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“You’re kidding!” His eyes went wide as he bent forward to get a closer look. “How did you get these?”
“I like to visit rare bookshops.” I shrugged. “They have some good titles. Some are amusing.”
“How so?”
“Plenty of other continents have rumors of Shrivs and Vargs, although in their stories they call us by different names.” I smirked, turning toward him. “You wouldn’t believe some of the insane things people make up about us.”
His eyebrow perked. “Examples?”
“Well, in some, Vargs can only turn during the full moon, as if having this form is a curse or something,” I laughed, although my stomach squeezed at the mention of my wolf form that still evaded me. I shook my head, putting that thought away. “And Shrivs are apparently allergic to the sun to the point where they burst into flames if they walk into direct sunlight.”
“I’m sorry…what?” Nolan flipped through one of the books, his expression puzzled. I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “How does that even make sense?”
“Not sure.” I shrugged. “Although it gives me a better understanding why outside of Kazola people are terrified of our kind. In their books, we’re depicted as monsters who want nothing more than to kill and eat humans. Doesn’t matter that we’re people too, we’re dangerous in these stories.”
“Like how humans saw us in the Ancient times.” Nolan set the book he was looking through back on the shelf.
“Exactly.” I nodded, sitting on my bed, gesturing to the desk chair across from me for him to sit on. “It makes me wonder if the rumors were started by Kazolanians from the Ancient days who escaped the Isle and spread vicious rumors with their ignorance.”
“It’s possible.” He settled into the seat, leaning back to look at me. “Alright, so, what are the new investigation tracks we discovered today?”
I perked up, my mind ready to go back to work and move away from all this personal talk, even if my body was at ease. We effortlessly found ourselves back in work discussions, debating over the exact details we needed to look for in past cases, how we could use these to our advantage, and the best way to divide the work to help research go quicker. Somehow, an hour passed us by, pages of my notebook filled with our ideas, which Nolan planned to update the rest of the Hierarchy on tomorrow at a morning meeting he would call.
I wrote down the last few to do list items, scribbling into the notebook. When I looked back up, I caught Nolan studying the artwork framed on my wall.
“My grandmother made that for me,” I said, not sure why I was explaining it. It must be because of how quizzically he stared at it.
“It’s like your tattoo on your left shoulder.” He pointed to it, his fingertip grazing the swirl of the word. “The word ‘moonlight’ surrounded by poppy flowers. The styles are different, but the concept is the same.”
“That piece of artwork was the inspiration, but Lucas is the one who created my tattoo.” My shoulder tingled.
“Lucas is a tattoo artist?” Nolan turned to me.
“He was certified right before joining the guard with Taylor,” I explained. “He doesn’t take commissions anymore, but he does keep his skills up by tattooing the Faction.”
“Huh, I’ll have to remember that.” He scratched his chin. “May I ask what this means?”
My lip trembled a bit, wondering if I was ready to tell this. I reasoned with myself that it was far from a secret—most of the Hierarchy was aware of its meaning. “It’s for my mother. She used to call me Moonlight growing up, and poppy flowers were her favorite. We would give them to her for any occasion we could think of.”
“Oh, that’s beautiful. I remember Ollie telling me about your mother…she didn’t deserve to be taken from you that way.”
“Thank you.” A tear stung the corner of my eye. “It’s still odd to think that you knew Ollie so soon after it happened.”
Her death had been a traumatic experience for all of us, but that was the risk for those in the Guard. We garnered enemies, and sometimes those enemies took revenge. And on that night so many years ago, one of her past enemies had taken the final revenge, stealing her from us forever.
Ollie had been sixteen when Mama passed, and like Caleb and I, had joined the Guard once he turned eighteen. A big portion of his grieving had happened when he was training. Sometimes, on special occasions like Mama’s birthday or the anniversary of her death, he would come home to be with Father and me. But grief was never a consistent thing; sometimes it could hit you for no reason at all. Ollie never talked about how he handled it when he was away, but he had mentioned that his friend Carragan was a good person to talk to. I had always been thankful for that.
“He’s my friend, and he needed support. I did what anyone else would do,” Nolan said, as if it was completely normal. But it wasn’t. He didn’t have to be there for Ollie. He didn’t have to be here for me now, yet here he was.
This man was still the goofy yet confident Alpha I’d met on his first day, but he was so much more than that. My heart shuddered at the thought—one I needed to keep at bay. I enjoyed working with him, this whole day of collaboration proved that, but these stirrings inside me, these attractions I couldn’t seem to control, they had to stop. I couldn’t want this; I wasn’t ready.
“You know, this isn’t how I pictured your room would be.” Nolan walked the small space, glancing over my piano and the stack of sheet music all the way over to my crammed bookshelves.
My mouth hung open. “You pictured my room?”
“Oh, um…no, not exactly…” He blinked as rapidly as he spoke. “I meant this wasn’t what I was expecting when I came here. I thought it would be more…minimalist.”
I gave a small laugh. “I get that, you’ve only really seen me in a professional environment and I can be very…rigid when I’m determined.”
