Chapter 2 Nothing Stays Buried Forever

Sierra Lane's POV

I didn't sleep.

Not because the room was cold or the bed too soft. Not even because of the wolves outside my window, howling like the moon owed them something. I didn't sleep because that note kept staring at me like it had teeth.

You were never supposed to see.

Six words, no signature, no explanation, but whoever left it had keys to a fortress guarded by killers and monsters in silk suits. That meant either Dominic knew and was playing some kind of twisted psychological game, or I wasn't just trespassing in his world, I had already stepped into someone else's trap.

I folded the note into my journal and stood. First rule of journalism: don't panic. Second rule: when the room starts smelling like secrets, go digging.

The mansion was silent, but not asleep. The kind of silence that hums like power lines buzzing with watching eyes and cameras behind vintage mirrors. I slipped into the hallway, barefoot, gripping my penlight and my phone like weapons.

The estate was a maze of polished wood, velvet walls, and oil paintings of dead-eyed men with family names that probably owned half the country. I counted doors, passed statues, avoided mirrors and something told me they didn't just reflect.

I reached a double door carved with symbols I didn't recognize. Moon phases, maybe. A wolf's eye. And something that looked a hell of a lot like my birthmark, a crescent with a jagged line through it.

The door wasn't locked.

Inside was a library that didn't belong in the twenty-first century. Dark walnut shelves soared to a ceiling dusted in gold stars. The place smelled like old books, older secrets, and power that didn't come from money.

I crossed to the far side and spotted a reading desk. A notebook sat open. Not mine. Not Dominic's handwriting either. I had memorized his sharp, controlled script from years of leaked corporate memos. This was softer, feminine, and familiar.

I picked it up.

Page one: "If you're reading this, you're not safe."

It was my mother's handwriting.

My pulse punched through my neck.

I flipped pages faster. Dates, names, and symbols. There were sketches of wolves, lunar alignments, blood sigils, and something that looked like a ritual involving salt, fire, and the phrase "cut from the moon."

She had known about them, and about him.

The journal stopped mid-sentence.

"As long as she doesn't remember-"

Blank.

I whispered, "What the hell were you hiding from me, Mom?"

"You're not supposed to be in here."

The voice shot through the dark like a bullet.

I turned fast, clutching the journal to my chest.

A woman stepped into the moonlight filtering through the window. Late twenties, elegant, dangerous in a red robe that looked ceremonial and obscene at the same time.

She had Dominic's eyes.

"You're Sierra Lane," she said. "The human he is keeping."

"And you are?"

"Cassandra Vale," she answered. "I was supposed to be his wife."

Of course.

She walked in slow circles around me, her tone silk-smooth but coiled like a whip.

"That book doesn't belong to you."

"It belonged to my mother," I said, spine stiff. "She disappeared when I was ten. This is the first trace I've found in years."

She smirked. "And somehow it ended up in Dominic's private archive? Tell me, how does a broke journalist wander into an Alpha's warpath and survive?"

I didn't answer. She didn't need one.

She already knew.

"You think you're here by accident," she said. "You think you uncovered something. But you're a piece, Sierra, a pawn. And pawns don't win. They bleed."

Before I could speak, the door creaked open.

Dominic walked in like he owned gravity.

"Cassandra," he said, voice low. "Leave us."

She turned to him with a look I couldn't read, part betrayal, part something older.

"She found the journal."

"I know," he said.

"She is dangerous."

"I know that too."

He stepped closer to me and extended his hand. "Come with me."

I didn't take it. I followed, but on my terms. Always on my terms.

He took me through a back corridor, down stone steps into a chamber carved from the earth. Torches lined the walls. No electricity, just flame and silence.

"This is where your mother stayed," he said.

I stopped walking.

"What?"

"Years ago. Before she vanished."

I stared at him. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't know it was her. Not until I saw that journal."

I looked around the room. The bed was bare. The walls were etched with symbols. On the far end, a cracked mirror reflected half a face-mine.

"She was one of them," I whispered.

Dominic nodded. "Not a wolf, but not human either. She was part of the old bloodlines, moon priestesses. Most were hunted out. Your mother hid herself well."

"And me?"

"You're something new," he said. "You don't smell fully human. But you're not wolf either. You're... potential."

I hated how he said it. Like I was a chemical waiting to explode.

"Is that why I'm here?" I asked. "Because of what I might be?"

"You're here because you saw me shift," he said. "But what you are... that's bigger than both of us."

I turned to him. "And what about you, Dominic? What are you?"

He didn't answer with words.

He stepped closer, too close, and I felt it, the thing no one warns you about in bedtime stories. Not fear. Not danger.

Connection.

Primal, inevitable, like my bones remembered him before I was born.

"It's not fate," I said. "I don't believe in that."

"Neither do I," he said. "Which makes this worse."

His hand brushed my jaw. Not soft, not rough, just there.

"You can leave," he whispered. "Right now. Walk away. But if you stay, there's no halfway."

I wanted to tell him off, punch him, kiss him. All at once.

Instead, I asked the only question that mattered.

"What happened to my mother?"

His eyes flickered. For the first time, he looked away.

"She died protecting something."

I nodded. "Then I want to know what it was."

He stepped aside. "Then stay, learn, and survive."

Later that night, I sat alone with the journal again. I flipped to the last page and pressed my fingers against the dried ink.

It shimmered.

No-glowed.

A single word burned into the parchment.

Crux.

I didn't know what it meant.

But the door to my room blew open.

And standing there, not Dominic, not Cassandra, but a man I had never seen before.

Tall, white-blonde hair, his eyes like knives.

He smiled.

"You're late, priestess."