THE WOLF WHO REMEMBERED MY NAME

Chapter 3: Open Only After You See Him

My father left me a letter under the floorboards, but the handwriting wasn't his.

The scratching in the closet stopped the moment Kieran left the house.

It didn't fade. It stopped. Mid-scratch. Like something listening.

I sat on the floor of my childhood bedroom for a long time, holding the one-eyed wooden wolf, breathing dust. The house was too quiet again. That kind of quiet that has weight.

We put you in here to keep you alive.

Jonah was your uncle.

You gave it to me the night I was supposed to kill you.

Nothing he said made sense. Everything he said felt true. That's what made me angry.

I shoved the wolf into my coat pocket and ripped the closet open.

Empty. Just coats. Small coats. A yellow raincoat with ducks on it that I dimly remembered. And on the floor of the closet, deeper gouges. Four lines, then four more, overlapping. Panicked. A child's nails, not claws. I had done that. I had tried to get out.

Or in.

My hands were shaking. I kicked the back wall of the closet out of frustration — it was thin plywood, swollen with damp — and it gave.

Not much. An inch. Enough to see there was space behind it.

Blackwood House had a second basement. Now it had a second closet.

I pulled. The plywood cracked. Behind it, not insulation, not stone. A hollow. And inside that hollow, a tin box, the kind cheap cookies come in at Christmas. Rust on the edges. No dust on it. Someone had put it there recently.

On top of the box, in thick black marker that had bled into the rust:

ELENA. OPEN ONLY AFTER YOU SEE HIM.

My mouth went dry.

I knew that handwriting. Not my mother's soft loops. My father's. Jonah's. The man who taught me to write my name by making me copy it a hundred times until my fingers cramped. The man who never let me go into the forest, who locked the windows at sunset, who died with his eyes open staring at the ceiling.

The man who raised me on lies.

I opened the box with my teeth because my hands wouldn't work.

Inside: one envelope. Cream paper, expensive. My name across it again. ELENA. Same black marker.

Under it: a photograph, face down.

And under that: a key. Small, iron, cold, shaped like a wolf's head with blue glass eyes.

I opened the envelope.

One page. One.

Elena,

If you are reading this, then Kieran has found you. Which means I'm dead, and I'm sorry.

Everything I told you about your mother was a lie.

Your mother did not abandon you. She did not leave because she didn't love you. She was taken. And I was the one who helped them take her.

They came the night you turned six. They said you were an abomination. A half-breed that would destroy them. Luna fought. God, she fought. Silas died trying to get to you both. I heard him howling all the way from the tree line.

They gave me a choice. Give them Luna, keep you and raise you human, or watch them kill you both. I chose you.

I told myself I saved you.

Do not trust the council.

Do not trust the wolves.

Most importantly, do not let Kieran tell you who you are.

Your blood is not entirely human.

Forgive me if you can.

—Dad

I read it three times. The third time out loud, because I wanted to hear how stupid it sounded.

"Not human?" My laugh was sharp and broke halfway. "Not human?"

The house answered. A floorboard creaked directly behind me.

I spun, still on my knees in the closet.

Kieran stood in the doorway again. He hadn't come up the stairs. I would have heard. He was just there, like the house had made him.

His eyes went to the letter in my hand.

"How much did you read?"

"Enough to know you're all liars," I spat, and threw the tin at him. He didn't duck. It hit his chest and clattered to the floor. "My father was a coward? You said that?"

"Yes."

"And you knew my mother?"

His jaw tightened. That scar white again.

"Yes."

"Is she alive?" My voice cracked completely now. I was six again, in a closet, scratching to get out.

Silence stretched so long I thought he wouldn't answer.

Then: "Yes."

The world tilted. I grabbed the closet door to stay upright.

"Where is she?"

He didn't answer.

I was on my feet before I knew it. I shoved him. Hard. He didn't move. He was stone, heat coming off him like a furnace.

"WHERE IS SHE?"

His hand closed around my wrist. Not hard. Inevitable.

And the instant our skin touched, something exploded inside my mind.

Not a memory. A detonation.

Forest. Night. Fire. Not house fire — forest fire, crown fire, trees screaming. Blood on snow. A woman screaming my name, not Elena, something older, something with too many syllables. Eleni.

My father — no, Jonah — kneeling in snow, hands over his ears, crying.

And a little girl. Me. Six years old, yellow raincoat, hair in two messy braids. Standing barefoot in snow that should have frozen me.

Beside me, a gigantic black wolf. Bigger than a horse. Silver running down its spine like a river. Its shoulder pressed to my small shoulder.

The little girl placed her hand against its muzzle. So trusting. So unafraid.

The wolf lowered its massive head.

The little girl whispered, "Keep him safe for me until I remember."

Then everything vanished and I was back in the closet, on my knees, Kieran holding my wrist while I gasped like I'd been drowned.

He let go like I'd burned him. His face had gone pale under the scar. Silver eyes blown wide.

"You saw it," he whispered. It wasn't a question.

"What was that?" My voice was raw.

"Our first memory."

I stared at him, at the man who was a wolf, at the wolf who remembered my name when I didn't remember his.

"I've never met you before."

"Yes, you have," he said, and for the first time since the cemetery, he sounded angry. Angry at me.

"You were six."

My stomach dropped to the floorboards.

"The night your mother disappeared."

I looked down at the photograph I hadn't turned over yet. The one under the envelope.

My hands shook so badly I almost tore it.

I turned it over.

Four people standing in snow beneath a full moon. A beautiful white-haired woman I knew was Luna. A dark, bearded man I didn't know, his arm around her — Silas, it had to be. A teenage boy with no scar yet and silver eyes that already looked haunted — Kieran at eighteen.

And in front, a little girl in a yellow raincoat with ducks on it, holding a one-eyed wooden wolf.

Me.

On the back, in my mother's looping handwriting that I would know anywhere, even after eighteen years:

We were whole before they broke us.

And below it, in Jonah's black marker, fresh:

She is directly beneath you. Don't let them hear you move.

The floor beneath my knees was suddenly very, very cold.

And from directly beneath the floor, from the second basement that had been breathing, something heavy dragged itself across stone.

And howled.