CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 14
“It’s not Aliya.”
Lucas sounds adamant.
“She doesn’t mingle with anyone especially wolves. She has a particular hatred for shifters. She won’t give one wolfsbane.”
“What if Valerie stole it?” I ask.
“Stole it?” Lucas give me an amused look. “Do you know how protected Aliya’s home is? Only sprites and faeries are allowed entrance. Aliya is protected by the forest itself. Nobody can invade her home. Valerie got it from somewhere else.”
But who?
I wrack my brains.
Usually Others live together in some sort of harmony, humans being their biggest enemy.
Or at least they used to.
The witch hunt that began was a vicious one. Witches are the strongest of all the existing Others since they have a direct link to nature. When they were targeted, wars erupted amongst those who wanted to protect the witches and those who wanted them wiped out from existence. This was centuries ago so when I had learnt from Lucas that a coven had existed in harmony with a wolf shifter pack, it had come as a shock because wolf shifters had been the first ones to target the witches.
“So, there have to be other witches around?” I look at Lucas.
“I’ve not heard of any or come across any. Valerie might have sourced it from somewhere.”
“Wait,” I pause, something occurring to me. “If Aliya is a witch, then maybe she can-“
“I already reached out to her,” Lucas says, steadily. “But I’ve not heard back from her. She usually gets back to me within a few days but she hasn’t so far.”
So that avenue is a dead end.
Letting out a heavy sigh, I turn my attention back to the books. It is information about how to detect wolfsbane and what it does to you. There’s also information about why and when it was banned but nothing about how to counter the effects of it.
My hands shake for a few seconds as I suddenly feel very overwhelmed, “Lucas.”
He’s by my side in a second, “What is it?”
I look up at him, my eyes tearing up, “What if there is no cure? What if I have to remain like this forever, my wolf trapped in my body?”
His eyes harden and he crouches next to where I’m sitting, “I don’t care. It won’t change anything. You’ll still be my side and if you want to leave this forest, we’ll do that. You will never be alone no matter what. I don’t care if you can shift or not. As long as you stay next to me.”
There is a dark possessiveness in his voice and it soothes me, being wanted like this.
“No matter what happens?”
“Yes,” He presses a kiss on top of my forehead. “You’re mine for life now.”
A small sob escapes my lips and he blinks, “What did I say?”
I rub my eyes, “Nothing. Sometimes you say just the right thing.”
He lets out a low laugh which makes something inside me shift and then he ruffles my hair making me frown and walks to his side fo the shelf.
He was gruff from the first day we met but he wanders around me as if constantly reminding me I’m not alone, his actions making me feel safe and protected.
I look down at the book in my hands. I have seen mated couples and while wolves are possessive where their mates are concerned, it’s different with Lucas. We’re not even fully mated and he makes me feel like I’m the most precious thing in the world to him.
My heart skips a beat. Hunter never made me feel like that. Now that I recall, it was always him, me, and Valerie, and I would often find the two of them together. But at the time, I had never thought anything about it. But now, I see that he had always been invested in Valerie, protective of her in a way that should have been for me.
If I had ended up with him, would he have changed and paid more attention to me?
I look over at Lucas and I already know the answer to that.
No.
We spend a few days at the archives, pouring through books, looking for some answers.
“When was this pack destroyed?” Lucas asks, suddenly.
I blink, “We just came across this place like this? I think it was years. Why?”
He puts down a book in front of me that looks like records and his voice is grim, “Look at this.”
I see a list of names and dates. The dates go back to centuries ago.
“What am I looking at?”
“The list of shifter packs that have been wiped out of existence. This pack was a very old one. I think they were the part of the Record Keeper Clan.”
The Record Keeper Clan.
They are an old wolf shifter clan with packs strewn all over the world. They act as the true historians of the wolf shifters. It is an unspoken rule that they must not be touched.
My face pales, “Why would somebody go after them? It’s now allowed.”
“Because they were tracking how and why wolf shifter packs were going missing,” Lucas says, grimly. “They had to be silenced.”
My blood grows cold.
It’s true that recently more and more pack are being wiped out but nobody has really looked into it since most packs keep to themselves.
“Let’s just hold on to this,” Lucas says. “Let’s keep looking for what we came for.”
With this unsettling knowledge in the back of my head, I focus my attention on the books before us. It’s the fifth day since we came here and these are the last set of books I have to go through.
However, my heart keeps sinking as the last book finally reaches my hands.
“There is no known cure to wolfsbane,” I read loudly, my voice shaking. “Till now, all wolves poisoned by it have died painful deaths within a course of weeks.”