“Every decision I made was to protect you.” Archie stepped forward, planting himself squarely in Malachi’s line of sight. “But, I won’t do that to you again. Not ever.”
The Hideaway seemed to hold its breath around them.
“Then say it,” Malachi snapped. “You still haven’t said what this place is actually for.”
“The room used to hide us.” Archie admitted. “If someone… lost control.”
Malachi stared at him. “Lost control how?”
“If they shifted.”
“Shifted?” Malachi threw his hands up. “Why are you speaking in riddles? Just—” His voice cracked. “Just spit it out.”
Archie closed his eyes for a second. He’d grown up around the Otherworld. Ina’s stories were half-myth, half-warning. He’d never even seen a Wolfenden shift. Never felt it in his own bones. Whatever had lived in his blood had stayed stubbornly silent.
“Wolfendens…” Archie searched for the right words. “Wecome from a line of wolf-shifters. An old one. Extinct, as far as anyone knows.”
He gestured to the gate, the locks, the reinforced walls sunk deep into the stone below their home.
“That’s why it’s here. To keep wolves safe if they get close to losing themselves.”
Silence fell hard.
Ina leaned forward on the cot, shoulders loosening on familiar ground. This was old knowledge to her. Old fear. She didn’t interrupt and let Archie stand alone in the truth he was finally sharing with Malachi.
Malachi stared at him, head tilted slightly, as though trying to decide if Archie was being serious or joking. “Wolf-shifters?” Malachi let the words hang in the air. “I don’t remember wolfing out at a full moon.”
“No.” Archie shook his head. “We’re not werewolves. There’s no moon trigger or rules like that.” He nodded towards Ina. “Our father, your grandad, was the last wolf in the family.”
Malachi turned to Ina, who nodded once.
“Our aunt and uncle too.” Ina’s eyes flashed with anger. “Until there was a falling out and—" She stopped herself, lips pressing thin, deliberately passing the reins back to Archie.
Archie was grateful, the weight was shifting from panic to purpose. He needed to keep going before he lost it.
“And?” Malachi crossed his arms, letting out a huff of impatience. The stance was pure Heather. That same exasperated, coiled restraint that meant she was five seconds from saying something dangerous.
“The last time anyone saw them, they were on top of the cliffs at White Bay.” Archie’s voice flattened. “We assumed they fell intothe sea.”
He hadn’t been alive then. Everything he knew came from second-hand stories filtered through Ma before she died and Ina.
“We never saw them again,” Ina cut in, unable to hold it this time. “The Wolfenden wolves protected Latharna.” Her voice wavered. “And when they tore each other apart, they took that protection with them, destroying our pack.”
The crack in her composure startled Archie more than the words themselves. He couldn’t remember the last time Ina spoke of their father.
“There are no wolves left.” Ina straightened up, pushing the emotion back down. “Latharna’s been vulnerable ever since.”
“I never knew that.” Archie had known pieces of the story. But this—this was the first time he’d heard her admit the fracture between their father and uncle outright.
A dull unease settled in his gut.
He’d built his life on what Ina told him. Trusted her to be the keeper of his family’s past because someone had to be. And now it seemed that much of the past was still locked away. Secrets, it seemed, were a Wolfenden habit, passed down as surely as bone and blood.
“What were they fighting about?” He leaned against the metal gate. It clanged shut under his weight, the sound sharp in the enclosed space, echoing longer than it should have.
“I never found out.” Ina’s emotion passed, all harsh edges sanded smooth. “They were the last ones who could turn. After that, the family fractured.” She raised her hands, palms out, as if to say she had no more information to share.
Malachi’s eyes darted between them, then drifted back to the gate. “Are we dangerous?”
