I memorized them the same way I catalogued everything else. Four buildings, two guard stations. Shift changes at six and six, skeleton crew between midnight and four. The basement door at the end of the east corridor, triple-reinforced steel with a keypad, never unguarded.
Nobody offered conversation.
Thiago’s daughter was an object of curiosity, but Thiago’s daughter who’d been mated by the enemy was an object of suspicion.
I could work with that. Suspicion meant they’d watch me, but it also meant they wouldn’t get close. And distance was exactly what I needed to move through this place without someone breathing down my neck.
On the third morning, Thiago summoned me to the study.
The map on the wall had new pins since my last visit. Silver ones clustered near the mountain range, and two red ones pushed into a region northwest of the compound. I didn’t ask about them.
“Sit down,” Thiago said.
I sat in the leather chair across from his desk and waited.
“You’ve been quiet,” he said. “Processing, I assume.”
“You told me that supernatural creatures killed my mother. I’m allowed a processing period.”
The faintest trace of amusement crossed his face. It vanished as quickly as it appeared. “Your sarcasm is your mother’s. She had the same defense mechanism.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Tell me I’m her. You lost that privilege when you disappeared.”
Thiago accepted the rebuke with a nod that was too graceful to be genuine. He opened a drawer and pulled out a weathered leather-bound book, its cover embossed with a crescent moon bisected by a blade.
“Your mother was a Maxwell,” Thiago said. “I married into the name. But you were born into it.”
He set the book on the desk between us.
“This family didn’t stumble into the Order, Mira. We built it.”
The book was a genealogy. Records of Maxwell names in varying scripts, each generation annotated with roles. I didn’t need to read every entry to understand the pattern. The women’snames carried the weight. Founders, commanders, researchers. Generation after generation.
My mother’s name sat in the last entry.Sienna Maxwell, chief researcher.With a death date penned beside it in red. Beside her name, a smaller notation: spouse, with no family lineage of his own listed. Just a man who’d attached himself to a bloodline and held on.
“The legacy passes through the eldest daughter,” Thiago said. “Your grandmother led before me. Your mother was meant to lead after.” His hands rested flat on the desk. “When Sienna was killed, I took over. I was never the intended heir. I’ve been holding this position since you were an infant, Mira. Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“For you.” His blue eyes held mine with bedrock conviction. “You are the last Maxwell daughter. The heir to an organization that has protected humanity.”
I wanted to laugh.
A twenty-four-year-old former bookshop owner with an abusive ex and three supernatural claiming marks on her throat being told she was destined to lead a centuries-old hunter organization.
If my life were a novel, this would be the chapter where the reader threw the book across the room.
But the genealogy was real, and my mother’s name was in it, and the claiming marks on my throat throbbed with muted bondsthat belonged to men who’d rejected me because of the blood running through my veins.
“I want to know what happened to her,” I said. “Specifically.”
Thiago stood. “Follow me.”
***
