“This is just more of the same bullshit,” I said, slamming the book closed. “Even the driest, most apolitical academic discussions of bond theory and power exchange seem to just assume a latent shifter as a central bond is the strongest and most stable. There isn’t shit in here about Fated bonds or the potential power of an off-the-charts female Prime as a central.” I glared at the books I’d strewn across Dad’s reading table, the room’s stately centerpiece. After I spent all day yesterday at the college’s library and didn’t find what I wanted, I’d stooped to raiding my fathers’ private collection.

Elijah shrugged lazily. He looked like a man without a care in the world, lounging in my dad’s reading chair, tucked into the corner of the library next to the fireplace. “Why would there be? Power females are as rare as mythics, and I’d be willing to bet a lot of them are, like my dove, hiding what they are. There just haven’t been any cases for your academic brethren to study.”

“And the Fated pairings that’ve been examined in the journals I found in the college’s database are almost exclusively lower-powered pairs like Avery’s friend and her wolf mate,” I continued. “They all report increased happiness and tranquility. Any beasts with rage or control issues do show some evidence of settling, but pairs like that don’t share power like a Prime quad, so they don’t report an increase in the strength or dominance of the beast.”

“And yet,” Elijah mused, “the First Guardians were bonded to a powerful female tiger, and they are heralded as one of the strongest quads to ever live.” His eyes glowed eerie yellow. “Somehow that fact has been… lost over the centuries.”

He was right, of course. Elijah had long cultivated this lackadaisical air of a guy who could hardly be bothered to put on a whole shirt, skipped class constantly, and found just about everything in life mildly amusing. And while that was him to a point, he was also focused, driven, and ruthlessly intelligent.

“You know I don’t believe the Moon actually disfavored females with a beast or any of that curse bullshit,” I said. “A miracle, given the environment I was raised in. I believe in solid, evidence-based magical theory. It is highly likely that our ancestors reacted in a certain way to the massacre at the lunar eclipse and the tiger’s role in it—whether it truly was a betrayal or just a terrible tragedy—and it caused them to develop mistrust of shifting females, which led to selection bias favoring latents when choosing mates and bonds.” I slumped in my chair. My head hurt, and my beast had been pacing anxiously within me for the entire three days since we’d left our mate in the infirmary. “Which then caused the disappearance of whatever genetic factors predispose a female to merging with a beast soul. Not divine will.”

He grinned. “Indeed. The ancestors were so dramatic.”

I rolled my eyes. “So, yes, I get it—quads and other strong groups formed bonds with latent females because within a few generations, that’s all there were. And the magical theory is solid—it makes sense that a latent bond would be more stable and magically potent. But we have nothing—nothing—on the Moon herself blessing a mating like ours. Arguably the bond will be even stronger because it truly is the divine will.” I pounded my fist on the table because fuck all of this. It may have cost me my mate. “Our entire body of research and theory is bullshit!”

“Yes,” Elijah replied, still infuriatingly calm, “and it’s breaking your professorly brain that we do have a few millennia of meticulously recorded history of powerful Primes and their latent bonds—both male and female—that provides evidence of the supposed perfect fit between the two. The significant increases in power, the way the beasts are settled, the bountiful fertility of the females⁠—”

I held up a hand. “Stop right there. The fact that Avery might think we didn’t want her because we assumed we couldn’t fucking breed her⁠—”

Elijah hissed through his teeth, his pupils slitting as his yellow eyes glowed. “Let’s not use the words ‘Avery’ and ‘breed’ in the same sentence. My beast is… interested.”

I arched a brow. “I’m relieved that you might actually be struggling as much as the rest of us. Your composure has been extremely off-putting.”

He blinked, and his eyes returned to normal. “One of two mysteries plaguing me has been solved,” he said, grinning lazily. “The basilisk was such a problematic asshole around my dove because he wanted to be with his mate. He doesn’t want to kill the woman I’m obsessed with. Amazing. Now all I have to do is figure out who killed my mother and why. Things are looking up.”

I stood up and began to pace the exorbitantly expensive Persian rug my mother’s designer had installed in here six months ago when she’d gone on one of her redecorating sprees. “To your original point,” I said, “our history and theology were recorded by the men who survived the massacre and became our first Council. If they’d wanted to erase shifting females—especially Primes—from it, they certainly had the power and opportunity to do so.”

“Our mate sure seems to think that’s the case.” Elijah replied, alluding to Avery’s words as she tore into us at the Blue Moon Ball.

“And why do you believe a shifting female isn’t the right choice for the bond of a powerful Prime quad? Is it because you believe in the lie made up by our ancestors to malign a hero just because she was female?”

Those words had rattled around in my skull like hell’s echo chamber since that night.

“But why?” Elijah went on. “To what end?”

“Why murder a war widow in the middle of a farmers’ market in Lion Valley?” I asked, referring to Elijah’s mom’s tragic story. “And why murder the bonded mate of an unassuming trio of mixed-power shifters and the mother of two toddlers, whose beast may or may not have been a tiger?”

Elijah frowned. The tension that crept into his shoulders would’ve been invisible to anyone but me, Heath, or Wyatt.

Or Avery, my mind supplied helpfully.

The fact that Avery and Elijah had murdered mothers in common was not lost on any of us, but we hadn’t speculated they could be connected. Why would they be? But nothing was impossible.

“These people have always existed among us,” I went on. “My fathers certainly have ideas about the place of females in our society, and they sit on the fucking regional Council.”

And it would be over my dead body that we told them anything about Avery before we had to. It was bad enough they’d been in the crowd for her performance during our final training run against the Simulated Wraith Invasion Magic, or SWIM, as it was known to trainees. My fathers didn’t need to know anything else until after we’d bonded with her and Heath put my most powerful father, Holden, in his place.

My jaguar purred at the thought. We’ll just keep dreaming, won’t we, buddy?

I strode to the bookshelf tucked behind Holden’s desk and began to rifle through the titles. I’d ignored this shelf because it was dedicated to his most archaic and backwards beliefs—unlikely to be hiding anything resembling progressive thought on bond theory.

The Original Sin of the Prime Female

The Superior Male: Glorifying the Moon Through Masculine Dominance

“Take a break, Aiden,” Elijah drawled. “We’re not going to find something we’ve overlooked that proves all modern bond theory wrong. You didn’t miss anything, and it isn’t your fault we believed what we believed. It doesn’t change the fact that we have to fix what we broke with my dove.”

King of the Jungle: Traditional Shifter Values in a Modern World

“Stop talking reason,” I snapped. “Maybe there’s a clue buried in the bullshit written by these reactionary thinkers my dad loves—” I paused to stare dumbly at an electronic keypad that I’d never seen before, which was hidden behind the two-volume set of Morals and the Moon, written by one of Dad’s favorite podcasters. “What the fuck is this?”

“What?”

“A keypad. I didn’t know my dad had a safe installed in here⁠—”

The door swung open, and I had two seconds to replace the books, sit down in the desk chair, and become engrossed in Shifter Monthly magazine before Holden strode in.

Shit. He must’ve left the office early and come straight to his library. He was still in his dress shirt and slacks, his mane of dark hair tossed over one shoulder.

He glanced up from whatever he was reading on his phone as he walked, pausing in the middle of the carpet. “Aiden? What are you doing in here?”

As always, his presence filled the room. He wasn’t any taller or broader than Wyatt, but he wore his beast’s dominance like a dark sorcerer would wear his cape billowing around him, heavy and threatening.

I pointed at the magazine. “I was hoping to steal a copy of this. There’s a feature on one of my colleagues for his work integrating techno-runes into home security hardware.”

Dad waved a hand. “Fine. I’m finished with that.”

I stood up and slid the magazine under my arm. “Elijah and I were just leaving.”

His cool gray gaze slid to where Elijah sprawled in his chair. Elijah watched him with lazy amusement on his face even as his yellow eyes flashed for the briefest moment.

My dad was wary of Elijah, though he’d never admit it. As the head of the Southeastern Council and self-proclaimed strongest Prime in the region, he could show no fear or weakness, not even in the face of a mythic. If Elijah’s basilisk challenged Dad’s lion head-on, Elijah would probably win, but Dad would give him a hell of a time. An equally likely scenario was that neither of them would survive the fight.

But until a few days ago, I’d have said Dad had something Elijah did not—supreme control over his beast.

Now? I’d never seen Elijah and his beast in more perfect harmony, and he wasn’t even bonded yet. It was as if just the knowledge that Avery was his Fated had flipped some mysterious switch.

“Ah,” Dad said, wrinkling his nose. “Good to see you, Mr. Harrow. I didn’t realize you were here, since I haven’t seen your detestable python slithering around this house in a few weeks.”

Elijah stood up, his posture loose and languid. He grinned and shrugged helplessly. “George’s newfound attachment to Clara was a surprise to me, as well, sir. He’s his own snake—I can only politely make requests of him.”

A half-truth. George was usually inclined to listen to Elijah’s polite requests, and he’d dutifully stayed behind at the manor to watch over Clara while the rest of us went back to school and fucked things up beyond comprehension with our mate.

“Speaking of your sister,” Dad said, returning his shrewd gaze to me, “where is she?”

It was my turn to shrug helplessly. “She and Willow conspired to convince Mom and Mrs. Gale to let them stay together this summer. Heath drove her over to the Gale estate a few hours ago.”

Also a half-truth. Wyatt’s mom was complicit in this scheme because she wanted Clara out of this house as much as we did. Dad didn’t need to know that part.

Dad strode past me to take the seat I’d abandoned behind his desk. He sat down and steepled his fingers, gray eyes studying me as if cataloging all possible weaknesses. “Fine,” he said finally, his lips pursed. “I suppose that since the Nelson boys are summering in Europe, she doesn’t have any obligations here. I want her back in this house before school starts in September.”

“I’ll mention it to Mom.”

“You do that.”

Elijah and I exchanged a look, and I jerked my head at the door. He followed me out.

“Oh, and boys?”

I paused in the doorway. “Yes?” I said over my shoulder.

“I haven’t had a chance to commend you on your recent heroism.” He smirked, and the look reeked of both pride and derision—his usual expression when it came to Heath and me. “A full breach in the campus wards, and not a single casualty, thanks solely to the younger Blackwell Quad.”

“It’s what we’ve been training for,” I replied simply. It was Heath’s diplomacy, the dean’s embarrassment, and Dr. Lee’s iron-clad rules on medical privacy that’d kept Avery’s presence in those woods from becoming public knowledge. “Had any wraiths gotten past us, there were other skilled quads and Support Squadron trainees guarding the evacuation location. But we got lucky.”

Dad hummed. “Indeed. Well, you’ll be pleased to know that the parents of your peers are falling all over themselves to thank our family for saving their precious children’s lives. Your mother can hardly keep up with the deluge of brunch and tea invitations.”

“How wonderful,” I said dryly. “As long as spilling our blood was good for something.”

Elijah chuckled.

Dad’s grin turned contemplative. “It’s too bad the four of you will be occupied this summer. I suspect there will be a parade of society mothers and their daughters coming through this house.”

I’d never been more thrilled to be spending two months in a cabin in the woods.

“As much as I hate to disappoint the ladies,” Elijah said, “there’s no getting out of camp, try as I did.”

He’d tried no such thing, but the more Dad found Elijah unserious and nonthreatening, the better. His commitment to the bit was legendary.

“On that note, Dad,” I said, “have there been any updates from the Council’s investigation regarding what happened to the campus wards?”

He’d lost interest in our conversation, apparently, and was back to looking at something on his phone. He waved a dismissive hand at me. “Likely a miscast by whoever was assigned that segment on the last re-up. We’re interviewing our contractors and will fire the person responsible. Nothing for you all to worry about.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. That would’ve been quite the mistake made by a supposed ward security expert while dealing with a rune sequence permanently etched into pure fucking silver.

“Sure,” I said. “Have a good summer, Dad.”

I would be joining Heath at Wyatt’s until we moved out to camp in mid-June. I could’ve gone back to my house on campus, but I wasn’t interested in marinating in my fuckups and pining for my mate by myself. Misery did love company.

Dad grunted an acknowledgment, and Elijah and I finally made our exit.

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