Chapter 37
CHAPTER 37
A shley
“Knock, knock!” a cheery voice calls through the screen door.
I spin away from the kitchen sink, grinning from ear to ear at the sound of Ms. Elsie’s voice.
“Come in, come in,” I insist, while wiping my wet hands on my jeans as I hurry to the door.
“Happy Birthday!” She presents me with a plate of fluffy pancakes with colorful sprinkles and topped with whip cream.
“You didn’t have to do this,” I say, taking the plate from her.
“Well, you didn’t come to breakfast this morning, so I figured I’d bring the surprise I had planned for you.”
My stomach churns with guilt.
“I slept in this morning.” It’s not a complete lie. I stayed out all night with Christophe, which made me sleep well past my normal time. But there’s another reason I chose not to attend the pack breakfast with everyone this morning.
“You’re still avoiding Emery, huh?”
Leave it to Ms. Elsie to get straight to the point.
“It’s that obvious?”
“Oh, only to anyone with eyes and ears.” She waves me off, taking the plate from me and placing it on the counter of the kitchen.
“How was your cake last evening?”
An instant smile spreads over my face.
“I knew you would love it.” She claps, proud of herself or of Christophe, I’m not sure. “He put so much time and care into making that for you. And I barely did anything to help.”
“He told me,” I tell her. “I think he’s a natural when it comes to baking.”
She nods, her eyes widening. “I told him the same thing.” She pauses. “Say, how about you and me take a walk?” She gestures toward the untouched pancakes. “We can save those for later.”
Ms. Elsie takes it upon herself to find a plastic lid in one of the kitchen cabinets and covers the plate of pancakes. More guilt has my belly feeling heavy. I don’t want her to think I’m ungrateful for the breakfast she prepared.
“Where are we headed to?” I ask. “Not a surprise birthday party, is it? Not to be ungrateful, but …” I trail off when she holds up a hand.
“Emery told me you hated the birthday parties your adopted mother used to throw for you when you were growing up. I wouldn’t dream of doing something like that.”
I push out a breath, relieved.
It’s not that I mind parties, but on my birthday I like things to be more mellow.
“You know,” Ms. Elsie starts as we head from my house toward the woods surrounding the pack’s compound, “Emery talked a lot about you when she …” She pauses.
I swallow. “Thought I was dead.”
Ms. Elsie nods. “Right. That ugly business.” She clucks her tongue, wagging her head. “The moment I saw her, I knew who she was. What she was, I probably should say.”
“You mean, the storyteller.”
“Yes.” She smiles brightly. “We’re heading just up here. Your sister has done a lot of work in the caves around here since she started her project. But this cave remains untouched.”
She points at what looks like just a bunch of shrubbery, not too far off of the walking trail we’re on.
“This one,” she starts, “I asked her not to go in.”
I scrunch my brows. “But it’s so close to the pack’s commune.” We haven’t even been talking for fifteen minutes. Most of the other caves I’ve been to with Emery require at least thirty minutes of walking if not a couple of hours.
Apparently, in the almost year since Emery started exploring the caves, she hasn’t even scratched the surface of what’s inside of them.
“That’s precisely why I asked her not to touch this cave. Not yet.”
I watch as Ms. Elsie moves the brush to the side, revealing the cave’s wide mouth. I turn to her, waiting for her approval. She nods.
“Go in. It’s okay.”
I step inside and immediately gasp.
All of the caves I’ve been to with Emery are amazing in their own way. Some were simply hideouts for people hundreds, even thousands of years ago. Some were obviously connected to shifters and packs that were passing through.
But this one is different.
Unlike the others, the paint that fills the numerous drawings on the wall isn’t faded or peeling. These colors are vibrant and stand out. As if …
“Did you do these?” I spin and ask, while pointing to the drawing nearest me.
Ms. Elsie doesn’t immediately answer me.
Instead, she moves past me toward one side of the cave. She presses her hand to the drawing of a young girl in a pink dress kneeling around a fire in front of an old woman who stands, supporting herself on a cane.
“She was my grandmother.” The reverence in her voice is palpable. “Back in the days I was growing up, it was rare for our elders to outlive their children. But my grandmother made it. Past the raids and the warring our pack used to do. My parents …”
She looks back at me with a sadness in her eyes that weighs on my heart.
Her parents didn’t survive.
I move next to Ms. Elsie, taking a closer look at the drawing.
“A pack needs its elders. While the alpha is the leader, the strongest and most powerful, and if he’s lucky he has at least one trusted beta, or multiple. But even they can’t do it alone.”
She turns to me and takes my hand in both of hers. “The elders are the guides. We help cross the bridge from one generation to the next.”
I nod, soaking in everything she’s saying, which is obviously very important to her.
The smile she grants me isn’t as pleasant as her usual smiles. It’s loaded with something I can’t put my name on.
“My wish is for you and the others to make it until you are the elders of this pack to pass along all of the knowledge and wisdom you’ve gained in your youth.”
“Ms. Elsie.” I shake my head because I don’t like the reminiscent tone in her voice.
“Don’t worry, dear. I’m not saying goodbye.” The luster in her smile returns, and I push out a relieved sigh. “It’s too important that I stick around to see things through.”
I squint again in confusion. “You adore speaking in riddles.”
That makes her giggle like someone a half-century younger than she is.
“I’m not the only one, am I?”
I dip my head, smirking. “Guilty as charged.”
“It’s one of our traits.”
I pop my head up to give her my signature confused look.
“Quirkiness,” she responds as if that explains it all. “Have you ever wondered why you’ve always felt like an outsider most of your life?”
“Oh, only every day for about a decade,” I mumble. “It’s one of the reasons I searched so hard to find out about my parents.
“When our adopted parents refused to tell us more than the basics about them, and never took us to Florida, the state we were born and lived in until they died, I decided to keep searching for answers.”
I turn to Ms. Elsie. “I hoped if I knew more about them it would answer this emptiness I always felt inside.” Unconsciously, I run my hand over my chest. “When I found out that we were actually wolf shifters, I thought that would be the answer I searched for.”
“But that didn’t answer everything, did it?”
I snort and let out a hollow laugh. “You mean aside from getting me kidnapped and thrown in to a torture chamber for months? No, it didn’t answer everything.”
It’s true that finding out the truth of my birth did explain a lot of the oddities I experienced growing up. It certainly accounted for the supposed iron pills my adopted mother practically shoved down my throat on a daily basis.
And why I always had an affinity for the moon, the outdoors, was stronger and faster than my classmates yet I never cared much for athletics.
“I mean, since I’ve been here among the Nightwolves I’ve felt more comfortable here than anywhere else.”
That’s the truth.
“But there’s something missing.”
I push out a breath. “There’s also the fact that I can’t truly be with my mate. Not like we should be.”
Again, my hand runs across my chest. The permanent ache is becoming more pronounced. As it does whenever I mention the reality of Christophe and my relationship status.
Soon, I find my hand in Ms. Elsie’s again. She squeezes before telling me, “Trust Mother Moon.”
I part my lips to ask her what that even means, but she cuts me off.
“But there’s something else, isn’t there?”
I take a beat, considering her words. Yes, the feeling of not belonging hasn’t completely gone away. Even with finding out the truth of who I am, becoming a part of the Nightwolf pack, and yes, finding the soul I know is my fated mate.
Despite all of that, the emptiness inside of me persists. Well, the questioning persists.
“It’s because we’re different. You and me,” Ms. Elsie says as if answering my unasked question.
“We’re not wolf shifters?” It’s not an absurd question considering I’ve never seen Ms. Elsie shift. She told me once shifters reach a certain age and they rarely shift, when I first asked her about this.
But was that a lie?
Laughing, she pats my hand before releasing it.
“Of course we are dear,” she answers light-heartedly. “Rest assured your wolf knows who you are. Always has.”
This time when I run my hand across my chest it’s with a smile on my face, meant to soothe my inner wolf. I feel her with me.
“But within every pack there are different roles. Everyone tends to believe the alpha is the most important because of his strength. While he is the leader, he cannot lead if there is no pack. We all have our place.”
She waves her fingers between the both of us. “That’s where we come in.”
I remain silent, allowing her to speak at her own pace because it feels as if she’s on the verge of telling me something I’ve been waiting to hear my entire life.
“Chance is our lead alpha, strong enough to become alpha of his own pack if he wanted. His mate, your sister, has become our pack’s storyteller. And yes, I am the pack elder, but if lucky, a pack can have many elders, and will.
“My first role, and dare I say, most important role, is the pack overseer.”
She chuckles when my eyebrows draw down into a deep V.
“I see you’ve never heard of this position.” She retakes my hand and spins us to face the drawing once again. “Most haven’t. If we’re lucky, we can get by in the pack without revealing who we truly are. It’s not to intentionally keep secrets. It’s for safety reasons.
“Throughout history raids and wars, not to mention the many centuries of fighting among other shifter types, witches, and vampires, there was good reason to keep the secrets of how our packs worked.”
“Preservation,” I say. “To preserve a pack’s secrets in case of a kidnapping during war or something like that.”
“That’s right!” she excitedly exclaims.
“I used to watch war documentaries when I was a little girl. Humans fight a lot,” I add.
“That’s one of the things we shifters have in common with our human siblings.”
“Siblings?” I ask, shocked she would use such a word.
“Oh, sweetie, there’s so much about this world you don’t know yet. None of us knows everything to be quite honest. But you just keep living.”
She pats my hand again and turns back to the wall.
“Back to what I was explaining. The overseer is often a part of the pack but separate from it. We stand out, not ever truly feeling a part of but never ostracized. You see, being slightly separate from the group helps to give us a better perspective of what’s going on. From the inside out.”
“I don’t understand.”
She gives me a kind smile. “Due to the insight I was born with, honed by years of practice, I was able to discern who Reese was the moment I saw her.”
“You mean the Alpha Queen?”
“That.” She nods. “But Chael had already figured that part out. The fact that our Alpha Queen is a seer. She didn’t know it about herself, but I saw it early on. And your sister?”
I lift my brows in anticipation for what she has to say about Emery.
“Well, you know the job your adopted mother did on her self-esteem. Not only did she steal the truth of your shifter lineage from the both of you, she tried to steal the legacy of the storyteller. Now, your adopted mother had no idea what that meant.
“She had no true understanding of what it meant to be a part of a pack. Anyway, Emery didn’t realize her natural love for history and understanding was the result of the role Mother Moon assigned her at birth.”
“As the storyteller,” I say.
“Right. Which leads me to you.” She dips her head toward the wall. “We’re meant to be on the outside looking in because it’s our job to help guide those who are lost to their natural calling.”
“I don’t understand,” I tell her honestly.
Her smile softens. “I didn’t either. It was my grandmother who explained it to me early on. She sat me down by the fire one night after the pack had gone on a run. She happened to be an overseer, too, which means she saw it in me early on.”
“So, we like, assign people to certain positions in the pack?”
Ms. Elsie shakes her head.
“We don’t assign anything. Our job is to observe. We’ll get a sixth sense when something shows up. My intuition immediately told me that Reese was a seer. The same way it told me who and what Emery was.”
Her hand tightens around mine. “The same way I knew the moment I met you that you would be my replacement.”
I snatch my hand away from her.
“Replacement?” I wag my head back and forth. I don’t want to replace anyone, but especially not Ms. Elsie.
“Don’t fret, dear. That’s a long way off. Until then, it’s just up to you to understand and observe. That’s it. Spend time getting comfortable with your own intuition. Once Mother Moon recognizes that you’ve learned to trust her and the gift she’s given you, you will be able to fully embody your gift.”
Though I don’t completely understand this gift or talk, something about it feels right. Almost like a key unlocking a door that’s been closed off to me my entire life. Rays of sunlight begin to stream in from the slight opening.
“And Christophe?” I ask, catching myself by surprise. “What’s his role?”
A serene expression comes over her. “He’s already fulfilled his role, dear.”
My eyes widen in horror.
“No, no, no,” she implores, taking my hand because I’ve taken an unconscious step backward. “I don’t mean that. He’s not, well, as far as I can tell, he’s not going anywhere. I just meant …”
She pushes out a heavy breath. “I can’t say everything, mostly because I don’t know everything. We’re not seers. Not like Reese. But just know, Christophe’s role was to disrupt the plans of those who would do harm to all of us shifters.”
She puts up a finger when I open my mouth to ask more questions.
“I can’t tell you anymore.”
Ms. Elsie quickly moves to another drawing on the walls. “Do you know our greatest strength as overseers?”
“What is it?” I ask.
She peers back at me and smiles. “We see deeper than surface level. When others see a mere coincidence, we can pick up that it’s part of a deeper meaning. Like, when your sister tries to get in between you and your mate, she’s not doing it just to spite you.”
“No, just because she thinks I’m incapable of making decisions for myself,” I immediately reply before covering my mouth with my hands.
Ms. Elsie gives me a knowing expression as she slightly shakes her head. “Perhaps. Or maybe, she’s just doing what big sisters do.” Ms. Elsie takes one of my hands into both of hers, squeezing it. “I was the one who held your sister when she cried over losing you. She blamed herself, believed she failed you. Though she might not be going about things the right way, her heart is in the right place.
“Your sister loves you, and as the older one, she wants to protect you.”
I part my lips to tell Ms. Elsie that I don’t need my sister’s protection, but I stop myself.
She’s right.
Emery has always looked out for me.
“They tried to turn me against her,” I whisper. “In that place. They lied and told me that she was the one who sent me there. It was Christophe who helped me see the lies for what they were. He reminded me to keep the good memories I had of Emery close, to remind myself of my sister’s love.”
Ms. Elsie squeezes my hand. “Did it work?”
I nod.
“Good. Mother Moon sent you an older sister who loves you dearly and a mate who would lay down his life for you. Not all of us get that.”
I look deep into her eyes. There’s a profound wisdom there that could only accumulate from years of life.
Her smile widens.
“Some of us get more than a few of those.” She actually winks.
Ms. Elsie has secrets. Way more than I could imagine, I’m starting to recognize.
“Don’t worry, dear,” she says. “As your gift grows, you’ll come to understand more.”
“What—”
“Ms. Elsie,” a male voice calls from the mouth of the wave, interrupting us.
“Bracka?” I call the adolescent who stands in the cave. He’s one of the younger members of the pack. No more than eighteen or nineteen.
“I can come back,” he says almost shyly.
“Nonsense.” Ms. Elsie waves him over.
I notice he’s carrying a tin bucket with supplies inside. The closer he gets, the more I can make out the paint, chalk, brushes, and other drawing utensils in the bucket. It comes back to me that the number of times I’ve seen Bracka at dinner or other pack meals, his hands are often stained with paint.
“You did these?” I blurt out the question.
The corner of his mouth quirks upward at the same time he dips his head.
“Bracka is our pack’s artist,” Ms. Elsie says proudly. “We have a lot of artists, but he prefers to work with natural canvases.”
She gestures to the drawings around us.
“Did you do the others, too?” I ask, thinking about all of the other caves around the commune. It would be impossible for him to have done them all, given his age. A lot of the drawings go back two or three generations.
“My great-grandfather did many of them,” he explains. “He taught me how to preserve and care for the drawings over time before he went to be with Mother Moon.”
I nod.
“Other pack artists made a lot of the older drawings over the decades,” Bracka continues, a sense of pride filling his voice. “It’s us artists that often work with the storytellers of the pack to preserve our history.”
I turn to Bracka. “But you haven’t worked with Emery. She told me she still doesn’t know who’s responsible for many of the cave drawings.”
He nods and dips his head again.
“Our young pup is shy,” Ms. Elsie says with a kind smile directed his way. “He’ll let her know when he’s ready.” She then turns to me. “That’s part of our task, too. Being able to allow others to come to their gifts in their time. Not ours.”
“Okay,” I answer as I nod, although I still don’t fully understand this gift she’s referring to. Yet, as she wraps her arm around mine and guides us out of the cave to leave Bracka to continue his work, a sense of belonging that I hadn’t felt before starts to overcome me.
“You know next week is the Supermoon Ceremony,” Ms. Elsie says as we walk. “Have you chosen an outfit?”