Chapter Eighteen
Kieran
I am sitting at my desk with Daciana, amusing her by conjuring fire from my fingers, a trick I learned from my mother a very long time ago, when there’s a knock on the door.
“That’s beautiful,” Daciana breathes, watching the flames dance across my knuckles without burning me. For a moment, the worry lines around her eyes have eased. “Your mother taught you that?”
“Just before she died.” I let the fire spiral up into a small phoenix shape, remembering her patient hands guiding mine. “She said every alpha should know how to work with fire. We’re wolves, yes, but fire is power. Control.”
The knock comes again, more insistent.
I extinguish the flames with a mere thought. “Come in.”
Artisem enters, and I know immediately from his expression that he has found something. Daciana straightens beside me, her brief moment of peace evaporating.
“The sigil,” he says without preamble. “I know which family it belongs to.”
“Tell me.”
“The Ravelholt Clan.” He closes the door behind him. “They were wiped out twenty-eight years ago.”
The name Ravelholt is familiar to me; I must have read it in one of the history texts in my pack’s archives. But it’s the timeline that makes me glance at Daciana. Her face has gone pale, but her jaw sets with that stubborn determination I have come to recognize.
“Around the time I was born,” she says quietly.
“Yes.” Artisem’s tone is gentle, which tells me everything I need to know about where this is going. “This clan was its own entity, with its own lands; they never joined any pack. Technically, they were rogues.”
“Rogues don’t usually last long,” I point out. “Especially not families. Not with their own sigil, their own territory.”
“That’s where it gets interesting.” Artisem leans against the wall. “Their family lineage traces back to the time of the first royal family—your ancestors, Kieran. The Ravelholt Clan was powerful once, during that reign. But when the royal family fell, the Ravelholt Clan disappeared, too. They’re not royals, never were, but they were connected to that time period somehow.”
This gets my attention. The bloody coup that led to the fall of the first royal family also gave way to a purist revolution. I wonder if Lucian knows that his ancestors would never have allowed his mate to live, much less be queen.
“Connected how?” I ask.
“I don’t know yet. The records from that time are incomplete at best.” Frustration bleeds through Artisem’s normally careful composure. “But what I do know is that they resurfaced eventually, living quietly at the base of the mountains. They were under the protection of the gypsy witches for as long as I could trace back. Centuries, possibly. The witches kept them hidden, kept them safe. Until they didn’t.”
“Hera,” I mutter. “She’d know about this.”
“I’ve reached out to her. Multiple times. Different messengers. She’s not responding to any of it.”
Of course she isn’t. The witches never make anything easy.
“Is there any chance—” Daciana’s voice cracks, and she clears her throat before trying again. “Is there any chance I was born into that family?”
The hope in her voice makes my chest tight. I reach for her hand without thinking, and she grips my fingers hard enough to hurt.
Artisem looks at her sympathetically. “It would make sense. The human town this clan traded with—they visited often, apparently—claims that one of their women was pregnant around that time. The timeline matches.”
“Wait,” Daciana says, confusion furrowing her brow. “You said it was a family. But if they took in rogues…”
“That’s my understanding,” Artisem admits. “I don’t understand it completely, but there were different shifters living with them. I don’t think they were all related by blood.”
The pieces start clicking together in my mind. “They might have been taking rogues in,” I say slowly. “Giving them a place to belong. But to remain hidden from the Kingdom’s sight, to avoid questions about pack structure and territory rights, they never called themselves a pack. They stayed under the radar.”
“If gypsy witches mate with shifters and humans,” Daciana says, her voice gaining strength, “could they have mated with one of these rogues? Is that possible?”
“It’s likely,” I say, squeezing her hand. “That would explain why the witches offered them their protection in the first place. If they had children together, if there were bonds between them—”
