The Witch and the Wolf ✔️

Kiche

"And that is the reason for the policy of farming omegas selling their crops in surplus in order for the Druids to maintain financial stakes in the human world."

I scribbled down as much as I could in my grimoire. But even as I worked on the lessons, I found myself still wondering one thing.

"Who's Kiche?" I blurted out.

Delta D'Anaconia stopped, panic in the lines on his face. "Luna Lorna, with all due respect—"

"Who's Kiche?" I tried to sound more like Tala, deepening my voice, looking him dead straight in the eye.

He avoided my glance. "I can't talk about this."

I straightened, shutting my grimoire. "Can't? Or won't?"

"I know that you know just as well as I do what kind of wolf Fenrir Lamar is," D'Anaconia said bitterly, still avoiding my gaze. "When he gives me an order, I will follow it."

"I don't understand. Why does it matter whether or not I know who Kiche is?"

"You're a flight risk, Lorna. He was very careful to emphasize that point. I'm not supposed to tell you anything that might motivate you to run away again."

"Trust me when I say that I still have reasons to run. I need a reason to stay."

"Wait. . . " He looked up to me. "You don't feel the Mating Bond then?"

I shook my head. "There's. . . complications."

"Poor Huron," D'Anaconia muttered.

"What's going on?" I asked, softening my expression. "I. . . I want to love my mate. I want to understand him. But we never spend any time together— so I can't. Please tell me something— something that could help me."

He finally met my eyes, and I saw sorrow in his. The same intensity of sorrow in Huron's eyes.

"This is a sad story, Lorna," he said. "This is the story of my greatest failure. Are you sure you want to hear it?"

I didn't hesitate. "Yes."

He nodded, gulping a breath as he looked down to his hands. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a faded photograph of a much-younger D'Anaconia, with a young woman about his age. She had light brown curls the same color of both of her children's, and the dark brown eyes that revealed the keen intellect of Surt.

"Kiche was my first student," D'Anaconia said. "She was from nowhere, an omega in her home pack of the Lost River. I was a young wolf then, and I was told to teach Kiche our ways, especially since she was to be Luna."

"So she was Huron and Surt's mother," I interrupted. I felt my stomach sinking as the implications hit me like a tidal wave.

"Yes." He studied the photograph. "I was eager to teach her. She was only a few years younger than me at the time, and she was bright. She loved to dance and to read stories. She collected the stories sitting on these very shelves. We spent more time together than she did with her mate."

I glanced around me. Surt and Huron's mother sat here. She built this place.

"You see, Kiche wasn't under the Mating Ecstasy either," D'Anaconia said as he folded the picture up, returning it to the pocket over his heart. "She tried, but she knew the truth about her Alpha. And I grew up alongside Fenrir and Lyall— the Beta— and I knew that neither of them were quite right as children. I couldn't lie to her— I don't think anyone could, not even her children."

I reached for a tissue and handed it to him, right before the tears started to fall.

"She mostly stayed out of his way, but was marked exactly three times," D'Anaconia said. "The first— she lost the pups there. The second time, there was supposed to be four, I remember the Guildmembers being excited, and Fenrir— he was even kind to her, then."

"But she lost them, too, didn't she?" I realized there were only two children of Kiche.

"All but one, and he was Huron," D'Anaconia said. "The rest were stillbirths."

"How awful." I couldn't imagine how Huron felt.

"Fenrir blamed Huron for the deaths of the other pups, but Kiche did her best to shield him from his father," D'Anaconia continued. "She was a devoted mother to him for two years. Her husband began to neglect her more and more, especially now that he had an heir that would surely survive to adulthood under her care."

He blew his nose, the tears starting to fall more heavily. "She wanted to be loved— she deserved it. And we were young, and immortal. When she was pregnant again, with only one pup, Fenrir didn't think much of it— although he had his suspicions."

He looked back up at me, and I realized who he reminded me of.

"It wasn't until Surt was four years old when Fenrir realized that Surt didn't resemble him in the slightest," D'Anaconia said. "It only took one blood test. Fenrir is an O type blood. Kiche is a B-type. Surt was AB. And I— I have Type A."

"No," I whispered, full of sympathy as I realized— Surt was like me. "What happened?"

"He killed Kiche. Exiled me. I begged him to kill me instead, to let her live for the sake of her children— but he didn't listen." His head was cradled in his hands. "I was forced to leave my daughter and Kiche's son in the hands of that monster. If I could have taken them, I would have. Huron was more my son than he ever was Fenrir's."

"I'm so sorry," I whispered, and I just touched my mentor's shoulder. "I didn't know."

"Fenrir forbid discussion of her, even by her children— her name was not to be spoken," D'Anaconia said. "You couldn't have known. And he didn't want you to know that another Luna had died at the hands of a Lamar wolf."

"But Huron isn't like him?" Despite what I knew, I still questioned it. There was nature and nurture there. Despite the gentle nature I'd observed so far in Huron, there were moments of wilderness and a feral spirit in him. What if he was only kind now, and would become that sort of monster eventually?"

D'Anaconia sat up straight. "No. Listen to me, Lorna— he is capable of love. He will be a better Alpha than his father— I know it. But we have to keep this all a secret, that you know. Please try to break through Huron's walls. If he is even close to the child I once helped care for, he is someone that a girl as bright as you— as Kiche once was— will love."

He swiped at his tears. "I suppose we should keep talking about economics, shouldn't we?"

"I suppose so."

Even if I didn't feel like it.

D'Anaconia began again with his lessons. But I couldn't focus, my mind began to wander.

And once again, I felt guilty for Amas Nox. Maybe. . . I would do it. Break the spell, for his sake.

But then I remembered how he had treated me the last time we were alone together, and how distant he seemed since then.

Perhaps D'Anaconia was wrong.