CHAPTER FOUR: WHAT SHE IS

The mug shook in my hands even after I set it down. Tea sloshed over the rim.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked again, louder. “That’s not an answer, Jax. What am I, if I’m not wolfless?”

He didn’t answer right away. He looked at my mom.

Eliza Quinn had her hands clasped so tight the knuckles were white. That high collar she always wore, even in summer, even sweating over dishes in that tiny trailer. I was staring at it now like I’d never seen it before.

“Mom. You said you have one. A scar.”

She finally looked at me, eyes wet.

“I was eighteen too,” she said, quiet. “Same barn. Same circle. Same Alpha calling my name. I stood where you stood tonight, in a borrowed dress too. Your grandma’s.”

The fire popped. I felt cold despite the heat.

“Who rejected you?”

“Harlan Stone.”

Harlan. Alpha Stone. Kaden’s father. Jax’s brother. Hearing it hit me like a punch to the stomach.

“Your dad’s dad?” I whispered.

She nodded, once, sharp.

“Harlan and I thought we were mates. I thought I felt it. But when I didn’t shift that night, he said the same thing he said about you tonight. Wolfless. Useless Omega trash. He rejected me in front of the whole pack so he could marry Claire instead. A proper wolf. Alpha female material.”

She pulled her collar down. There it was, on the left side of her neck, faded to almost silver after twenty years, but the same shape as mine. A hand. A burn. Only hers was wider. A man’s hand.

“Mom…”

“I left the pack that night. Told everyone I was going to stay with your aunt in Billings. I didn’t. I stayed in the trailer at the edge of the property because I had nowhere else to go. Three months later I found out I was pregnant with you.”

I couldn’t breathe. The room was spinning again, differently this time.

“So Kaden—”

“Kaden isn’t your brother,” Jax said quickly, like he already knew where that thought was headed. “Thank God, no. Harlan was already married to Claire by the time you were conceived. Eliza was already gone. You and Kaden share no blood. I checked. I’ve checked since you were twelve, once he started looking at you like you were the moon itself.”

My mom made a small, broken sound.

“Then what does that make me?” I looked between them. “If you were rejected too, why didn’t I shift? Why did you say I’m not a wolf?”

Jax finally moved away from the fireplace. He knelt in front of me, not touching, close enough that I could see the rain still drying in his hair, the scar through his eyebrow.

“Because of your grandmother. Eliza’s mother. She wasn’t from Wolf Creek. Wasn’t from Montana at all.”

My mom picked it up. “My mother came from the North. Canada. A pack that doesn’t exist on any map anymore. They called themselves the Silent Ones.”

“The White Wolves,” Jax said. “They weren’t werewolves, not like us. We turn. We’ve got wolves inside us that share our skin. They are the wolf, all the time. They don’t shift. They’re born as they are. White as snow, eyes like ice. They don’t get a wolf at eighteen because they’ve been one since birth. They just wake up. Late. When they’re safe. When they’re claimed by someone strong enough not to be afraid of what they really are.”

He reached out slow and turned my wrist over. On the inside, a faint mark I’d always assumed was a birthmark. A tiny crescent, white on white, hard to see unless you knew to look for it. I’d had it since I was a kid.

“The pack called your mother wolfless because she never shifted,” Jax said quiet, his thumb hovering just above the mark, not touching it. “Harlan called you wolfless tonight for the same reason. You’re not wolfless, Amelia. You’re wolf. Entirely.”

My mom was crying now, silent.

“The reason Kaden could never mark you,” Jax said, “is that an ordinary wolf can’t mark a White Wolf. It would kill him. The only one who can claim you is an Alpha who’s already killed a White Wolf’s bite and survived it. Someone who’s already been marked by one.”

He looked up at me then, and I saw it. On his own neck, half hidden under his beard, faded into the skin.

A white scar. Four thin lines. Claw marks.

The size of my hand.