“Sure, that’s fine.” I glanced around the house again, and had to ask a question that had been eating at me. “Luis, do you know where Nico’s been going? He’s either locked up in his room or he’s away for hours at a time. Where the heck does he go? I’ve barely seen him since the first night, and when I do see him, he seems tense, distant. Is that normal for him?”
One corner of his mouth turned up in a humorless smile. “You’ll know everything soon enough.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. It seemed overly ominous. “What do you mean? I’ll know what?”
Luis shook his head dismissively. “Not my place to tell. Nico will explain it all in due time. That’s all I can say.”
I huffed out a sigh, but knew I wouldn’t get any more out of Luis. He was like a living, breathing brick wall. No reason to keep beating my head against that wall.
I went upstairs and turned my shower on. While I waited for the water to heat, my stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten anything for hours. I’d been too nervous before going to work, and I hadn’t had any appetite at work. I jumped in the shower and cleaned myself quickly. Wrapping myself in a bathrobe, I headed downstairs to dig through the massive pantry and fridge for something to make for dinner.
Instead of finding Luis downstairs, Nico was sitting on the sofa. His face was hard and stony as he glanced up at me. Thelook in his eyes was not pleasant. He didn’t look angry, but I’d never seen him so serious.
“Want to have a seat?” he said, gesturing to the other side of the couch.
“Uh…sure. I’m gonna grab a beer. I think I may need it based on your face.”
He cocked his head. “Unfortunately, you’re not wrong there. Grab me one too, please?”
I pulled the cans from the fridge and handed him the other as I sat down. Nico popped the can open and took a drink, then glanced across at me. “What do you know of shifter history?”
This was a strange subject, I thought, but shrugged and played along. “Um, only what you learn in school. Basic dates and big events. The Shifter’s Rights Movement in the forties and fifties, the Shifter Purge in Russia back in the early 1800s, stuff like that. Why? What does this have to do with me?”
Nico downed his beer in three quick swallows and suppressed a burp. “Okay. Let me tell you this story. Wait until I’m done to ask questions. I’m sure you’ll have a lot.”
I was both scared and intrigued. Nico was one hell of a storyteller if this was how he was starting. I nodded at him to go on.
“There was once a royal line of wolves. Shifters who were part of the longest standing pack in history. The pack dated back hundreds of years and was the largest ever known—over a thousand members, if the legends are to be believed. My pack is considered massive and we’ve only got around sixty members, if that tells you anything. It takes an impressive and powerful will for an alpha to keep that many members in line and on the same page.
“They were all descended from a powerful wolf shifter who’d married a human woman. A human princess. He married into an actual royal family. One of his final descendants continuedthat tradition and married a widowed queen. Their children, like those before, were born as hybrids. Half-human and half-shifter. Something that was unheard of in other situations. Only this royal family bloodline had this ability.
“The alpha of this clan was legendary. Not because he was a royal or had hybrid heirs. He was strong, but what truly made him and his ancestors legendary were their distinct abilities. Shifters always go through a full change. We totally and completely become the animal we share the body with. These alphas? They could change different parts of their body at will. A human body but the head of a wolf? Upper torso of a wolf, and lower body of a man? A single hand changed to a paw? Changing their teeth to fangs? They could do all that. It was where the original stories of werewolves came from. They were also much stronger and faster than regular shifters.” Nico paused and brushed a hand over his face.
“This final werewolf king was named Edemas Hollander. His pack weas feared not only by humans but other shifters. They were able to harness the power of the moon—again, like the old werewolf legends. It made them stronger than any other living being. On the day and night of the full moon, they were basically unstoppable and at their most powerful. It was this power that helped them reign over all shifters.” Nico sighed and looked at me. “Is this making sense?”
I stared at him, my mouth hanging partially open. I had so many questions, but I needed to hear what he was telling me. We could sort it out afterward. At the moment, I was enthralled by the outlandish story he was weaving. I nodded for him to go on.
“Okay, good. So Edemas had children and they could shift, but this started to fade with each passing year. Especially within the royal line, the shifters chose to mate with humans. Every generation, the werewolf bloodline grew weaker. Even some of Edemas’s own children couldn’t shift. Edemas didn’t likethat the lineage was getting diluted, so he took a concubine—a shifter woman—and started mating with her to produce more pureblooded heirs. This caused issues Edemas didn’t foresee. The family of the concubine considered themselves the pureblood line, and Edemas’s legal wife and her children the half-breed line. There was tension, to say the least.
“While this ongoing issue was brewing within the royal family, the other packs feared how rapidly Edemas’s family was growing. The fact that the strength of the bloodline was dissipating had given them some hope that eventually the Hollander pack would vanish from the earth. The new concubine and the full-blood children swept away that hope, and now they knew that Edemas’s line would reign longer than anyone had anticipated. Maybe forever.
“The second issue was that there had been several females born to the concubine who had been born as alphas—something unheard of to this day. Those women were stronger than most male shifters. Edemas saw this happening, and started taking more concubines. It started to get out of hand. Some legends say he had upwards of three dozen children between his wife and concubines. He was trying to have as many children as possible, but that was frowned upon in the royal family. Usually you had children until you had a boy, then a second male child. After that, typically, the king would stop purposely trying to have children. I know it sounds weird, but it’s how things were done back then. Anyway, a contingent of royals informed the alpha that he was not allowed to have any more children—official heirs or concubine bastards.
“This…this is where things get bad. The stories say Edemas flew into a rage. He slaughtered the contingent of family members, some of them his own nieces and nephews. His wife, the queen, was also a victim of his rage. He found her in the castle, and knowing she was the one who had orchestrated theproclamation, tore her throat out with his own wolf teeth. The news was like a nuclear bomb going off. Every human and shifter leader within hundreds of miles heard of the butchery, and they knew neither Edemas nor his lineage could be allowed to live. For more than three years, a resistance faction formed in the shadows, a combining of strength between all the shifter clans who were disloyal to Edemas as alpha and humans who knew they would be subjugated if the Hollander line was allowed to flourish. Also, some of Edemas’s distant family joined the resistance. These were cousins and far-removed relations. None of them were werewolves, but they craved the power and fortune of Edemas. They felt slighted by their lack of station in his court. They were the main leaders of this resistance. Anewroyal family, basically.”
Nico laced his fingers together and gripped his hands so hard, his knuckles went white. “On the night of the new moon, when Edemas and his children were at their weakest, the resistance attacked. It was bloody and brutal. Not a single descendant were to be left alive. The main party attacked Edemas in his stronghold, but hundreds of others tracked down his family. There…” Nico paused and made a pained face. “There are stories of pregnant concubines having their stomachs cut open, the fetuses inside killed. Children struck down in their beds, babies…” Nico put a hand to his face. I could see the horror in his eyes as he told the story. “Babies were killed in their cribs. The bloodline fully severed. Ended, wholly and completely.” He finally raised his eyes and locked them on mine. “At least, that’s what most shifters thought until this week.”
I looked at him for several long seconds before laughing uncomfortably. “Yeah, but that’s all just a story, right? You have to be joking.”
Nico shook his head. “I wish I was joking.”
“No.” I jumped up and started to pace around the living room. “What are you saying? That story? That’s…like, massive. That type of thing would be in the history books. Everyone would know that story. It sounds like something out of the French Revolution. Come on, Nico.”
“History is written by the winners. Most of the shifters were ashamed of the atrocities they committed that day. It needed to be hidden. Not only because Edemas had been a madman, a fascist, and probably psychotic, but because the only way to stop him was to commit crimes no one wanted remembered.”
I ran my hands through my hair. “How does this connect to me, though?”
Nico’s eyebrows furrowed. “Your DNA test. The only match was for Edemas.”
