I skimmed the lines of text—each written on the parchment in my mother’s hand—and chose the one with the least amount of text to try to make sense of.
I wished I hadn’t.
I had to read it a dozen times. It was a formal assertion, complete with my mother’s paw print and wax seal over it at the bottom. A formal document meant to go to the Archives, but it wasn’t exactly perfect—no Chronicler had helped her prepare it. She’d clearly done it herself, alone.
Let it be known that at the moment of my death I state the truth to the Wolves & Before Gaia:
Rodero of SilverPaw, Elder Alpha of SilverPaw and Chronicler, is not my Gaia-Ordained mate. My true mate was another, different wolf, but my Alpha demanded I name Rodero as mine. The First Law demands no less, and the First Law should never ask so much.
Autumn
Elder Luna of SilverPaw
So I was... a bastard? Jerron had been a bastard?
What a twist.Sterlingwas legitimate, andIwas the unlucky bastard from a cursed union. Jerron and I had both been illegitimate, born under unlucky stars, and my father the biggest hypocrite in the history of hypocrites.
Marcella passed it to Demetrius, who ran a hand over his mouth as he contemplated the statement.
“Alpha?” Henri asked.
Demetrius carefully rolled up the parchment. “Rodero wasn’t Autumn’s true mate.”
“What?” Henri exclaimed while Searle startled.
“It explains why everyone always wondered about their relationship. They were always sofrostyto each other,” Marcella said almost to herself.
“Contentious is how I’d describe it,” Henri said. “But Rodero still respected her, even if sometimes it struck me as grudging. I never understood that dynamic. She was always so aloof. Until she wasn’t, and then she put the fear of Gaia into whatever poor soul had crossed her.”
Searle offered no comment. He had been a wolf of no consequence when my mother had still been alive, and would only have been in the most general proximity of her. But Henri was older, and would have known my mother a bit better. My mother had always had a reputation (as I knew it) for being one of the more aloof Elder Lunas.
Had she just been hiding her own pain? Because I could seealoofas a good coping mechanism. But I’d seen my parents be affectionate with each other, and it hadn’t seemed performative. Then again, what the hell would I know? If all I’d ever seen had been performative affection, then all I knew was performative. Sterling had always been affectionate with me, but he’d accused me of being a lousy cuddler.
Was it because I’d never seen my parentscuddle? My parents had shared a den, they’d shared space, they’d shared a bed (figuratively and literally). But I couldn’t remember them cuddling or seeking to be close to each other, like Marcella and Demetrius always seemed to be when they weren’t being formal, or even like Sterling had always wanted to just beclose.
I’d never have said my parents had beenin lovewith each other, but I’d figured they’d loved each other, and toddling around behind my father, I’d met plenty of pairs that weren’t especially happy or starry-eyed with each other. Hell, it wasn’t like Cerys loved Malte more than Gaia obligated her to. Cerys might love Malte, but she wasin lovewith Garrett.
“ ‘The First Law demands no less, and the First Law should never ask so much’,” Demetrius said, skimming it again. He passed it to Marcella, and she sniffed it, and recoiled with a shake of her head.
