Hunted by the Shadow Division

Chapter 6

Ryan POV

The snow came early that year.

I remember because it was the first winter at the Rogers' house and I had never seen real snow before. Not the kind that settled and stayed. Back in Atlanta the cold was damp and grey but it never quite committed to becoming something beautiful. Bay City, it turned out, had no such reluctance.

I stood at the living room window with my nose pressed to the glass while Mrs. Rogers threatened to make me clean the smudge I was leaving. Nat sat curled in the armchair by the fire pretending to read, but I could feel her eyes drifting to the window too. She would never admit it. She was eight and had decided that being eight meant being above wonder.

I was six and had no such hangups.

It was Mr. Rogers who told us a visitor was coming that evening. He said it the way adults say things when they are trying to sound casual and failing completely.

"A friend of ours," he said, moving things around on the kitchen counter that did not need moving. "Someone we thought it might be good for you both to meet."

Nat looked up from her book. I looked up from the window.

Mrs. Rogers set down her tea and gave Mr. Rogers her this-is-not-the-way-I-would-have-said-it look.

"Her name is Joan," Mrs. Rogers said, her voice warm and careful in equal measure. "She is a very old and very dear friend of ours. She knows about wolves, Natalie. She knows what you are. Both of you. And she wants to help you understand it."

Nat set the book down properly this time.

"How does she know?" Nat asked. The suspicion in her voice was not unfriendly, but it was firm. Nat had kept us alive for four weeks in those woods. She did not switch off her wariness easily.

"Because Joan is not entirely ordinary herself," said Mr. Rogers with a small smile. "We can leave it at that for now and let her explain the rest."

…

She arrived just after seven, when the snow outside had settled into something thick and blue and quiet.

I had expected someone old in the way that old people usually looked old. Soft around the edges. Slow moving. I had expected grey hair pinned up and perhaps a cane.

Joan was not that.

She was tall with dark copper skin and hair the colour of a raven's wing, cut sharp at her jaw. She wore a long coat the deep green of pine needles and her eyes, when she looked at me, were the most extraordinary shade of amber I had ever seen on a person. They were not quite human eyes, though I could not have told you then exactly what made me think so. They simply held something older than the rest of her face suggested.

She looked at Nat first.

Nat, to her enormous credit, did not flinch. She stood her ground in the hallway and looked right back.

Joan smiled slowly, as if she had just seen something that pleased her very much.

"Blue River pack," Joan said, more to herself than to us. "I thought so. I can smell it on you both. That old blood."

"You can smell our pack?" Nat asked.

"The remnant of it. Yes." Joan tilted her head in a way that reminded me so precisely of the way Nat did when she was thinking that it startled me. "Sit down, little wolves. There is a great deal I want to tell you and most of it is good news. Though I suspect it will not feel that way at first."

…

We sat in the living room, the fire going and the snow pressing softly against the windows, and Joan talked for a long time.

She told us first about what we were. Not just wolves, she said. Anyone could be a wolf, could carry the shift and the instinct and the bond to a pack. What we were was older than that.

"The Lycan line," Joan said, wrapping both hands around the mug Mrs. Rogers had pressed on her, "is the original bloodline. Before the wolves fractured into packs, before the Alpha lines were established and the territories drawn, there were the Lycans. Fewer than a dozen families in the whole of recorded history. Yours is one of them."

"Ours?" I asked.

"Your mother's line," Joan said gently. "She carried it. You both do."

I looked at Nat. She was very still in the way she got when she was trying not to show how much something had hit her.

"What does that mean for us? Practically?" Nat said.

Joan nodded as if she appreciated the practical turn of mind.

"It means your wolves will be stronger than most. Faster. More aware. It means the bond between you and your wolves will be deeper and more communicative than the average wolf experiences. It means your instincts will rarely mislead you, if you learn to listen to them." Joan paused. "It also means you will be of interest to those who understand what you are and want to use it. That is the part that is less good news."

"Someone killed our pack," Nat said flatly. "Were they interested in that?"

Joan looked at her steadily. She did not look away or soften her expression, which I think was the right thing to do with Nat.

"I believe so," Joan said. "I do not have all the pieces yet. But I am looking for them."

The fire popped. Snow tapped the window like it was asking to come in.

"There is one more thing," Joan said, and her amber eyes moved to me. "You specifically, Ryan. When your wolf wakes and when the time comes, you may experience something called a mate bond. A pull toward one specific person. It will feel unlike anything else you have ever felt. Like gravity wearing a face." She smiled faintly. "When that happens, do not be afraid of it. But do not be reckless with it either. A Lycan bond is not a small thing. It marks both souls."

I was six years old and had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

But somewhere underneath the six-year-old ignorance, something in me filed it away.

It would wait there quietly for many years.

Patient as wolves always are.

…

Aunt Joan, as she became, visited often after that. She brought books and stories and the particular kind of knowledge that does not live in schools. She taught Nat and I our history, the history of our blood, and she answered questions with a frankness that the Rogers sometimes winced at but never stopped.

She also never seemed to age. Not even a little.

I noticed it years later and when I asked, she simply raised an eyebrow and said, "I told you I was not entirely ordinary," and refused to say anything further on the subject.

Some things, I learned, Joan kept to herself.

She was entitled to that. She had given us everything else.