I firmed my lips and backed away a few steps, but I had to say it. I had to follow the thread to see if I was right.
"Aika…” he said gently, “who poisoned you? Your baba?"
A bitter taste flooded my mouth, as real as it had been fourteen years ago, and I shook my head violently, trying to smear those memories from my head forever.
But I had to say it. I had to find out the truth.
"My ama. My mom," I finally admitted, my voice cut from shards of stone. I'd never told anyone that. Ever. Not even Jade. With the truth out there in the open, I felt horribly naked, and Archer and Grady's gazes dug deep into my flesh like fresh bruises. I wanted to snatch it back, claim it was someone else, not my own mother, but a stranger who wasn't supposed to love me. But I didn't.
"Our eyes…" Grady cleared his throat of some of its roughness. "Our eyes didn't used to go red when we shifted before we were poisoned."
"Yeah…" Archer said. "Must've been a side effect. So the fact that we were all poisoned, our shifter pack and a human… It connected us. Offered eyes to the one who can't see."
A breath loosened in my chest, one I seemed to have been holding since I'd told them the truth. Neither of them had questioned me further about Ama. No whys. No judgment, either, when I'd honestly expected a backlash of it. Maybe I judged her enough for all of us.
"Moonshine itself causes blindness when drunk too much. I guess with you…" I gestured lamely at them. "With shifters, it reacts a little differently."
"It's still curious why you'd be able to see through us," Archer said.
"I mean, you're wolf shifters. That in itself is curious, don't you think? So maybe it’s the same thing. What exactly makes you shift?"
"Magic," Archer offered.
Oh. Simply put. I'd expected a more complicated answer that had to do with the full moon's gravitational pull on their hair follicles or something—I had no idea—but magic summed it up nicely.
Magic. I'd never been associated with it, never thought of my blindness as linked in any way to it. But in a way, I suppose it was if magic allowed me to see.
A sharp sting speared my chest, a hurt that somehow felt good. I couldn't explain it and I didn't know what it meant exactly, but it made me feel…alive? That wasn't quite right. Of course I felt alive. It was more than that, like I got to experience something very few did.
Magic. Not the kind with cards I couldn’t see, but the real kind. The kind I could see.
"How do you…” I struggled with the words. “What kind of magic is it that makes you shift?"
Grady crossed in front of me and started poking at the fire. "It doesn't make us. We make it."
“Oh. And…what about your clothes when you shift?” It seemed sort of trivial, but that sure didn’t keep me from wondering.
“We shift back fully clothed. All part of the magic,” Archer said, a smile in his tone. "It comes from the ruby caves in the Crimson Forest."
"That's right, Archer. Go on and tell her everything," Grady growled.
"She's already involved, asshole, so you can go to hell with all your damn secrets. Maybe if we had fewer secrets, we wouldn't be in this fucking mess."
Grady's teeth gnashed together so loud I could hear them over the crackling fire.
"Anyway," Archer continued, his voice low, "those conceived in the ruby caves shift, like us. It's the way it's always been. A female brings all of her harem of mates there when she’s in heat to better her chances of conceiving."
“Mates? More than one?”
“Yes. The more mates, the better protected the pups will be once they’re born since they’re all considered the fathers.”
“Oh.” This was some news. Like sharing a female, and then she could have multiple men all to herself. That seemed…perfect? I had too many other questions to stick on that subject for long. "And if you're not conceived in the caves?"
"Then there's no creation, no wolf pups to carry on the pack," he said. “Pregnancies don’t happen outside the ruby caves.”
"So now that someone else is controlling the caves…"
"That's right.” Archer sighed. “Nearly two years ago when we were pushed out of the Crimson Forest was the last of any new births or pregnancies for our pack."
