Margot was absolutely ecstatic when she saw I had a pure white coat. She, of course, believes it means I’m the wolf from the prophecy, but I’m still not convinced it’s the case. The more we talked about the prophecy, the more we realized we don’t really understand it. It says, “so will the rest of us,” but we aren’t clear on what that means.
I’m walking across the room to measure the fireplace mantel when I hear a car pull up and footsteps make their way to the front door. I know by the sound of the steps it isn’t Ryker. I meet the person at the door and swing it open before they have time to knock.
“Esme!” I’m shocked to see the high priestess standing there. “What are you doing here?”
“I found it!” she cheers as she pushes past me and hurries into the house. “It took some digging and a pretty powerful locator spell, but I finally found it!”
“Found what?” I question, following behind her as quickly as I can. She moves around the house and finds her way into the kitchen. It dawns on me she’s been here before when my parents lived here.
She pulls a small, old book from her bag and carefully places it on the counter. The binding is torn and beat up, and the writing embossed on the leather cover is almost worn off at this point. “It’s a book written by one of the oldest known wolf shifters. It’s a brief history of how your species came to be. It’s actually a very interesting read, but that’s not what’s important.” She flips through the pages looking for something specific. “The important part is where they discuss the White Wolf. This book—the prophecy originated from this very book.”
“What does it say?” I look between the book and Esme’s obsidian eyes.
“Over the past three hundred years, this whole book has been reduced to a single sentence: ‘When the white wolf walks this Earth once more and finds her mate, so will the rest of us.’ Generation after generation forgot what it really meant, and we were left to speculate and guess as to what the actual meaning was. And we did get some of it right, but it’s so much more than we thought,” she rambles with excitement.
“Esme, stop!” I put my hands on her shoulders, hoping she’ll pause long enough to take a breath. “Just tell me what it says.”
“It’s in a different language, but I was finally able to figure it out. Basically, it recalls a time when mates weren’t strictly based on fate like they are now. Instead mate bonds were created when two people, regardless of what species they were, truly fell in love. The writer talks about a demon and a wolf shifter falling in love and mating with each other.” She pauses and looks at me, her face softening. “Pru, they were able to have children together.”
“What happened then? Because that’s not possible anymore.” I shake my head. The whole point of Nicolai’s breeding program was because all of this isn’t possible.
“A curse happened,” Esme explains, a look of awe and wonder on her face.
“A curse?”
“Yes. One of the first and most powerful witches to ever exist created a curse when her son fell in love with a wolf shifter, a white wolf shifter. She was all about keeping the bloodline pure, and when she heard they were going to mate with each other, she—for lack of a better saying—freaked out. She didn’t want her grandchildren to be crossbreeds and found a way to make it impossible.”
“By creating a curse that would only allow mating between the same species?”
“Exactly.” Esme nods.
“Okay…” I ponder what she’s saying. “I’m still confused about what this means for me or the whole white wolf thing?”
“You weren’t randomly selected to be the white wolf, Pruitt, this goes back generations. The curse requires that for the white wolf to exist again, the bloodline of the original white wolf had to be recreated, and by your grandparents meeting up, and subsequently, your parents, and then them creating you, recreated the bloodline.”
“So what you’re saying is, I can blame all of them for this?” I bite my lip to keep from laughing at the expression on Esme’s face. “Okay, I’m sorry. I won’t make a joke again.”
“If all of this is true…” She begins, but then her words trail off.
“Esme, if this is all true, then why hasn’t there been any interspecies mating yet? The prophecy says ‘when the white wolf finds her mate.’” I make little air quotes with my fingers when I recite the line from the prophecy. “I found my mate, and still, nothing has happened. Noah and Addison are very much in love, and they don’t see a mating aura around each other, and if anyone should, it’s them. They’ve waited so long to be together, and now you’re telling me there’s a chance they’ll really be able to?”
“I believe when the prophecy says she ‘finds’ her mate, it means when she is mated to her mate.” Esme rereads a part of the book before nodding. “Yes, that’s what makes the most sense to me based on what I’ve read.”
“We’ll find out after tonight it’s all true.” And suddenly my nerves about tonight grow and my stomach drops. “No pressure.”
Even though I know the mating ceremony isn’t a wedding, I still want to look my best. I take my time curling my hair and applying my makeup. Tonight is something Ryker and I will look back on for the rest of our lives, and I want to think about how beautiful I felt when I walked outside to meet him.
We had agreed to meet on the
