Chapter 149: Lock & Key
Edrick
I couldn’t sleep at all that night after the picnic. It was for a variety of reasons: first of all, I was still admittedly upset over what Moana had told me earlier that day. I knew that I shouldn’t have been jealous or hurt over it, as Moana was my mate and what happened between us was only fate striking at just the right time, but it didn’t make it hurt any less.
I just wished that she told me sooner that she broke up with her ex not even an hour before we met, and I had to admit that the way she pitied him made my mood darken. However, that feeling was quickly overshadowed by the way that she suddenly blurted something out.
It was only one word: “No.”
Somehow, I knew that she was talking to her wolf, and not to me. But what were they talking about? Was there something that she wasn’t telling me?
Either way, I knew that it would only be a matter of time before Moana’s wolf fully emerged. If she accidentally shifted, and if she was in fact the Golden Wolf, she would be putting herself in grave danger. I needed to get to the bottom of this before it was too late. If she was the Golden Wolf, I would have to find some way to keep her from shifting for the first time until the baby was born. People would instantly know about her existence the second she shifted, and they would no doubt be hunting her. With a baby in her belly, it only made it more dangerous… Not that I wouldn’t also be terribly worried about her anyway even if she wasn’t pregnant.
That night, I kept tossing and turning. I would fall asleep for a few minutes, only to wake up again from my nerves. Finally, I decided that I simply wouldn’t sleep at all.
My mind kept wandering back to the forum thread that I found about the book on the Golden Wolf. It was supposedly extremely rare, and possibly didn’t even exist. But I had a feeling that I could find it.
There was a private library in the city that was only open to the highest class of werewolves. I had never been there before myself, but it was common knowledge that the librarian lived there, and she had an enormous collection of rare and banned books. It was late, but I didn’t care; I needed to see her now.
I quietly got dressed while Moana slept, taking one last glance at her before I slipped out of the room and headed outside. And soon, I was driving my car across the quiet city, and pulling up to the curb outside the library.
It was a massive stone building that had been a part of this city since the city was built. The librarians here were always from the same family, and the library would be passed down to each generation. There was something almost ominous about the building, but I swallowed my nerves and walked up the front steps to the big, ornate wooden door and pressed the doorbell.
There was a long wait. I pressed the doorbell a couple more times, and by the third time, I began to think that no one was going to answer.
However, just as I was about to walk away, the door finally cracked open.
“What do you want?” a gruff, old woman’s voice said through the crack. “It’s three o’clock in the morning. Can’t you read? The hours are posted right in front of your face.”
I felt my face flush with embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you’re not open. But I have urgent research to do. Can you please let me in?”
The door cracked open a little wider, and now I could see an old woman’s face staring up at me. Her face was covered with wrinkles, but she had piercing blue eyes. “I recognize you,” she said, her voice low and gravelly. “You’re Edrick Morgan. What are you doing here?”
I swallowed. “Like I said, I have urgent research I need to do,” I replied. “It’s really important, but unfortunately I can’t tell anyone what it’s about.”
The woman didn’t say anything for a few long moments. Finally, she pulled the door open the rest of the way and gestured for me to come in. “Do you want tea?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks. I just need to see your rare books. The rarest of the rare.”
The woman grumbled something to herself, but complied anyway and led me through the narrow walkways between bookshelves that towered all the way to the high ceiling. There must have been thousands of books in there — no, millions — and each of them looked even older than the last. Unlike any regular library that would normally be spacious with lots of seating, this library was nothing but shelves. Books were even piled on the floor, along with paper scrolls and half-melted candles. The whole place reminded me of some sort of demented wizard’s tower from a fairy tale.
“The rarest of the rare, huh?” the old woman asked, her appearance flashing beneath the large skylight that let the light of the moon in, revealing a hunched over posture and gray, frazzled hair. “How rare, exactly?”
“Rare as in… It might not even exist,” I replied.
The old woman stopped and stared at me for a moment over her shoulder, pursing her thin lips as she looked me up and down. I stared back, and eventually she nodded and led me over to a narrow wooden door that was nestled in between two bookshelves. If she hadn’t led me there, I never would have seen it.
“I don’t normally let people in here,” she said, extracting a ring of keys from the pocket on her robe, “but since you’re… well, you, I’ll allow it. It’s where I keep my most prized books.”
“Thank you,” I replied. The old woman didn’t respond as she rifled through the keyring. She finally found the key she was looking for and unlocked the door. When she pushed the door open, it creaked loudly and exposed a set of narrow stone steps that led downward.
“Go ahead,” she said, gesturing for me to enter. “Be careful on those steps. And try not to get your fingers all over everything. The oils from your skin will ruin my books.”
I nodded. “I’ll be careful,” I replied. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and switched on the flashlight, then descended down the stairs.
With each step, the air became colder. By the time I got to the bottom, it was almost frigid. I found myself in a surprisingly small room, but it was still packed with books. The walls were made of bookshelves, and there were a few glass cases that housed extremely decrepit old tomes. Unlike upstairs, everything seemed to be neatly organized.
I began to scour the bookshelves, searching for anything that would even remotely resemble the book that I heard about. If it was going to be anywhere, it would be here… I was sure of it. I had a good feeling about this place.
At first, my search was fruitless. There were plenty of rare books, but none of them seemed to contain any information on the Golden Wolf. I even went through each bookshelf twice, but found nothing. I must have been in there for a few hours at that point; the sun was probably rising and I had no way of knowing since it was so dark down there.
I was about to give up after my third time looking through all of the bookshelves. Obviously the book simply didn’t exist, because if this library didn’t have it, then it couldn’t possibly be anywhere else. If it did exist at one point, then it probably didn’t exist now.
But then, something caught my eye.
I only noticed it because there were three books that protruded from the shelf slightly more than the rest. At first, I thought that they were just shaped differently, but on closer inspection I realized that something was behind them. With a furrowed brow, I carefully pulled the books out.
A cloud of dust sprung up as something flopped down onto the shelf. My eyes widened; it had been pinned behind the books.
And as I pulled it out, I realized that it was exactly the book I was looking for.
My heart practically leaped out of my chest as I snatched the book off of the shelf. The pages were yellow and brittle, but it was still fully intact. I thumbed through it as carefully as I could, straining my eyes to read the faded text.
“The Prophecy of the Golden Wolf,” I whispered to myself, reading the text on one of the pages. “The Golden Wolf will return in the form of a human at first… But they will possess strange abilities unlike any human, with only a single physical indicator of their existence… A single Alpha tooth that glows in the light of the full moon.”
My eyes widened even more as I read the text. I snapped the book shut, my breath catching in my throat.
There was no doubt about it; Moana had the tooth. She came in the form of a human at first, but she possessed strange abilities. She had to be the Golden Wolf.
But I still needed more proof. Not only that, but I needed guidance, and there was only one person in the world who could possibly help us now: the Mother Witch. The wisest, oldest, and most powerful of all witches.
First, however, I would need a lock of Moana’s hair to bring to the Mother Witch.
