Chapter 116: The Alpha Tooth
Moana
That night, Edrick asked me to sleep with him. I didn’t know exactly what changed, and why he didn’t seem to want me to leave his side, but I chalked it up to the anxiety caused by the whole ordeal. Besides, I wasn’t complaining; I didn’t want to be alone, either.
Feeling his warm arms wrapped around me was a sorely needed comfort, and I found myself slipping off into sleep within moments of laying down with him.
Edrick and I didn’t wake up again until the next morning. Somehow, we slept through the entire day and night, and still felt tired in the morning.
We laid there for a while after waking up, not speaking as we both stared up at the ceiling. I had so many questions about what happened the day before, and how he found me… But it seemed that he had questions of his own, too.
“Can I ask you something?” he said, turning to look at me.
I nodded as I tried to ignore the feeling of my face turning red under his gaze. I was so used to the Alpha billionaire’s stern eyes by now, but I wasn’t used to how soft and sincere they’d suddenly become since he found me in that alleyway.
Edrick seemed to be searching for the right words for a few moments before he finally spoke. “Do you know anything about your lineage?” he asked. “I mean… Do you know who your parents were, or anything like that?”
I felt my heart start to race. Surely he had some idea that I was a werewolf if he truly followed my scent to find me, like Mina said. But I wasn’t prepared to tell him right now. What if it turned out that my wolf never wound up being able to emerge? I couldn’t tell him until I was certain. I had planned all along on waiting until I shifted for the first time to tell him the truth, assuming that we would still be living together by then.
I suddenly sat up, shaking my head.
“I don’t know anything about my heritage,” I lied. “All I know is that I was left on Sophia’s doorstep. That’s it.” I threw the covers off then and swung my legs over the side of the bed. “Are you hungry? I can make breakfast. I’ll bring it in here if you still feel sick.”
Edrick’s hand suddenly shot out and grabbed my arm — not hard, but firmly enough to show me that he knew I was lying, and that he wanted me to stay and talk to him.
“Please, Moana,” he said quietly. “I’m the father of your baby. I think it’s only fair for you to be open with me.”
I paused, unsure of what to say. Edrick clearly had some inkling of my true heritage. I couldn’t exactly go on like this forever, keeping the truth from him. Eventually, our baby would be born and it would be fully werewolf, not human. There would be no hiding it then, and the longer it went on, the more Edrick might start to resent me for not telling him the truth.
Finally, with a sigh, I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “But let me get something first. There’s something I need to show you.”
Edrick’s eyes widened. He released his grip on my arm and I stood, putting on my robe before I slipped out of his room. It was still early enough for the other servants and Ella to be asleep, so I was able to make my way to my room without being seen and questioned over why I had slept in Edrick’s room all day and night. Once there, I opened my top dresser drawer and rifled through it until I found the small wooden box where I kept the wolf tooth that Sophia had given me. I hadn’t looked at the tooth in a while. When she first gave it to me, for some reason I couldn’t stop carrying it around in my pocket — but when I eventually realized that I could have lost it or broken it, I decided to tuck it away in a box where nothing could happen to it. This tooth was the only link to my parents, and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to it. Even if my parents did leave me on Sophia’s doorstep because I didn’t have a wolf as a baby, I still wanted to hold onto the possibility of meeting them someday when my wolf did emerge.
Then, swallowing the lump in my throat, I carried the box back to Edrick’s room.
He was sitting up in bed when I arrived, waiting for me. I didn’t speak as I set the box down in front of him.
“What is it?” he asked tentatively, glancing between me and the box with a confused expression on his face.
“Just open it,” I replied. I didn’t have the strength to speak; I just wanted him to see the tooth for himself.
Slowly, Edrick opened the oblong wooden box. His eyes widened as he stared down at it. Then, gingerly, he picked the tooth up and held it up to the light. I watched in silence, my heart racing, as he turned it over in the light, inspecting it closely.
“This is yours?” he asked, his disbelieving gaze sliding over to me.
I nodded. “Sophia gave it to me. She said that it was in my hand when I was left on her doorstep as a baby. And… She said that it’s usually a sign that a child is a werewolf, and it’s not just that; she also said that it’s usually a sign that werewolf parents have chosen to abandon a wolfless child, pronouncing them as dead instead of embracing them for who they are. I didn’t believe her at first when she said that I might be a werewolf, but I know it’s true now.”
“How do you know?” Edrick asked. I think he already knew the answer.
“I’ve been hearing my wolf’s voice for a few months now. I think that she was the one who protected me, along with the baby, when I was in the Rogue district yesterday.”
Edrick fell silent. He was still holding the tooth in his hand, and looked back down on it with a curious expression on his face. I didn’t realize it before, but my hands were shaking as I stood at the foot of the bed.
Was Edrick my mate? Was that why he was able to follow the scent that Mina released? And was that why he was so warm toward me now?
But as he continued to stare at the tooth, his eyes wide, I could tell that there was something else going through his mind. He seemed to notice something. Something shocking.
“What is it?” I asked. “Do you notice anything about the tooth?”
Edrick paused for a moment, then suddenly put the tooth back and snapped the box shut, shaking his head. “Nothing really,” he said quietly, picking up the box and holding it out for me with a pensive expression on his face. “But I do think that it might just be more than a regular werewolf tooth.”
I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean?” I asked.
Edrick sighed. “I think it might be an Alpha tooth.”
