Chapter 11 · The Seventh Scent

"You want answers?" Noah's voice cut through the silence before I could even catch my breath. "Then we go now. The lab closes at midnight."

I stared at the ring in my palm. Tarnished silver, old claw marks along the band. My mother's ring. Or was it?

"What lab?"

"The one your mother worked in before she died." Noah didn't wait for me to process that. He was already walking, his coat snapping in the wind. "Before someone scrubbed her name off every record in this city."

I should've asked more questions. I should've gone back inside, found Kael, demanded he tell me what the hell my mother had to do with his father and that bloody knife. But Kael wasn't stable right now. He'd barely made it out of that hall without shifting, and I'd felt the moon-ring burn against my skin the whole time, tightening like a noose.

So I followed Noah.

The car ride took twenty minutes.