I didn’t realize I fell asleep until my phone started buzzing in my back pocket. “Ugh, who is it now?” I look at my notifications and see a photo attachment from Rie. I open it and roll my eyes. It is a picture of her and Nina with Gregory. “She really pushed her luck this time, huh?” I don’t bother replying and turn off my phone. I close my eyes again but I find my head racing with thoughts of what Gregory said earlier. “I wasn’t aware that there were riots ten years ago? I would’ve remembered that if it was taught by the tutor,” I muse out loud. An idea forms in my head and I sit upright. My clock reads two forty-seven a.m.Everyone should be asleep by now.
I carefully open my door and head quickly to the east wing of the main house. The hallway is dark, but my eyes can see each speck of dust clear as day. As a werewolf, all my senses are so sharp that I often get sensory overloads daily. Still, being able to creep in the dark is pretty neat so it’s not something I really complain about.
The intricately carved wooden door greets me in the dark. I listen closely for any sign of life behind the door. I touch the doorknob and twist it lightly, afraid of any dark magic that may hurt me. Surprisingly, it opens with ease.Maybe because no one will even dare go to this side of the estate.
I step inside my grandmother’s library. It’s smaller than I remember, but heaps of books fill each wall and table. Some are even neatly stacked on the floor. “Where do I even start?” I spin around and choose a random wall. The titles are arranged from fiction to nonfiction, in alphabetical order. After a few minutes, my eyes settle on an untitled book by the edge of the center table.
The book is larger than most in my grandmother’s collection, and I wonder if it’s a personal diary. Its cover is bound in maroon-dyed leather, with one side already faded in color. I pick it up and sheets of folded paper tumble onto the floor. I bend down to collect them but as soon as I do, I hear footsteps come closer into the room.
I scan the entire library for a viable place to hide, but any space I can crawl into is either too cramped to fit my body or too tight. I can’t come close to any of the books either for fear of accidentally knocking some of them down. Panic surges through my body.
Just then, I hear the doorknob jiggle open.
Chapter Ten
This is not how I envisioned my Thursday morning to start. I frantically try to grab the contents of the book in my hands and shove them under my shirt.
“Mistress Isabela? Are you in here?” someone whispers.
“Eliza!” I jump in surprise at the soft voice of my personal assistant. She half-screams and puts a hand to her mouth.
“Don’t scare me like that!” Eliza berates me but she giggles after a while. “Mistress, pardon my intrusion. But you shouldn’t be in here.” She gestures for me to follow her out into the hallway but I stand my ground.
“Give me a few minutes. I just need to check something,” I say, and pull her inside the library with me. “How’d you find me, anyway?”
“I saw you walk down this hallway. I thought you were a ghost at first, but then I figured those aren’t real.”
“And werewolves are supposed to be fictional too, yet here we are.” I chuckle.
“Yeah, even the idea of half-werewolves isn’t supposed to be real. But here I am.”
She smiles to herself. “What are you looking for anyway? Shouldn’t you be resting? I heard what happened. Are you okay?” I nod and ignore her other questions. I look at Eliza’s face in the darkness.
“I’m fine, there’s no need to worry. Katya healed me.” I hand her a couple of papers. “Here, look through these first and tell me if you see any mention of riots from ten years ago.”
“Mistress Katya was with you?” she inquires and sifts through the documents. “You know, you can’t rely on her to fix your injuries each and every time. You need to be careful.”
“Eliza, we’ve been friends since we were kids. You know I AM careful. It’s not my fault trouble seems to come find me wherever I go.” She sighs.
“People call you ‘troublemaker’ behind your back.”
“Even you?” I pout at Eliza. She nods and I push her shoulder lightly.
“Which is why I think you should travel with bodyguards from now on. It’s not safe anymore.” She trails off and reads through newspaper clippings she took from a drawer.
“No. It’s bad enough to be cursed with wolf blood. I don’t want any more unnecessary attention.”
She puts a hand on my arm. “I don’t think you have a choice, Mistress. Your grandmother spoke to the head of the Elites earlier. She’s putting together your own set of guards starting tomorrow.” She cringes at my gaze.
“She…what?” I hiss.
“Calm down, Mistress. Handle one problem at a time.” She shoves some clippings into my hands. “Focus on this one first.” I look through the articles in the dark, some of the headlines have been cut off, but I can make out a few lines. I take pictures of the piles and move on to the next one. “Mistress Isabela,” Eliza queries, “are we looking for the great uprisings?”
“I—what do you know about this?”
“Well, it started when the Esperanza family, rather your grandmother, ordered an attack on the Richardson pack.”
Richardson? My mind backtracks to the white calling card I found in Gregory’s wallet. “Why this specific pack?” I ask bluntly.