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She answered on the first ring, and Lily couldn’t help but admire how young the matriarch of the clan sounded.
“Yes, dear? Is everything all right?”
She didn’t have the same air of concern that many older women were plagued with, which often strained relationships between women and their mothers-in-law. There was nothing controlling or possessive about her, and that was one of the main reasons why Lily inherently trusted her.
“I don't know,” Lily said, drumming her fingers against the porch. “I feel a bit uneasy. Gabriel left to see about that missing shifter."
Claire went quiet for a moment, and that was when Lily started to actually become concerned.
Then, she spoke with the firmness of a sergeant general.
“Put some tea on, darling. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
Lily did just as she was told the moment she got off the phone. She tied her hair back away from her face and put a bra on for her visitor’s sake. Then she went back out on the porch and noticed one of the enforcers named Levi carrying something over his shoulder. It was clad in smooth black and rolled up like a sleeping bag.
Lily’s heart skipped a few beats, and then she beckoned him. He was the father of one of the children she taught art lessons to, one of the older, more soft-spoken ones with dazzling ice-blonde hair.
She jogged over to him from the porch, the streetlights flickering on.
“Levi, what's going on?"
He stopped abruptly, gazing at her with a torn look. She realized she had placed him in quite a predicament. She was the surrogate of his alpha, but he had also likely been given orders and was to stay hush about them. Lily realized it the moment he opened his mouth to spill the beans.
“It’s not good, Lily. I can't say everything just yet. But something about a campsite and artifacts and relics …"
Lily perked up the second she heard the word relics. Levi rubbed his hand in an earnest look of needing to bite his tongue.
She decided not to torture him any longer and let him go. When she got back to the porch, she found Claire standing there. She knew that Claire was a shifter as well, but damn, the woman moved fast.
Claire had her silvery locks tucked over one shoulder, cascading down. Her clothing was far from casual. She looked as elegant and formal as when they'd first met. She wore a solid pastel-colored blouse with a shapely pencil skirt. She had a presence about her that Lily innately admired.
Claire was smiling, her fingers tapping against the door.
"Got that tea going?”
They went into the lounge, and Claire started the fire. Lily said they could have asked one of the staff to do that, but she shook her head valiantly.
“It’s a wonderful ability to not need a man around. Trust me.”
Lily sat next to the matriarch and sipped at her tea. The fire crackled with a lively spirit.
“Relics,” Lily said, staring into the orange and red burn. “That was what Levi said. Artifacts of some kind that the humans are looking for. What would you know about that?"
Claire was a straightforward woman, and so was Lily.
She sat next to Lily on the couch, holding her mug in one steady hand while she turned to face her surrogate daughter-in-law. Her gaze was just as intimidating as Gabriel's, but in a way that was comforting.
She spoke evenly and got straight to the point.
“There are ancient relics that are specific to our kind. Some to certain shifters, some to shifters as a whole. There have been many stories about humans attempting to obtain them to gain power over us. Some want them to annihilate us."
Lily listened closely, feeling her chest rise and fall with anticipation.
“These have been stories passed down from generation to generation. Most of them are fables. Some of them have truth laced in. The most outrageous stories are where you hide the truth. Humans are not great with the outlandish."
Claire laughed darkly as though a memory possessed her for a few moments. There was hurt weaved into the sound.
“I have heard about many of these relics, and I have learned of their truth. The humans somehow found their way through the maze of the obscene and found our truths. It is vital information to your existence, so we taught our kin all about it."
