Old Texts

Chapter 24

The book Sable handed Roman was older than the mansion itself. Its leather cover had cracked along the spine, and its brittle pages smelled of dust and something faintly metallic.

At the center of the open page, someone had circled a passage in faded red ink.

When the old blood wakes, the moon itself takes notice.

I read the words twice.

"What does that mean?"

Roman stood across the table, his expression unreadable. "I don't know yet."

"You're telling me you found a book that might explain my abnormal blood results, and you don't know what it means?"

"I'm telling you the truth." He pushed the book toward me. "Sable discovered it while comparing your results against historical records. She believes the descriptions might be connected to what she's seeing in your blood."

"Might be?"

"She hasn't confirmed anything."

I stared at him, searching his face for the familiar signs of a decision he'd already made on my behalf. The careful wording. The protective silence. The promise that everything would be handled before I had to worry about it.

But Roman didn't take the book away or tell me to leave it alone.

Instead, he pulled out the chair beside mine.

"I should have brought this to you the moment Sable told me," he said. "I'm done deciding what you get to know."

I wasn't ready to forgive him for the things he'd kept from me. Still, I pulled the book closer.

"Then let's find out what it says."

The first several pages were almost impossible to understand.

The language was archaic, its grammar unfamiliar, and some of the words had meanings that seemed to have disappeared from modern records entirely. Roman had summoned two translation references from the pack archives, but neither provided much help.

I traced a line with my finger.

"This word appears three times."

Roman leaned closer. "Which one?"

"This one. Here, and on the previous page."

He studied the faded lettering. "The closest modern translation is bloodline."

"Then why does it have a different symbol beside it each time?"

"I don't know."

I looked at him.

"You're the Alpha of Blackthorn. Shouldn't you know your territory's history?"

A humorless smile touched his mouth. "Apparently, my ancestors were better at keeping secrets than recording them."

It was almost a joke. Almost.

I returned to the page, refusing to let the tension between us distract me.

Then I found it.

One word stood out beneath a line of faded script, underlined in ink darker than the surrounding text.

Moonborn.

I read it aloud.

Roman straightened.

"What?" I asked.

"I've never seen that word used to describe an actual bloodline."

"But you've heard it before?"

"No. I've encountered references to ancient wolf classifications, but nothing that matches this."

I turned the book toward him. "Then why is it written here?"

He examined the passage without touching the page.

"Because someone wanted it recorded," he said. "Or someone wanted us to believe it existed."

"Those are two very different possibilities."

"Which is why we need more information before deciding what it means."

I hated that he was right.

I hated even more that the answer to a question about my own body might be buried in a book written centuries before I was born.

I looked down at the chart Sable had given us. My blood markers had failed to match every documented bloodline in Blackthorn's records.

None.

Not one.

"What if the reason my markers don't match anything modern is that whatever I am isn't modern at all?"

Roman went still.

I watched the realization settle over his face.

"You think this is about you," he said.

"I think it's a possibility you and Sable should have considered before deciding I was better off knowing nothing."

His jaw tightened, but he didn't argue.

Instead, he turned another page.

The writing grew more fragmented as we continued.

Several sections had been damaged by moisture, leaving only isolated words and incomplete sentences. Others had been crossed out so aggressively that the parchment had nearly torn.

Still, enough remained to form a disturbing picture.

Rare beyond memory.

Blood that answers to the moon, not the pack.

Believed lost from the world for generations.

I leaned back.

"Lost?"

"That's what the translation suggests."

"Not extinct?"

"Not necessarily. Lost could mean a bloodline disappeared, its descendants were concealed, or its history was deliberately erased."

I glanced at the crossed-out passages.

"Which possibility do you think is most likely?"

Roman didn't answer immediately.

"Given what we've already discovered, I don't think we should dismiss the possibility that someone wanted this information forgotten."

A chill moved through me.

For weeks, Roman had been investigating the strange circumstances surrounding my selection as his surrogate. Lyra's death had raised questions no one seemed eager to answer. Documents had disappeared from her study, and Tessa had once mentioned something about old blood before abruptly refusing to explain further.

Now I was sitting in front of a book that described a bloodline absent from every modern record.

The pieces didn't fit together yet.

But they were beginning to look as though they belonged to the same puzzle.

"Keep reading," I whispered.

Roman turned another page.

Near the bottom, a short passage had been written in a different hand. The ink was faded, but the letters were still legible.

Where two bloods meet, the forgotten inheritance may awaken.

My fingers tightened around the edge of the table.

"Two bloods," I repeated.

Roman read the sentence again.

"The wording suggests that an inheritance can emerge through the joining of different bloodlines. But it doesn't tell us whether that means ancestry, a particular kind of bond, or something else entirely."

"Could it mean our baby?"

He looked at me.

I hated how much I needed his answer.

"Could it?"

"It's possible."

"That's all you have?"

"That's all I can honestly tell you."

I lowered my gaze to my stomach.

Until now, I'd tried to think of the pregnancy as something separate from the mystery surrounding my blood. Whatever strange results Sable had discovered, the baby had been developing without obvious signs of distress.

I had clung to that distinction because it gave me something solid to hold on to.

But what if the two things were connected?

What if my compatibility with Roman hadn't been an extraordinary coincidence?

What if the reason I'd been selected as a surrogate had nothing to do with the person I thought I was?

"Does the book say what happens when this inheritance awakens?" I asked.

Roman scanned the remaining lines.

"No."

"Does it explain whether it's dangerous?"

"No."

"Does it tell us why someone would want it erased?"

He looked at me.

"No, Mira. It doesn't."

I let out a shaky breath.

"Then we have a lot of questions and one old book that refuses to answer any of them."

"We have more than we had yesterday."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"No." His voice softened. "It's supposed to remind you that we're not going to stop looking."

For a moment, I believed him without reservation.

Then I remembered how many things he had investigated without me.

How many decisions he'd made because he thought he was protecting me.

I pushed the book away.

"There's something else I need you to understand."

Roman waited.

"If this really is connected to my blood, I want to know everything. The medical results, the historical records, whatever you find out about Lyra's investigation. I don't want information filtered through you because you think I'll be frightened."

His expression changed.

"I'm not trying to keep you ignorant."

"Then stop treating my ignorance as protection."

The words landed harder than I'd intended, but I didn't take them back.

Roman looked down at the book.

For several seconds, the only sound in the room was the faint ticking of the clock near the window.

Then he nodded.

"You're right."

I hadn't expected him to say it so quickly.

"I can't promise we'll find answers immediately," he continued. "But I can promise you won't have to discover them by accident while everyone else stands around pretending there's nothing to tell you."

I studied his face, looking for the conditions he might attach to that promise.

I found none.

"Good," I said quietly.

It wasn't forgiveness.

But it was a beginning.

I reached for the book again, intending to return to the damaged passage.

Instead, my fingers caught on the spine.

Something about the binding felt wrong.

I turned the volume sideways and examined the stitching. Several threads had been cut cleanly, leaving a narrow gap between two sections of parchment.

"Roman."

He looked up.

"These pages are missing."

He leaned over my shoulder.

"Books this old fall apart."

"Not like this."

I pointed to the stitching. "Look at the edges. They're too clean. Someone cut the threads and removed the pages without damaging the rest of the binding."

Roman examined the spine more closely.

His expression hardened.

"You're right."

I opened the book wider, careful not to tear the fragile paper.

A faint line of text remained near the gap, partially hidden beneath the folded edge of the next page.

Roman took one of the translation references and compared the surviving words.

"There's a reference here to a record of the awakening," he said.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning the missing section may have explained what happens when the Moonborn inheritance returns."

I stared at the empty space.

"Someone removed the explanation."

"It appears so."

"How long ago?"

"The damage is old. Whoever removed the pages probably did it long before either of us was born."

I looked at the faded words again.

Someone had preserved a record of a bloodline that supposedly vanished generations ago. Someone had written about an inheritance that could awaken when two bloods met.

And someone had gone to the trouble of removing the part that might explain what that awakening meant.

"Maybe they were afraid of what the Moonborn could become," I said.

Roman closed the book halfway.

"Or they were afraid of what people would do if they knew the bloodline still existed."

I looked at him sharply.

"You think someone might still be looking for it?"

"I think we should consider every possibility until we have evidence to eliminate it."

My stomach tightened.

For the first time, the question wasn't simply whether my blood was unusual.

It was whether the truth about me had been deliberately buried and whether the people who buried it might have had a reason to fear its return.

By the time we finished examining the remaining pages, the afternoon light had faded.

We had found no names, no locations, and no clear explanation of what Moonborn meant. The book offered fragments, contradictions, and enough unanswered questions to make sleep seem impossible.

But one thing had changed.

Roman had stopped trying to stand between me and the truth.

I looked at the book resting on the table.

"Thank you," I said.

He turned toward me.

"For showing me this. For letting me read it myself."

"I should have done that sooner."

"Yes. You should have."

He accepted the rebuke without defending himself.

That mattered more than another promise would have.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. His hand rested on the table near mine, close enough that I could have reached for it.

I didn't.

Not yet.

There were still too many things between us that needed to be understood.

Roman looked back at the book.

"If these records are accurate, then your compatibility with me may not have been a coincidence."

"I know."

"And if the missing pages explain what the Moonborn inheritance actually is, we need to find them."

"Then we'll find them."

He met my eyes.

For the first time since Sable had shown me my abnormal results, I felt as though I wasn't facing the mystery alone.

Then Roman's expression changed.

He turned back to the final page, where a line we'd overlooked sat beneath a patch of discoloration.

"What is it?" I asked.

He didn't answer immediately.

Instead, he moved the book closer to the light and read the sentence again.

Then he looked at me.

"Mira, I think you need to see this."

I leaned forward.

Beneath the faded ink, the words were unmistakable.

When the Moonborn awakens, those who buried the bloodline will know.

My mouth went dry.

"Know what?"

Roman stared at the page.

"That it has returned."

A cold silence settled between us.

Somewhere beyond the room, footsteps crossed the corridor and faded into the distance.

I looked at the book, then at Roman.

For weeks, I'd believed the greatest danger was that I might never discover why I'd been chosen.

Now I understood there was another possibility.

Someone might already be waiting for me to discover the answer.

And if the book was telling the truth, the moment my blood awakened, they would know exactly where to find me.