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Isla slowly pulled her hand back. “Does he talk about her anywhere else?”
“I mean, not really,” Jonah said. “You would think he would—I think they may have been fated, too—but he mainly writes about rising to power. A lot of political meanderings, scheming, and nonsense. Then some of his own personal accounts.”
Isla wrapped her chilling hands around her mug’s warm surface. “What kind of personal accounts?”
“Nothing interesting. How he’d been feeling day to day. A lot about headaches he’d been having, but didn’t want to tell anyone about it so they wouldn’t see him as faltering.”
Headaches?
Isla nearly jumped from her seat. “What kind of headaches?”
“Bad ones?” Jonah offered, heeding her eagerness. “I could translate something like pressure. There could be more about them in his other journals. I’m sure there are many more. We barely scratched the surface of any war here, just some scheming.”
Isla gnawed on her lip. “Where do you think those are?”
“My best guess would be the Wilds if anything. The Pack Hall, if it’s still standing after the decimation.”
Isla found her eyes tracing the swirls of creamy foam through the darkness eddying within her mug. Her mind reeled back to last night. “Would Alpha Kyran have kept journals like this?”
Would he have written about Kai, about why he wanted to protect him specifically?
Jonah cocked his head. “I could imagine. Kai hasn’t seen them?”
She highly doubted Kai had gone through much of his father’s things. “He hasn’t mentioned them.”
“Oh, the secrets those must hold.” Jonah leaned back in his seat, gnawing on his pen, mulling something over. “For diaries like this, I think it’s custom for them to be locked away somewhere where only other alphas can get to them. I doubt betas are told, and I wonder about lunas. Alpha Kyran may have only given the location to Jaden.”
“That’s…tragic.” It was the only word Isla could find to describe any of this. “So, Kai would never know where to find it?”
Jonah frowned. “Hewasonly Alpha Kyran’s scion.”
Isla huffed. “Someonehasto know. They can’t just be lost forever.” The corner of Jonah’s lips ticked up slightly. “Don’t look so giddy about it.”
A full smirk graced the shopkeeper’s mouth as he put his hands behind his head. “Another mystery to solve,” he mused. “Hopefully, that one doesn’t try to kill us.”
CHAPTER26
ISLA
Isla would’ve been content never to think again.
By the time she leftThe Bookshoppe, her mind was spinning, so filled with thoughts that she was surprised they didn’t spill out of her ears. She hadn’t been sure what to focus on as she ascended the hills back to the Pack Hall. There had only been a little over two hours left until she needed to be at the docks to depart, and though a part of her wanted nothing more than to just whisk off without telling Sebastian the truth about their mother, deep in her soul, she knew she had to.
She’d made it nearly halfway home when the coughing started.
Again, then again, and again.
Her hand went to her chest, clawing at it as if she could free her lungs.
She hadn’t realized it was happening before it was too late. Her body turned cold, her fingers trembled, and the overwhelm wrapped so tightly around her throat that she sputtered. Panic hit her like a blow to the head.
Isla ducked into the nearby woods and found refuge against a tree, sinking to the leave-littered floor. She dragged her knees up to her chest as she breathed, breathed,breathed.
The forest around her was so tranquil, the wildlife at peace and trilling their melodies. Covering her mouth, she leaned her head back against the bark, catching glimpses of the sky through the trees’ canopies.
This felt different than any other time she’d panicked or cried these past few days. She couldn’t pinpoint what had set her off.
It was too much. All of this was far too much. And it didn’t feel like there was any way out of it. It didn’t feel like there would ever be an end—like there would ever be any sense of peace. It would only become worse, get harder.
