Bronx pulls out a picture of Alpha Graham and Ryan.
“These two men are dangerous and are potentially stalking my mate. The younger one tried to attack her yesterday. Lenora was able to stop him. If you see either of them, protect Kas at all costs. Consider this a military escort.”
“Yes, Alpha.” They reply again.
Marco steps forward.
“Luna it’s our honor to serve you.”
James nods behind him.
I bow my head slightly at them and thank them both.
“We’ll be here in the back library for the next several hours, gentlemen. Your assignment starts immediately. You two work out who’s on guard first. Wait outside the office.” Bronx says.
Power seems to be rolling off him as he speaks.
“Yes, Alpha.” They repeat.
They both bow to me again and leave the office.
“That was intense.” Lex says in awe.
Bronx stands up and we follow him to a door near the back of the office.
He opens a keypad, punches in a code, and the door silently opens.
“This is your private library?” I look around in awe.
There are mahogany tables and giant lounge chairs all over the huge room.
There are large, old books in glass cases and on pedestals placed strategically around the room.
There are two stories of floor-to-ceiling built in mahogany bookshelves packed full of books that go around three walls.
The fourth wall is just windows facing a beautiful pond.
“Alright guys, let’s split this up.” He pulls out a laptop and pulls up a list of books in the library.
He gives us each ten books to look at.
We split up around the room finding our assigned books and finding spots to go through them.
I find a pad of paper and a pen and start making notes.
Three hours later, I’m through eight of the books I pulled from the shelves without having found anything useful.
A loud growling yawn makes everyone jump out of their skin.
“Milo! You scared the crap out of everyone!”
Lenora scolds.
“Sorry. I just needed to stretch.” He says, feigning innocence.
“I’m going to the kitchen to get us all lunch. Any requests?”
“Just get some pizzas. Oh, breadsticks and applesauce for Kas. Do you want anything else, Baby?”
“A banana would be great. I’m really hungry.”
Bronx smiles.
“Get the lady a banana, Milo!” I turn back to the book I’m reading.
It is written in old English, so it’s difficult to understand.
I flip the page to find a beautiful hand-painted illustration.
It is a depiction of the Moon Goddess.
There’s a man standing next to her that looks like a king.
They are surrounded by children.
She is holding a baby in her arms with gray hair and violet eyes.
The title on the next page says ‘Menae – Children of Selene’ freaking way.
“Bronx! I found something! I found something!”
Everyone comes over to look at the book.
“Menae? Hmm. I saw something about that in a more recent book. Let me go get it.” Reggie muses.
He trots over to a pile of books and brings them over.
He flips through the pages until he finds what he’s looking for and starts reading aloud.
“The Menae are fifty children of the Moon Goddess and the human king Endymion. Modern times say they represent the fifty months of the four-year Olympiad cycle.”
“So basically, a kid a month for a little over four years? It looks like Zeus allowed the Menae to be goddesses, even though Endymion was human. There is no mention of any names or their powers, but if they are goddesses, they would have some type of power, right?”
Bronx strums his fingers against his cheek as he looks at the laptop screen, “Alright, so this says there were two Olympiad cycles. Ancient Greeks believed one four-year cycle had forty-nine months and a second cycle had fifty months. Something to do with the lunar cycle because that is how they kept track of time. We don’t use lunar cycles to keep track of time anymore, so it doesn’t matter that there’s more than twelve full moons per calendar year.”
I look more at the old English book while he is talking.
“Uhh…my name is here…”
I point to a small print sentence that clearly says ‘Iokaste’ in the middle of it, but I’m not familiar with the words around it, so I can’t figure out what it’s saying. Follow the newest chapters on novelping(.)com.
Reggie looks over my shoulder.
“It says Kas in there?”
“No, Reggie, my full name is lokaste.”
“Oh sick! Like Iokaste the Seer!” Reggie says, sounding excited.
“Who is Iokaste the Seer?” I ask, confused.
“Reggie, Kas is clearly not named after an Assassin’s Creed character.” Bronx rolls his eye as he looks up from his computer.
“Okay, but lokaste the character predicts the future just like our lokaste can. Could be relevant!”
“Please don’t call me that. Just call me Kas. Please.” I request.
“Why don’t you like being called Iokaste anyway?” Ashley asks.
“I, um, it was the name on the blanket I was found in. I like to think my parents put a lot of thought into what my name would be. I always wanted to ask them more about why they chose such an unusual name for me, but I can’t. Who knows, maybe they just saw it in a book like this and thought it was pretty. I guess I may never know.” I shrug, trying not to feel down.
I feel the familiar lump of sadness in my chest.
He must sense my sadness, because Bronx clears his throat and gets everyone’s attention away from me.
“Back to the task at hand. According to this, lokaste was an ancient Greek woman. She was the queen of Thebes. Accidentally married her son who just so happened to be Oedipus. Whoops!”
“Ohh-kay, definitely do not call me Iokaste!” I proclaim.
Bronx snorts a little and looks back at the monitor.
“And some people believe the word Iokaste translates to…oh…”
He trails off before he finishes.
He sighs and rubs his face in his hands.
“TRANSLATES TO WHAT?!” Lenora yells, throwing her hands in the air.
“Violet.”
“Violet? Like the color of Kas’s eyes?” Ashley asks.
Her voice is thick with Skepticism.
“Yeah, Ashley, other than the flower, there are not a whole lot of definitions of violet.” Lenora teases.
Reggie looks up from the book he’s referencing.
“Kas, what did you say your dad’s name was?”
“Andy. Why?”
Reggie nudges Bronx who leans over the book and reads aloud.
“Selene was so enamored with the way Endymion looked while he was sleeping in a cave on Mount Latmus that she asked Zeus to allow her to have a relationship with him. Oh, holy shit.”
“Mount Latmus? Like my last name?” I’m a bit confused.
“Kas, what if Andy is like some sort shortened, modernized version of Endymion. Endy, Andy. What if the Moon Goddess turned him into a werewolf? Because that’s what she does right? What if she turned him into the first werewolf?” Reggie starts theorizing.
Lenora and Ashley stand behind him with wide-eyed disbelief.
I blink a couple of times as he throws out questions until I burst out laughing.
Like, a maniacal villain who lost their mind in the middle of the movie, laughing.
I’m laughing so hard that I can’t catch my breath, my belly hurts, and tears are coming out of my eyes.
Everyone is looking at me like maybe I lost my marbles.
“Come on, like, seriously. You can’t honestly believe that.” I reason with him in between laughs.
“The chances all these things are coincidences is a whole lot more realistic than it all being connected in some sort of ancient Greek conspiracy theory.
The Moon Goddess, my actual mother?
A painting of me as a baby in an ancient book of werewolf lore?
My name in this book is MY name and not just a reference to the color purple or an ancient queen?
My dad is an ancient Greek king who had fifty daughters with the Moon Goddess?
The Moon Goddess turned him into the first werewolf?
Guys.
Come on.
Let’s be serious for just a minute here.
What are the chances?
Basically zero chance.
“PIZZA’S here…” Milo interrupts with a happy yell, but quickly quiets down when he sees the look on everyone’s faces staring at me while I laugh uncontrollably.
“Yeahhh…I think we’re at a good stopping point.” Ashley nods. The source of this chapter is g.com.
She takes me by the elbow out into the office, everyone follows.
We sit around the conference table in the back corner of the office while we eat.
Hypothesizing the information we have found so far.
“Kas. how old is Elexis anvwav.” Lenora asks while she pulls extra cheese out of the bottom of the pizza box.
“Never ask a lady her age.” Lex snaps quickly.
“Lex, this is important. We are trying to figure out who I am before we can shift. We have to make sure it’s safe for both of us. You want to shift, don’t you?”
“Ugh. Fine. I’m four thousand six hundred and eighty-two years old, I think. I’ve kind of lost count because we kept track of time differently back in the old days.”
“Lex, be serious.”
“Why the Hell would I joke about that?”
“She says she is over four thousand years old.”
Ashley spits out her water.
Milo stops eating, mid-bite of his pizza.
Dramatic much?
I know wolves’ spirits live a lot longer than humans, but I have no idea how much longer.
Everyone else asks their wolves how old they are.
Saint is the oldest at eight hundred twenty-nine years old.
Everyone else’s wolves are less than two hundred years old.
“How many human spirits have you been attached to, Lex?”
“Just you, Kas. We’re attached through all of your lives. Forever in the past and forever in the future. Don’t you remember?” She sounds kind of sad that I don’t remember our past lives.
“You mean like, I’ve been reincarnated over and over for forty-six hundred years?”
While I’m talking to Lex, Bronx is talking to the others, “If Kas was a goddess, she would be thousands of years old. She’s only seventeen. We know she got to the Silver Moon when she was an infant.”
“Uhh… what if I was reincarnated?”
Bronx stops and turns to me.
“Reincarnated?”
“That’s what Lex is telling me.” I shrug.
“Since the beginning of her lifetime, she and I have always been together.”
“Okay. I think we need to call in the Elder Council. We need their help here. Kas, I’m sorry, but we need to wait a little longer for you to be able to shift.” Bronx says apologetically.
I feel Lex’s frustration but she doesn’t say anything.
I take the last bite of my delicious breadstick and cross my arms in a huff.
Bronx’s POV
I send everyone out of the office so I can make calls to the Elders and get some work done for my security business.
I also make arrangements for Kas to see one of the pack therapists.
Tobias, the head of the Elders, lets me know he can have everyone gathered at the packhouse in a couple of weeks.
It will have to do.
Other than the chance she could give someone a minor burn, Kas doesn’t seem to be dangerous and her shifting into wolf form is not something to be considered an emergency.
Even if Saint and Elexis are anxious to meet each other.
It takes about five hours to finish up everything I need to do for the business.
I sit back in my chair while I have some peace and quiet and start to think.
I need to talk to Kas about becoming Luna by summer solstice, but we just met.
I don’t want to scare her or put any unneeded pressure on her but if I don’t mate and have a Luna for Blood River by the summer solstice, my position as Alpha Regent will be taken away.
Just one more thing to talk to the Elders about.
A knock on the door interrupts my thoughts.
Carly, my assistant, comes in with a bag.” She confirms.
“Thank you, Carly. Have a good night.” I smile at her.
“You’re welcome. Good night, Alpha.” She looks at me suspiciously, before she leaves the room.
I sit confused at her reaction until I realize it is because I rarely say thank you and I don’t know if I’ve ever told her to have a good night.
I can change, right?
I make a mental note to make an effort to be nicer to Carly.
She’s a good assistant.
I should show her I appreciate her.