FIA
The volume was heavy. Heavier than I expected. I pulled it down and carried it to a nearby reading table. Moonlight streamed across the surface, aiding the overhead lights and giving me just enough light to see by.
I opened it and immediately looked for the Pauline Strati because the existence of Athena had to be during their time. Did it not?
I found what I was looking for almost immediately.
Pauline was the third daughter of a small pack who clawed her way into becoming a Luna of Alpha Marcus Strati who renamed himself Dimitri. I laughed a little when I saw a note there that said he did so because he found it to be a cool name and he wanted to sound cooler.
At least someone in that just as demented family had a sense of humor.
But I wasn’t here for them. Not really.
I looked deeper. At the Omegas section. My fingers traced down the list of names. Some had detailed entries. Mostly because they were sucking up to their bosses. Others had almost nothing. Just a name and a date.
Then I found something.
Athena Stellan. Deceased.
That was all there was to her. No birth date. No death date. No cause of death or even a tiny nudge at a family lineage or anything that would tell me who she actually was.
Just her name and one word.
Deceased.
It was exactly as Cian had theorized. And it made sense she would be dead. Being bound and experimented on by some sick fuck of a warlock didn’t exactly leave me with much hope.
Still...my eyes lingered on her surname.
Stellan.
I mouthed it and it rolled it around on my tongue while I also let it settle in my mind.
Why did it sound a lot like my mother’s maiden name? Sterling.
The similarity was too close to be a coincidence. Too close to ignore. Stellan. Sterling. They were practically the same name with different letters at the end.
My heart hammered in my chest. The bond hummed gently in the back of my mind, responding to my spike of emotion. Cian was probably still sleeping. I didn’t want to wake him. Not for this.
Not until I knew what this meant.
I stared at Athena’s name until my vision blurred. Until the letters seemed to shift and move on the page. Blood memories. That’s what Elder Moira had called them. Memories passed down through blood. Through generations.
Was that what this was? Was Athena somehow connected to me through blood? Through my mother?
I thought about the dreams. About being strapped to that table. About the chainsaw and the injection and the man’s cold, clinical voice asking why Athena was rejecting what he’d injected inside of her.
About him pressing his hand to her stomach and feeling something move.
About him asking if she was pregnant.
My hand moved to my own stomach without thinking. It was flat and empty. There was nothing there but my own organs, blood and bone.
But Athena had been pregnant. In that memory. In that moment of horror.
What had happened to her? What had happened to the baby?
The genealogy didn’t say. It gave me nothing. All I had was just her full name and that freaking word.
Deceased.
I needed more. I needed answers. Real ones. Not riddles from goddesses or vague explanations about blood memories.
I turned the page and kept looking. Maybe there was something else. Some other record. Some other mention of Athena Stellan or her family or what had happened to her.
But the next page was blank of anything I needed. And the one after that started a new family line entirely.
Athena was a ghost. A footnote. A place in a book that no one probably looked at anymore.
Except me.
I closed the volume and rested my hands on the cover. Let my forehead drop against them.
Lady Selene had brought me here. To this pack. To Cian. She’d favored me for reasons I didn’t understand. She’d shown me Athena’s memories for reasons that felt just as murky.
But there had to be a reason. There had to be.
The goddess didn’t do anything by accident.
I just had to figure out what the hell she wanted me to see.
I opened the genealogy book again and that was when I heard the door open.
The sound was soft. But it sounded like it was open too carefully.
My head snapped up. Every muscle in my body went tight as my gaze flicked toward the entrance of the library which was hidden from where I had nothing to go with.
"Hello?" I called out.
My voice echoed back at me, thin and brittle against the tall shelves. No answer came. But I still caught the faint sound of footsteps moving closer.
I straightened, closing the genealogy book with care and sliding it back across the table. My pulse picked up. I could feel it in my throat, in my fingertips. The bond stirred, uneasy, like it knew it needed to inform Cian that something was off even if I was keen on keeping my secrets.
"Who’s there?" I asked again, sharper this time.
The footsteps stopped.
For a brief moment, nothing happened. Then a shadow stretched across the floor, long and distorted by the moonlight pouring through the windows. It crept forward first, followed by the outline of a shoulder, then the curve of a head.
A face slowly emerged from behind one of the shelves.
Ronan.
The spike I had been holding back with everything I had slammed into me all at once. It was not fear exactly. But I was taken aback seeing him here and I knew deep in my heart that this couldn’t be good.
My fingers curled against the edge of the table.
Of course it was him.
He looked the same as he always did. Too calm. Too sure of himself. Dark hair neatly kept, eyes steady as they locked onto mine. The kind of gaze that weighed and measured, that never quite revealed what it was thinking.
"Oh, what do you want?" I asked, trying my best not to sound as freaked out as I felt.
Because what the fuck was he doing here?
He took another step forward, then another, stopping just far enough away to be polite. Or at least pretend to be.
"Luna Fia," he said. "I have been looking all over for you."