He snickered. “I wouldn’t be surprised if yousleepon your enemy’s pelts.”
She glared at him, although lips gave way to a smile. “I only do that on a full moon.” Suna squatted down, touching the fur, and said, “I admit, though, that standing on Kelgri’s fur is not as much fun now. It was just so long ago.”
Ronan looked over the maps as she stood on the fur. He thumbed one scroll and sawThe Exilesinked on the outside and unrolled it. He wanted to engage in tales from their youth, of how their grandfather killed the shifter named Kelgri after he attacked Suna, scarring her leg and injuring it so badly that it took almost two years to heal. Ronan and Suna had only seen ten winters by then, just younglings with hardly any of the strength of a shifter. And no one touched the sires, or grandsires, of Sigurður Warden.
Kelgri’s white pelt was a reminder of that.
But standing in the underground caverns that his grandfather built, a sense of duty weighed heavily on him.
Hewas the Alpha now, and these caverns were his.
And these maps… They were from an era before him, from the world that all the aged ones abhorred speaking about.
“You’re brooding again, Ronan,” Suna pointed out, walking over to him.
“These are maps of the Exiles,” he murmured, placing his hands on the table, the wood creaking from his weight.
She stood next to him, looking over the meticulous drawings of a map. He eyed the mountains, and one lake had been filled in with ink.The Raven’s Basin.
“Isn’t that the lake amma said would claim souls, even from miles away?”
“Yes.”
“How could it possibly do that?”
“Supposedly, one could make an offering to it by putting some of its blackened water in food or drink. If the consumer didn’t get the proper treatment in time, they would find themselves wandering to it…”
Ronan couldn’t explain what he felt. Staring at the paper made it feel like the ghosts of his ancestors stood right behind him—those who had birthed and died in those lands—haunting him, commanding that he defend the salvation that was Earth.
His grandparents’ generation arrived after their sacrifice to get here. They rebuilt, reclaiming what the humans took for granted. They grew with the lands that were overcome with magic, hollowed out caverns for their dens, and established their ghost trees.
That success felt threatened, and he couldn’t explain why.
Suna poked him, and he rolled his glare at her.
“What has your tongue?” she prodded. “You’re always abrooder, but you’re usually more fun than this.”
He looked back at the maps, eyeing the drawing of a cave that his afi and amma said they came through nearly a century ago. “Something feels wrong, Suna.”
He looked back at her, and he could tell that she was uncertain, like she didn’t know how seriously to take him. She ran a hand through her long, unbraided chestnut hair. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Instinct, perhaps. But I haven’t felt something this strong since father died, since I felt him in the woods next to me, even though I hadn’t known he’d died.”
Her face grew long and weary, looking down at the maps. It always bothered her she hadn’t gone with them. “I thought maybe I was just feeling a little unsettled with the hunters, or maybe it was the silver” —Ronan’s eyes widened—“but I can feel something too. It’s faint, but there.Shit. If you feel it, then something is wrong.”
“It didn’t start until Rem was brought here,” Ronan pointed out, biting his lip before straightening his back.
“What do you think of her? And no, not likethat… I mean what of the fact that she is from a village of witches? Amma always says that the presence of witches makes the hairs on our necks rise.”
“I don’t suspect her of anything. She looks… Guarded, not manipulative. Her heart rate doesn’t align with that,” he remarked, walking around the room, stepping on pelts that his grandfather laid.
Suna shrugged a shoulder. “Either way, something is off with her. I expected an angry, feral human. I’d be beyond angry if humans took me and forced me to live among them, even if my family was brought with me. And I know, you don’t have to remind me, we had no choice. The hunters would have abused the Silvers like chained dogs. But still. She was quiet in the truck and spoke carefully. She doesn’t act as I would expect.”
“What if Jackson’s attack did more to her than we think?” he asked, kicking a blue pillow back into a nesting pile where one would sleep.
“That’s what I mean. She healed too easily. One attack and now she is obedient? Where’s the fire in that? That’s no Luna material. I even told her I wanted you to choose her, to see what she’d say,” —he looked at Suna— “she just brushed it off. Granted, she reeked of nerves and her heart nearly burst through her veins…”
“She is nervous, Suna. She has been mauled and uprooted. And if her family didn’t come with her, then she might not have enjoyed her home life—” he paused and looked down. He was about to theorize about her life, and instead, said, “Go tell one of the cousins to bring Rem to me.”
