Chapter 186. Ancient Forbidden Texts
Maisie
"It’s not what it looks like."
I might have uttered those words if I wasn’t steaming out of my ears and nostrils. So when my mates began tussling around with Bastian, asking him what the fuck he did to me and why I was crying, I didn’t wait around to be a part of the scene they were creating.
Quite frankly, I didn’t care if they killed each other.
Actually, I hoped they killed each other. Soren first, the liar.
Tell me all about ’finding a different solution’, but he just planned to sell me off to them all along. And while I understood why that seemed like the only option, couldn’t he have had a conversation with me first? This was my life. My body. My mate bond. Couldn’t I, at least, get a say in the matter of who I ended up with?
I felt the clog of rage in my throat as I stormed down the hall, dragging a bag full of ancient texts I’d gotten trapped looking for—to help them, but hey, who fucking cares? Let’s just sell her off. I mean, since she’s already spreading her legs for four men, adding three more to the list shouldn’t feel like much.
Right?
Fucking assholes.
I had reached the car before I realized Juliette was behind me. "Maisie," she said softly , eyes tracking mine as I couldn’t get a grip on my emotions. I was so pissed, I was leaking like a faucet, and with my emotions so heightened lately, I couldn’t even help it. "Do you need me to ride back home with you?"
I started to shake my head, but then I saw Soren and Quinlan ahead. Their expressions were stormy, but there hadn’t been a fight. Which only served to prove that Bastian was right and Soren was entering a negotiation with them. And I suddenly wasn’t in the mood to speak or be in the same space with them. "Yes, please."
She pulled open the backseat and I got in and I heard her say something harshly to Quinlan that made them both stop dead on their tracks, before she got in beside me and we left.
***
Juliette and I sat together on my bedroom floor, where several of the tomes I had stolen were laid out carefully. "Had you not shown this to me, I’m not sure I would’ve believed it. Maisie, amour, this is..." she shook her head. "I am great with languages, but that I have never seen before."
My fingers curled around the page shakily. I thought perhaps there was some explanation for my being able to read it. Maybe it was some ancient text that only Lycans understood. But I’d seen Bastian squint at the books without comprehending what they were and now Juliette was shaking her head as well.
Taking photos of it and punching into the internet for a translation had come up blank.
What did it mean to understand a language that didn’t exist?
"We could speak to my brother—"
"No," I rushed. At her arched brow, I added, "If they knew I was snooping around in places I shouldn’t to find answers, they wouldn’t let me. There is not much I can do for them. This is the very least I can try to help in the only way I know how. I’ll tell them if or when I find something important."
Somehow, Juliette picked up the things I didn’t say. "You plan to return to that place?"
I flushed. "There’s an entire world of undiscovered knowledge hidden there. It’s a little... scary and exciting. I feel like a pirate looking for a lost island with a treasure chest," I giggled, legs kicking. "I want to know why it’s hidden. Don’t you?"
Juliette looked at me like I was half mad, but she laughed. "You get this strange look in your eyes when you’re all fired up. It’s cute. Fine. Your secret is safe with me, but I do think you need to talk to them about why you were upset. If they’ve all gone lengths to make sacrifices that ensure you are happy, then I’m sure there’s a reason behind their decision to consider the offer."
I bit the inside of my cheek. "I’m just tired of people acting like I’m not an actual person with feelings and wants. Making decisions for me without even speaking to me first. I thought we had gone past that."
Juliette nodded, running her hand up and down my back in a soothing pat. "Which is why you need to communicate these things. Set boundaries if you need to. Break some furniture if it makes you feel better, too. So long as you make them understand what the lines are."
I nodded. I really liked Juliette. I always felt better after talking to her.
I spent most of my evening translating. And I got so engrossed in it, I barely noticed when Juliette left, or when night fell. My back hurt and my wrist ached from writing, but I didn’t stop.
And after five hours of ripping my pages out, blotted inks and cross referencing across four books, I successfully translated a page.
"The goddess shaped beings of sky whose wings could eclipse entire cities, creatures of the deep waters and creatures of earth, who wore flesh and shape as they wished.
For a time, they lived in uneasy balance, and the goddess believed her work was complete. But when she withdrew to watch from afar, the balance shattered.
The great ones turned on one another. They warred over territory, over dominance, over the right to claim the lesser races as slaves and concubines. They fought until the skies burned and the seas ran red. They fought until there was almost nothing left to fight over.
The Moon Goddess watched her children devour one another and saw only ruin, envy, greed, selfishness and destruction.
She mourned, for she had created beings too powerful for their own good. So she turned her face from the world and let it die. The land grew barren, the skies poisonous, and the waters bitter, until her children began to wither and fade on their own. The goddess accepted her failure and resolved to begin again.
She shaped a new race. Smaller, frailer, short-lived. Humans. Though they carried the same capacity for cruelty as their predecessors, they also possessed something the firstborn lacked. Compassion. The goddess watched them build, govern, and sometimes destroy, and found in them a fragile kind of hope.
Fearing that one day, both worlds might collide, leaving her humans defenseless, the Goddess fashioned creators for her beloved humans. Beings who could walk as men and fight as beasts, sworn to stand between humanity and the horrors of ages past if the need ever arose.
For a long age, this world flourished.
But her first children who had survived were dying, their numbers dwindling with every passing century. Desperate to escape extinction, they turned their eyes toward other realms. They sought worlds that could still sustain life. And ways to reach them.
They found the Gatekeeper, the last descendant of a died out race gifted with the ability to tear open paths between worlds, and with the Gatekeeper, they sent scouts. Warriors. Carefully chosen from the older bloodlines of hunters and protectors. The only race amongst them that they could trust not to abandon them.
Their purpose was simple. Find a world that could hold them.
And in doing so, they found this one..."
I slammed the book shut with such irritation, it sent dust flying. "What the fuck is this shit? "
I rose, nearly pulling all my hair out. I spent five goddamned hours translating a damned fantasy book about gatekeepers and alternate worlds? Wings? Creatures of seas? What the actual hell? Why the hell would anyone put a storybook in the history section and name it forbidden?
Enraged, I packed up all seven books, tossed them into the closet with a loud thud, glared at the closet, before stomping over to my bed and throwing the cover over my head. "Gatekeeper my freaking ass."