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Ferris barely breathes as he pieces everything together. “My mother was your daughter?”

“Yes,” she says, eyes bright with love and loss. There’s an air of amazement to her voice. “I knew who you were to me from the first moment I saw you.”

Ferris looks down, hiding his emotions. “Was she a shifter?”

“Yes, as am I.” Both of our eyes fly to the Lunar Mother, shocked. “Oh, don’t act surprised. You think a human could lead a half-dozen clans of shifters?”

That startles a chuckle from Ferris.

She asks, “If you are here without her, am I to assume she is dead?”

“Yes,” Ferris swallows. “I’m so sorry.”

Iza’s scent burns with grief, but her face is painted in stony acceptance, like she already felt in her heart that her daughter was gone, and this is confirmation. She sniffles, but tells us, voice strong, “I named her Lyra, after the constellation that painted the sky the night she was born. She found her wolf earlier than most and loved to shift. She seamlessly melded between her two forms, like water flowing over river rocks; neither side of her being complete without the other. Her relationship with her wolf was unlike any I’ve seen. She had the same brown curls that crown your head, and eyes an even lighter brown.”

“Why did she leave home?” Ferris asks, wrecked.

“Lyra dreamed of uniting the shifters, or at the very least, establishing communication and migration between our groups. As part of this mission, she believed it was her destiny to find the Appalachian Clans. I warned her how difficult it would be to make it into their territory and actually find the shifters, but she was stubborn and motivated by what she thought was her life’s purpose.

“It was only supposed to be a year-long journey, nothing more, but she never came back. At first, I wanted to believe that she’d found happiness there, maybe even a mate, but that hope shriveled when she never came home. Over the years, I would try to learn about Lyra’s fate through the trees, but they can only reach as far as the Wastes, and the moon never graced me with dreams about her.”

“When I was very young, my father killed her,” Ferris growls, his voice equal parts anger and desolation. I can see the guilt and hurt that he carries in his rigid shoulders and painful expression. “He was a terrible alpha that ruled his people with fear and dominance. There was no softness in his compound, not even for those closest to him. I’ve had some time to think about his reasons for murdering her, and I’m beginning to think that she hid that she was a shifter, and he somehow found out.”

Ferris’s jaw clenches, the muscles there fluttering with controlled rage. “He was terrified of someone taking his power away, of someone being more dominant than him. After my mother passed, he mated a beta woman who gave him beta sons, which is what he always wished I was. I think the shifters scared him because he knew he was no match. I think he killed my mother because he knew that she’d given him his worst fear—a son that could overpower him.”

The Lunar Mother’s eyes swirl with bronze fury. “And the fate of this monster?” she asks.

“I killed him,” Ferris states, emotionless.

She closes her eyes and breathes deeply. “Good.” We sit in silence for a heavy moment.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Ferris muses. “If my mother wanted to unite the shifters, how and why did she end up tangled with the monster that sired me? Why did she ever leave the Appalachian Clans? I never got the impression that she was there unwillingly, but I guess I don’t know for certain.” His voice breaks.

Iza nods, sadly. “Knowing Lyra, she was following the stars. She must have felt that her destiny changed, or maybe she accomplished what she sought to do with the shifters and followed a new path. One that created you. You are a son of the East and the West, aren’t you?”

Tears streak down Ferris’s face, and I grab his hand, clutching it to my chest. Ferris’s life has been turned upside down at every turn since he left Grand Prairie, and I worry how much more he can take.

Iza stands and comes closer, laying a hand on Ferris’s shoulder. “This is a wound we will both carry for the rest of our days. There is nothing that can make it better, yet you’ve made it home, you have a pack, and you have me. Lyra would be so proud of you.”

[ 62 ]

FERRIS

Northern Pacific Territory

Tomorrow, we head for Dair’s territory in the Cascade Mountains. He has become increasingly antsy about getting us on his land, mumbling about how Raine needs to be in his den, making her nest. The amount of time he spends staring at her neck makes me think that he’s eager to get home so that he can finally bite her. I also think the Lunar Mother—my grandma—is getting on his nerves.

I still don’t really know how to feel about everything that’s been revealed about my mom and my awkward place in this community. I wish more than anything I could remember her, both for myself and for Iza, but the only memories that have awakened since learning the truth are her scent and her long, curly hair that was the same shade as my own.

Why did she ever leave her home? How did she get entangled with my father? It’s eating me away that we’ll never know for sure. We only have Iza’s guesses to explain the last years of my mother’s life. It feels massively insufficient for the woman who made me.

Then there’s the fact that my wolf is no longer body-bound. Shifting, in short, is complicated. Seeing how seamless it is for others in the community makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me. Tore assures me it’s like this for everyone at first, and if anything, it’s harder for me because most people first shift when they’re young and their minds are still malleable. It’s going to take a while for me to reorganize my neural pathways to work as efficiently as Tore and Dair’s.

To aid with my goals, Vale and I have been getting daily wolf lessons from Tore, although she got a head start on her journey here when it was just the two of them. I think Tore is worried about Vale, though; she’s been mostly in wolf form since we arrived in wolf territory, and apparently there are superstitions that if someone remains a wolf for too long, they’ll become one permanently.

Ren has been hypothesizing nonstop about my transformation, and the best explanation he can offer is that the viral DNA of the Biter virus mutated something inside of me that allowed my wolf to break free. Instead of the virus turning me into a monster, it simply turned me into a wolf. Ren believes that only people who carry the shifter gene are capable of surviving a bite, but he seems really afraid of the implications of that.

If the two mutations—the shifter gene and the virus—are that similar, what does that mean for their origin? Raine keeps saying that Ren needs to speak with Vale about her experience emerging, but that would require Vale taking skin.