SERAPHINA’S POV
Lucian’s words echoed long after I left the OTS compound.
‘Your wolf isn’t ordinary.’
‘Maybe ask your family.’
They clung to through dinner, through Daniel’s chatter about his training, even through the quiet hours after he’d gone to bed.
By the ti the moon hung high in the sky, I was still replaying that conversation in my head—Lucian’s expression when he said it, the hesitation in his voice, the way he hadn’t looked at when he ntioned my family.
If there was one thing my family was known for, it was their secrecy. Elegant façades, polished smiles, and a knack for keeping any imperfections buried under gold-tiled floors.
I wasn’t naïve enough to think I could just walk into the manor and start asking questions about psychic control and Alpha resistance.
So instead, I started where I could: Maya’s second favorite pasti—cyber stalking.
I spent half the night clicking every link that led to a new page that had a link that led to a new page that—
You get it.
I scrolled through every database, archive, and obscure supernatural forum I could access.
Most of what I found echoed the recycled fluff I’d grown up hearing: tales of how the Lockwoods built Frostbane, how generations of Alphas had been born from their line, how the na was synonymous with dominance and power.
But not the kind of power Lucian was talking about.
No ntion of psychic control. No ntion of freezing an Alpha mid-command.
By the ti dawn broke, my eyes ached from the screen’s glare, and my third cup of coffee had gone cold. I stared at the blank search bar one last ti before exhaling sharply and muttering, “Screw it.”
If anyone knew sothing, it had to be Ethan.
He answered on the fourth ring, voice groggy. “Sera?”
“Morning, sunshine,” I said dryly.
A pause. “It’s five-thirty in the morning.”
“Exactly. You’re an Alpha. Don’t you people wake up with the sun?” Kieran certainly did.
Ethan sighed. “What do you want?”
Sohow, the gruff irreverence in his voice made smile. It felt good not to walk on eggshells around each other anymore. Or at least not as much as we used to.
“I need to ask you sothing,” I said. “Sothing about our family’s...abilities.”
There was a shift in his tone. “Abilities? What kind of abilities?”
I hesitated, unsure how much to reveal. “Rember when you spoke about Lockwood instincts? Reflexes. Intuition. That kind of thing.”
“Ah,” he said, his voice easing into familiarity. “Yeah, I rember.”
“Is there more to it?” I asked carefully. “Like maybe a...mind control aspect.”
He sounded amused when he answered. “The Lockwood instinct is exactly that—instincts. It’s sensing a strike before it lands, reading an opponent’s movent, reacting without thinking. It’s not psychic, just generations of refined battle intuition.”
“So no one in our bloodline ever had other kinds of abilities? Maybe pyschic in nature?”
He humd thoughtfully. “No. Not that I know of, at least. But if you’re curious, the Frostbane archives might have more details. The pack library keeps all the old records.”
My heart gave a small, uneven thud. “The library?”
“Yeah. You rember where it is, don’t you? You practically lived there before getting married.”
“I rember,” I said quietly. “Thanks.”
He made a dismissive sound. “Don’t ntion it. And Sera?”
“Yeah?”
“I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for. You deserve all the answers you need.”
My lips curled. “Thanks, Ethan.”
“And I’m here if you have any more questions,” he added. “But not at the fucking ass-crack of dawn.”
I laughed as I hung up.
***
The Frostbane Pack library stood at the far edge of the Lockwood Estate grounds, nestled behind a grove of sycamores. Even after all these years, I could still find the path blindfolded.
It had been my sanctuary once—an escape from the mansion’s noise, from Celeste’s taunts, from my parents’ cold indifference.
I used to sit cross-legged by the far window, losing myself in books that slled of dust and ti. Fiction, mostly. Stories about warriors and queens who weren’t afraid to stand alone.
Stories that made forget I was the Alpha’s defective daughter.
The air inside slled just as I rembered—faintly of old paper and dust, thick with the kind of silence that felt almost sacred.
Rows of shelves stretched high, lined with decades of Frostbane history, training records, pack treaties, and bloodline docunts.
Dust motes drifted lazily through the shafts of sunlight filtering from the high arched windows.
I trailed my fingers along the familiar spines, the texture of old leather grounding . A strange nostalgia tugged at , bittersweet and sharp.
I found the family history section near the back—an entire wall dedicated to Lockwood lineage.
My father’s na, Edward Lockwood, stood prominently in the records, his line traced ticulously across decades of Alphas and heirs. Every branch was recorded, every union docunted.
I scoured through it all as ticulously as I could, looking out for any ntion of strange abilities or late wolf ergences.
The only ntion of anything remotely close was the sa thing Ethan had told . Refined battle intuition.
It was hard to keep my frustration from bubbling up into a scream.
Deep down, I could feel it existed—an explanation. Even if it was just one line, one sentence that would explain why I’d gone thirty years before hearing the voice of my wolf, or why she was manifesting in all these strange, confusing ways.
I needed that answer as desperately as I needed air. Then I could know that I wasn’t flawed. I wasn’t defective.
My fingers froze as I skimd through a heavy leather-bound book. Unlike the older tos that coughed up decades of dust when I pulled them from the shelves, this one’s spine was uncracked, its pages newer.
Margaret Everleigh. Married Alpha Edward Lockwood, January 16th, 1990.
I blinked, certain I’d missed sothing. I flipped back a page, then forward again.
Nothing.
No note of my mother’s pack, her lineage, or even her parents. Just that single sterile line, as if she’d appeared from thin air and slipped into Lockwood history without a past.
“What the hell?” I murmured, running my thumb along the edge of the page.
I pulled another record from the shelf—The Lineage of Western Alpha Bonds—and scanned for her na.
My father’s section spanned several pages, chronicling his achievents, his ancestry, and his alliances.
His mate was ntioned only once: Margaret Lockwood. No further elaboration. No background.
I tried another. Then another. Each book showed the sa omission—Margaret always appeared as a secondary figure beside my father: a date, a title, a photograph caption. Never before him. Never alone.
A hollow dread crawled up my spine.
“Why aren’t you here?” I whispered to the empty shelves. “Where did you co from?”
I yanked open a lower drawer in frustration, flipping through brittle parchnt scrolls and handwritten ledgers. The older texts had sections for every Luna—birthplaces, bloodlines, alliances.
Even distant relatives had paragraphs written about their talents, wolves, strengths and weaknesses.
But where my mother’s na should have been...there was only blank space.
A ghost in her own history.
I sat back on my heels, heart pounding. Could my strange ability, whatever it was, have co from her?
The thought twisted inside , both unsettling and exciting.
I turned back to the open book, fingers trembling slightly. My eyes scanned the margins again, searching for anything—an annotation, a symbol, a stray note from a historian who might have cared enough to wonder. Nothing.
“Seraphina?”
The sound of my na shattered the stillness.
I stiffened, pulse jumping as the familiar voice echoed between the shelves, polished and composed.
Speak—well, think—of the devil.
My mother.
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