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“Why the hell are you out skulking in the night?” Adrian asked. “We nearly jumped you!”
“I used the signature knock and everything,” Herald argued.
Adrian chuckled sarcastically. “I don’t know what Victor knows.”
Herald cocked his eyebrows. “Have you been out here lately?”
Adrian nodded. “We were just out this afternoon,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
Herald backed up a bit, offering Adrian a view. Eventually, Adrian peeked his head out, looking at the tiered streets of the den village.
There were torches everywhere, but not in the usual places.
Adrian noticed several straggling villagers, the usual night owl types. But rather than working on swords and lending out books, they had formed their own standing mobs.
“They’re waiting for you, dude,” Herald hissed, throwing the brown hood back up as a defense mechanism. “Can I please come inside? It’s scary out here.”
“Oh, grow a pair,” Adrian said before stepping aside regardless. As Herald stepped through, Adrian realized that he had a large backpack strapped to himself.
Shutting the door after ensuring nobody else was approaching, Adrian cleared off the dining room table, sitting at the table’s head. He patted the seat next to him, and Luna, who looked very shaken up, sat beside him.
Herald unzipped the pack, revealing several old-looking and very large books.
“I did some digging on our elder,” Herald said, slamming the books on the table. Several clouds of dust emerged as a result. “Victor’s got a checkered past of his own.”
For his part, Adrian was incredibly curious.
Herald flipped open to a bookmarked page in a large red tome.
“This one was incredibly hard to find,” Herald said. “Everything about him that was out there, Victor tried to bury.”
The pages were yellowing and full of names, as though a census or log of some sort. Beside everybody’s name was a pack designation.
“This is an old log of exiled pack members from nearly fifty years ago,” Herald offered, moving his finger along the list of names, seemingly arranged in no given order.
He stopped on one name … Victor Imeteriu, Stirring Fire Pack.
“What does this mean?” Adrian asked. “That’s not Victor’s last name.”
“Ah, so you’d think,” Herald offered. “But I only found that name after …”
He closed the book, setting it on an empty chair before throwing an even older but more formally published book on top of it.
Again, having bookmarked the page, Adrian opened the book to a yearbook listing.
“Back in the day, before it became a problem, shifters used to go to schools like everybody else,” Herald offered.
“We know,” Adrian and Luna said in unison.
Shaking it off, Herald continued, running his finger along the pages and landing on Victor Imeteriu, who looked like a less cracked mirror version of the Victor they had all come to despise.
“Our friend Victor’s anything but sentimental,” Herald offered. “Apparently, he was reading this back at Silver Fang before he left.”
Adrian couldn’t hide the disbelief from his face. “You went back?”
Herald chuckled but didn’t acknowledge the question.
“Okay,” Luna said. “So far, all we know is that Victor was kicked out of his pack back in the day. What does that have to do with anything?”
