#Chapter 185: Unwanted Encounters

Agnes The pack headquarters’ courtyard was unusually quiet today. Normally, Gertrude and I would be sitting at our usual table, sharing lunch and gossip while the sun warmed our shoulders. But she’d called out sick this morning, which left me eating alone. I didn’t mind the solitude, though. It gave me a chance to dig deeper into the book on elementals that Elijah and I had checked out from the library yesterday. I’d been too anxious to read it last night, too afraid of what I might find, but the daylight made the whole thing seem less threatening somehow. I unwrapped my sandwich and balanced the heavy book on my lap, dusting a few pink blossoms off my shoulder that had fallen from the tree above me. Most of what I’d read so far wasn’t new information. Basic history about how elementals had once been crucial to pack survival before modern amenities made their powers less necessary. How the gifts had slowly bred out of most bloodlines over time. None of this was