Mateo Santiago novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: The Mark
Mateo did not say my father's name.
"Chela's up," he said instead.
"She's always up at this hour."
I had my fingers on the round patch behind my ear and could not make them move.
"I want to hear someone else say it," I said.
"Then we ask someone who has seen one," he said.
Chela sat alone in the kitchen with a jar lamp, a bowl of pumpkin seeds, and her reading glasses on the end of her nose.
She took one look at my face and put the seeds down.
"Tell me," she said.
Mateo told her plainly.
She stood, wiped her hands on her apron, and took a brass hand lens from the drawer where she kept the thread.
"With your leave, mija," she said.
"Look," I said.
I sat on the bench, turned my head, and held my short hair out of the way.
The lamp hissed, and her breath touched my neck.
Her fingers were warm and very steady.
They stopped moving.
"Come here, Alpha," she said quietly.
Mateo bent beside her, and I felt both of them go still.
"A burn spreads," said Chela.
"It has no edges, and it has no corners."
"This has a corner."
"What's in it?" I said.
"A moon with a bar through the middle," she said, "the size of a lentil, pressed in once, deep, with something hotter than a stove."
"Silver," said Mateo.
"Silver," said Chela, and her voice was not steady anymore.
"I've seen it twice in sixty-three years."
"A boy in Chama, who never shifted again."
"And a girl in Tesuque, who didn't live to twenty."
"It's called a Hush."
She said the word people say the name of a disease.
"An Alpha puts his voice over a young wolf and seals it with the brand, and the wolf goes under," she said.
"It lasts thirteen years."
"Then it wears off at the first Winter Moon after the wearer turns twenty-five."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Mateo Santiago are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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