C3

"You let her out of your sight, Magnus?"

The words did not just come out of his mouth. They shook the heavy wooden beams of the Blackthorne Pack Manor. Supreme Alpha Idris Blackthorne sat on the wide stone bench, his black tunic tight across his broad shoulders. His dark skin and sharp jaw looked hard like stone. His eyes were cold like winter ice, and they stared straight through the guard.

"I would never hurt the princess, Alpha King!" Magnus Wraith gasped. He stayed down on one knee on the floor. "The crowd at the Ravenmoor International Gateway was too thick with different clan scents. But something amazing happened. Princess Amara spoke."

Idris leaned forward fast. His large hands gripped the edges of the bench.

"Did the healers at the Lunar Crest Research Institute finally fix her mind?" Idris asked. His deep voice grew a little soft.

"No, it was not the pack doctors," Magnus said, shaking his head. "The treatments did not do anything new. It was a girl. A random wolf woman in her twenties at the transit hub. Amara wrapped her arms around her and called her Mommy. She cried so hard when the woman walked away into the city."

Idris narrowed his dark eyes. His wolf shifted under his skin, feeling a strange pull he did not understand.

Five years ago, Idris had brought two tiny pups back to the Blackthorne Bloodmoon Pack. The elders told everyone the mother was Ayomide Okafor from the Okafor Moonfang Clan. But the two pups hated Ayomide. They ran away whenever she came near the pack borders. Amara had never spoken a single word to Ayomide, so why would she call a total stranger her mother?

"What did this woman smell like?" Idris demanded. "What did she look like?"

"She looked very plain, Alpha King," Magnus said, trying to remember. "She had dark brown spots all over her face and a wide, flat nose. She looked like an ordinary omega wolf from the outer woods. There was nothing special about her face at all."

"I do not care about her beauty, Magnus," Idris growled, his teeth showing. "If she can make my daughter speak, she is the key to fixing her mind. Track her scent. Use the Shadow Trackers. Find out what pack she belongs to right now."

"I will do it this very second!" Magnus said. He stood up fast and ran out of the big room to start the hunt.

Upstairs in a bedroom that smelled like pine wood, Jabari Kane was fixing some wooden drawing sticks for his little sister. He was the oldest twin pup, the Alpha Successor of the whole dominion, but right now he was just being a good brother.

Amara took the drawing stick from his hand. She started scratching dark lines on a big piece of white paper.

She drew a girl with a flat nose and lots of little brown dots on her cheeks. While she drew, a huge, happy smile came onto her face. She even used a bright yellow stone to draw big sun lines all around the girl's head, making her look like a bright star.

At the very top of the paper, Amara wrote one word with her shaky hand: Mommy.

"Why did you write that?" Jabari asked, his little eyebrows bunching up. "That does not look like the mean lady from the Okafor clan."

Amara's smile went away fast. She shook her head up and down with mad energy. She hated Ayomide. Ayomide was not the warm wolf she had met at the gate.

"If it is not her, then who is it?" Jabari asked, looking at the ugly face on the paper.

Amara opened her mouth. She wanted to tell her brother about the beautiful, sweet scent she had smelled. She wanted to say how safe her inner wolf felt when the woman held her. But no sound came out. Her throat felt tight again, and she could not speak.

She felt so sad that she could not share her secret. She quickly rolled up the paper and hid it tight under her shirt, right against her small chest.

Jabari watched her, his young wolf mind wondering what kind of magic this strange woman had to make his sister so happy.

Across the city inside Zanele's Mooncrest Villa, I pulled the sticky, ugly mask right off my skin.

Achoo!

"Someone is talking about me," I muttered, rubbing my real nose. My true face was smooth and beautiful, with no spots at all.

Zuberi was sitting on the floor in front of a big silver computer screen, typing fast into the pack web network. He looked up at me with huge, glowing eyes.

"Someone is definitely looking for you, Mommy," Zuberi said, pointing at a red flashing message on the screen. "A huge alpha leader is offering all his pack resources just to hire your magic healing skills!"