Chapter Fifteen
A towering wolf stood where Keegan had been seconds earlier.
Even now, the sight stopped me. Moonlight caught in his fur, and something about the power in him, ancient and steady, made my chest tighten.
“Maeve!” It was Caleb.
Relief and dread hit at the same time as I opened the door.
Caleb stood there breathing hard, eyes sharp with urgency. Wolves moved behind him in the yard, their bodies tense as they watched the trees.
“My pack arrived first,” he said quickly. “They wanted to make sure the cottage was secure. I hope they didn’t alarm you.”
“Only mildly.” I stepped past him onto the porch and froze. I glanced at Keegan, who looked like he was smiling under all his fur.
I watched as wolves filled the clearing, and it wasn’t just Caleb’s.
There were dozens, and they moved through the shadows and settled into a wide circle around the cottage, keeping a careful distance from us.
“They’re guarding it,” I said, but I think I was hoping for confirmation.
“Guarding you,” Caleb corrected me.
“I didn’t ask for that.”
But then I spotted my dad. He stood near the edge of the yard in his bulldog form. He was solid, but quiet in the moonlight. When he turned toward me, something in his eyes made my stomach drop.
Caleb hadn’t brought the pack just to protect me.
Something worse had happened.
And my father already knew it. He crossed the grass toward me with slow, deliberate steps.
Something in the set of his shoulders made my stomach drop before he even shifted.
The change came halfway across the yard. Fur pulled back. Bones stretched. The familiar shape of my father stepped forward from the night as if he’d been carved out of it.
“Maeve,” he said calmly.
It was too calm.
He pulled me into a hug before I could think, and for one fragile second, I let myself fall into his embrace.
But when he pulled back, his hands settled on my shoulders, and his eyes searched mine.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
I frowned and shook my head. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
He didn’t look convinced, and his hands stayed where they were, and that was when I saw it. There was a massive strain sitting quietly behind his eyes.
My gaze slipped past him to Keegan. He’d shifted back into himself and stood a few paces away, barefoot in the cold dew of the grass. Caleb lingered beside him, speaking lowly, and the wolves had gone completely still.
Karvey dropped from the roof and stood silently with his wings tucked close.
The whole yard felt like it was waiting for something that I couldn’t give them.
Until it hit me.
“The Priestess took her.” The words left my mouth before I could make sense of them, but I just knew. I could feel it, and the thought tore out of me.
“She kidnapped her, didn’t she?” I said again when my dad didn’t answer.
“No, Maeve.” My father shook his head slowly. “Believe it or not, she left on her own.”
“I don’t believe it.”
For a moment, the words didn’t land, but I knew what needed to be said. My mom wouldn’t go to the priestess.
“She wouldn’t go.” The words slipped past me like something said in another language. “That’s not possible.”
“I saw her, Maeve.” My dad cleared his throat. “I tried to stop her.”
The ground shifted under my feet, and Keegan came to my side.
“You saw what exactly?”
“She walked out of the Academy toward the wilds.”
I stared at my dad, trying to make sense of any of this.
“She didn’t run away,” he added. “But she didn’t stop, and I know she heard me calling. I ran after her, but she slipped away.”
“One of our younger wolves saw her heading through the Wilds. She didn’t seem to have had a spell cast. She looked in good health and not in a trance or…” Caleb stepped forward slightly. “She looked like she meant to go wherever it was she was heading.”
“Twobble saw her first,” my dad said.
My heart stuttered at the words.
“Twobble noticed her near the garden beds. He thought she was just meditating or something,” my dad told me.
“Did she talk to him?” I asked, my pulse racing.
Caleb nodded once. “She spoke with Twobble and asked him not to tell anyone that he saw her.”
A bitter laugh left my lips. “Twobble isn’t known for keeping secrets.”
“When he tried to get closer, she told him to stay where he was,” my dad added.
“Anyway, she kept walking,” he continued.
“But she wouldn’t stop,” I whispered.
“She crossed the boundary where the orcs are.” He shook his head. “I lost sight of her, and I could only track her so far into the Wilds before her aura was lost to the forest.”
“The young shifter hollered for her when he saw her wander past the orcs, but she didn’t look back.”
That was the detail that broke something inside me.
My mother had never walked away from us without turning back, at least.
“Where did she go?” I asked, swallowing the dryness in my mouth.
Caleb hesitated, glanced at my dad, then continued.
“Someone was waiting beyond the tree line.”
My stomach dropped, but I needed to know everything. “And?”
“They said it looked like the Priestess or at least her silhouette.”
“But she wouldn’t go to her willingly,” I said immediately.
Keegan stepped closer, and his hand settled against the middle of my back. The warmth of it steadied me a little.
“She may think she’s protecting you,” he said carefully.
The words hurt more than anything else.
“That’s worse.”
Because if it was a choice, if she believed she was saving me from something, then she had walked straight into that woman’s reach on purpose.
“She asked me something earlier tonight,” my father said after a moment.
I looked up at him.
“She asked if blood can be corrected.”
Ice slid through my chest.
Blood remembers. The Priestess’s words echoed in my head.
“She left an empty teacup on the table in her room,” he added softly. “The porcelain still warm.”
That small detail undid me more than the rest.
She hadn’t stormed out.
She hadn’t fled.
She had finished her tea… and walked away.
“She thinks she understands the Priestess,” my father said.
The distinction sat heavily between us, but then a quiet voice drifted from the porch.
“Maeve?” Twobble stood at the bottom step, clutching something carefully in both hands. Cindy was sitting securely on his tiny shoulder.
There was no dramatic sigh, punchline, or speech about goblin authority. He looked pale and uncertain. His ears drooped in a way I had never seen before.
“I tried to stop her,” he said softly.
My chest tightened.
“I know,” I said, moving toward him.
“She told me it wasn’t my burden,” he continued, shuffling forward,
He held out a folded piece of parchment.
“I found this on your desk in the office.”
My name was written across the front in my mother’s familiar, slightly slanted handwriting.
Everything around me went quiet.
The wolves.
The trees.
Even the wind.
Keegan’s hand stayed steady against my back while my father moved closer without saying a word.
The paper felt heavier than it should have when I took it from Twobble.
I stared at my name, and suddenly, the thing that frightened me most wasn’t the Priestess.
It was whatever my mother believed she had to do.