BLACKTOP MOON

CHAPTER 6:CLAWS OUT

Ronan walked down the hallway toward Mabel's door, and I had no idea that everything I thought I understood about my own life was about to get renegotiated without my signature.

The door opened before he touched it.

Mabel was smaller than I expected, silver haired, a woman who looked like she had been carved out of driftwood and stubbornness in equal measure, sitting in a chair that faced the door like she had known the exact second we would arrive. Candles burned low along the windowsill even though it was the middle of the afternoon, and the room smelled like dried sage and something older underneath it, something that made the hair on my arms stand up before she even spoke. Her eyes found me and did not leave, cataloguing me the way Ronan did, except older, deeper, like she was reading a book she had already finished once and was now checking for errors in the printing.

There you are, she said, like I was late for something I had never agreed to attend.

I do not know you, I said, staying near the doorway, my body already calculating the distance back to the hall.

No, she agreed, motioning toward the empty chair across from her without ever raising her voice above a murmur. But I know your blood. I have known it longer than you have been alive to carry it.

Ronan stood near the door, arms crossed, watching this unfold with an expression I could not read, careful in a way that told me he did not fully know what was coming either, which somehow made the whole thing worse instead of better.

Sit, Mabel said, and it was not a request.

I sat. My legs did most of the deciding without consulting the rest of me.

She reached out and took my hand before I could pull it back, her grip surprisingly strong for someone who looked like a strong wind might carry her off, and turned it palm up, tracing one weathered finger along the lines there like she was reading a map instead of skin. Whatever she found made something shift behind her eyes, grief and relief tangled together in a way that made my chest ache without understanding why.

Your brother sat in that exact chair eight months ago, she said. Same stubborn set to his jaw. Same fear he thought he was hiding well, and hid badly, same as you're doing right now.

The floor tilted under me. Danny was here, I said. He sat right there, in that chair, and nobody thought to mention that to me.

He came looking for the same thing you're looking for, Mabel said. Except he already knew what he was walking into by the time he sat down, and you don't yet, and that is going to make the next part of this conversation very hard to hear, girl, so I want you steady before I say it.

Ronan shifted near the door, a small movement, like he wanted to step forward and stopped himself at the last second. Mabel, he said, low, almost a warning.

She's earned it, Ronan, Mabel said without looking at him, still holding my hand in both of hers now, cool and dry against my palm. She rode a stolen bike into wolf territory chasing a dead man's truth. She faced down a shift without running. She can handle the rest of it, even if it isn't kind.

I looked between them, feeling like the only person in the room who did not have the script everyone else had already memorized. Handle what, I said, my voice tighter than I meant it to be. What are you not telling me.

Mabel's grip on my hand tightened, not painful, just anchoring, the way you hold onto someone before delivering news that is going to knock them sideways whether they are braced for it or not.

Your family carries something rare, Wren, she said. A bloodline the old packs used to call a binding line, blood that can seal or break certain curses depending on how it is given, and how willingly. Your brother had trace amounts, enough to sense the old magic but not enough to work it. You have more. Considerably more, more than I have seen carried by a single living person in over sixty years of watching for it.

I do not understand any of those words, I said, which was true, and also easier to admit than confessing how badly my hands had started shaking in her grip.

There is a curse killing this pack, Mabel said. Slowly. Quietly. Picking off members one generation at a time so gradually most of the wider wolf world does not even realize it is happening. It has been killing them for longer than you have been alive, longer than Ronan has led them, though the weight of stopping it landed on his shoulders the day his father died carrying the same secret. Your blood, given the right way, at the right moment, is the only thing on this earth that can stop it.

The room went very quiet. Somewhere outside I could hear the ordinary sounds of the garage, an engine turning over, someone laughing, life continuing on as though the floor of my entire understanding of myself had not just been ripped out from under me and replaced with something I never asked to hold.

Given the right way, I repeated. What does that mean, exactly. Say it plainly. I am done with half answers today.

Mabel did not answer right away, and that silence told me more than words would have. Ronan finally spoke instead, voice low and careful in a way I had not heard from him before, stepping closer now, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him even without touching.

It means there are people who would take that blood from you whether you offered it or not, he said. And you just spent three weeks making yourself very easy to find, riding a stolen bike straight into a rival pack's scouting range without knowing what you were carrying inside you the entire time.