“You don’t want to know.”
“I’m asking anyway.”
She sighed. “He said you’re staring at me like I’m going to disappear if you blink.”
Warmth crept through me, and I figured my face must now be red. I directed my gaze at my plate.
“He also said the new flowers are pretty,” she added.
I glanced up. She was looking at them, not me, but color had filled her cheeks as well.
After breakfast, Victoria disappeared into the office with her notebook, Acorn scampering behind her after giving me a long look. I returned the tray to the kitchen, then came back to the suite and sat at the table, spreading out my map, trying to focus on patrol logistics. We needed to guard the northern regions, but my pack was spooked. Few dared travel that way, and who could blame them?
Victoria’s research in that area kept coming to the forefront of my mind. The seal sites and duskburst. The timing of theincidents. Now these new reports, with more of my pack losing their ability to fuse with their wolf.
I stared at the map until the routes blurred together.
Bastian’s visit threw in another complication. He must know that creek area almost as well as I did, and while his scent hadn’t necessarily shouted guilt, it hadn’t been clean either. Was he trying to sabotage my rule?
I could send Kirk to quietly shadow Bastian’s pack movements. He could track where alpha went, who he met with, if anyone, and see if he could find out for sure if Bastian’s people were experiencing the same problems.
Then I reconsidered. Kirk was loyal, but he wasn’t subtle. And if Bastian was involved in something and this was more than just unfortunate timing, I didn’t want to reveal my hand yet.
I needed more information. Proof of what this might be. And more understanding of what I was actually looking at.
Had my father known much about the seal sites? He’d once called them the bones of the pack, though he’d never explained further. I wish I could ask him why they mattered or what they were for.
I was nineteen when he died. Cocky. Certain I’d have years to learn the things he still had to teach me.
I set the reports aside and stood.
The office door was open, and I walked over to stand in the doorway.
Victoria worked at my mother’s old writing desk by the window. I hadn’t told her who it belonged to. I hadn’t told anyone. It was easier to let it be furniture. Her back was to me, her head bent over something I couldn’t see.
“Feral,” she said without looking up.
“How did you know I was here?”
“Your footsteps.” She lifted something worn and black and rose, turning. “Acorn also told me you were coming.”
The squirrel nestled in his basket, looking smug.
Victoria walked over to me, holding out a small leather-bound book. “You need to look at this.”
I frowned down at it. “Why?”
“You just do.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FERAL
Worn at the corners, the book looked like it had been handled daily for years. Age had darkened the leather.
“I found it behind a small wolf carving,” she said, pointing to the bookshelf on the side of the room I’d been ignoring. My father’s side, as I’d started to call it in my mind. “I was looking for texts that might contain herb lore, though I didn’t find any. This was tucked behind the wooden wolf.”
I’d carved the wolf when I was ten. It was clumsy, asymmetrical, and the proportions were all wrong. My father had loved it anyway and kept it on display in his office like it was something precious.
