Chapter 97

Dominic

I started my day with new energy, invigorated by a night that brought Mira and I closer together.

I still had not told her about Celeste, but thought perhaps it could just fade into the past. I trusted that Celeste would be just as embarrassed by the kiss and would not want to share the information with a soul. Some mistakes are resolved by doing less.

“Coffee?”

Mira was up first, like most days, and came back into the room with two mugs. She was wearing a light silk robe over her naked body, and I was mesmerized by how the fabric could cling to her silhouette and still create mystery.

I accepted the steaming cup from her with one hand, the other gripping her extended arm so I could kiss the inside of her wrist. She giggled and squirmed, knowing I knew that she was ticklish there.

“Don’t start anything you can’t finish,” she said, mischief in her eyes.

“I wouldn’t dare,” I said, still kissing her soft flesh.

Twenty minutes later, the coffee was cold where we had abandoned it on the bedside table. Our bodies were warm, entangled in sheets, sated with our union.

“Now I’m going to be late,” she said, crawling over me and making sure her body pressed against mine as she did so. “I don’t think ‘making love to my husband’ is a good excuse to give to my patients.”

“I’m not just your husband,” I said, trying to keep her writhing body on top of mine, “I am the Alpha. Technically, you are serving the greater good of the Pack.”

“Wow, the ego returns so quickly.”

She flicked my forehead with her fingers.

“Ow!”

“Just get blood back to your brain so you can use it today,” she said, a smug smile on her face.

I stayed in bed long enough to watch her dress, a ritual almost as intoxicating as the process in reverse.

“What’s on your itinerary today?”

I paused for a moment, letting out the extra breath I’d been holding. “Mostly boring paperwork,” I said, the palms of my hands rubbing my eyes. “I have a list from yesterday’s outing of things to look into for the public, and some other projects I need to get started.”

“Will you let me know how I can help?” she asked, turning to me. “My day clears up around three this afternoon, and I’d like to stay involved.”

I smiled at her. “Of course,” I told her, “I think the library staff would actually prefer you as their benefactor instead of me.”

“Well, luckily Alpha and Luna are one,” she said, coming back to lean over me. Her lips lightly brushed mine, a tease. I tried for more, but she pulled away. “Oh no no, I’m not falling for that again.”

I growled at her as she went back to her prep for the day. When she was gone, I thought about staying in bed so that nothing could tarnish my good mood. But I wasn’t lying when I said I had projects to work on.

Now, in my office hours later, my brain was feeling fried from staring at small print and poorly scanned newspaper articles from a decade ago. It was just the beginning of a research project that I knew would take a lot of strength and determination. It also had to be done in secret, which is why I was slumped over my desk instead of delegating to someone else.

I was looking back in time, trying to understand my mother’s death.

Most of it seemed like gossip rather than fact, but sometimes that provided more of an accurate story than one told by an authoritative news source. Every Pack had their own media to disseminate information, and every Pack had a web of private citizens sharing the real news of its members.

Emphasizing discretion, I had filled in Lucas and Wyatt on my quest for answers. They were slowly bringing me information, scrolling archives so I wouldn’t be seen looking into the past myself.

I had not yet been able to get into hospital records, and I knew that soon I would have to bring Mira into this investigation. She would be excited to help me find answers, but I knew she would also shoulder some of the emotional burden. I wanted to keep her free from my troubles for a little longer.

“It’s mostly redacted,” Wyatt was telling me as he handed over a few printed pages. “The security reports from the time when you were ‘in treatment’ and your mother became ill were labelled classified. Lucas had to distract the archivist in order to get this one out.”

Our names weren’t there, but I could tell from the little bit of context that it was about us, my family. The words ‘mysterious’ and ‘unconventional’ stuck out at me, but it was hard to tell if they related to me or my mother.

“Might your father have any other information?” Wyatt asked. “Maybe personal files, even pictures from that time?”

I lit up like a lightbulb. “I’m not sure,” I said, gears turning in my head, “but I think I know where some of it might be, if it survived the years.”

“Where?”

“My mother’s room.”

When she died, my father went cold. He spent a week more or less locked in the bedroom they had shared, sending orders through his Beta, Trenton, and putting me up as poster child for the future of the Pack. We pretended he was busy on important Pack business, but everyone knew the man was being torn apart with grief.

Later, when Irene weaseled her way into his heart and his house, she had no desire to sleep in a dead woman’s bed. So the Alpha and his new Luna renovated rooms on the other side of the house. But Davos kept his first wife’s belongings exactly as they were, a shrine to the woman he never stopped loving.

In a fit of teenaged angst I had made a copy of the key to the room, though I had not used it in years. My hand shook as I heard the click as the door unlocked, swinging slowly inward.

It was like entering a crypt.

Dark, a bit musty, but showing signs that someone had dusted in here at least once a year since she’d died. The rich purple bedspread still had its intricate beading. The pillows were arranged perfectly, waiting to catch a reclining head.

I walked around the room, my hand lighting on her books, her jewelry, a horsehair brush that I had watched her slide over her long auburn hair so many times as a young boy. I felt the pangs of the loss of her all over again, but focused on the joy of the memory instead of the sadness.

I sat on the bed, opening the drawers of the tables on either side. Nothing seems too out of the ordinary, and I was closing a heavy bottom drawer when it got stuck. I had to kneel in front of it to realign the wooden box on its track.

And that is when I noticed what it was caught on.

There was a false bottom to the drawer, a secret layered compartment, and the years were loosening it at the joints. I pulled the whole thing out, emptied it’s contents, and flipped it on its side. I separated the pieces of wood, being careful of splinters.

Inside, I found a thin notebook. My mother’s journal.

My heart was in my throat as I opened it, seeing the perfect lines of her cursive script. I always envied her handwriting, mine blocky and brusque like that of my father. I could almost smell her as I flipped through the pages.

A piece fell out and onto the floor. I looked down, picking up a seal envelope with her handwriting on the front.

It was addressed to me.