My Fated Mate Can Have Her

Chapter 274: Her Family’s Name

Violet

The private archive was quiet, the crystal lamps casting their steady glow across the towering shelves.

Rowan had more time on his hands today, and he had offered to help me search through the records. I had accepted gratefully, though a part of me was nervous about what we might find.

Or what we might not find.

I had been coming here for even more days now, slowly working my way through the Lycan documents. The customs, the traditions, the fragments of a culture that had been nearly erased from existence. It was beautiful and heartbreaking in equal measure.

But I still hadn’t found what I was looking for.

The pull. The strange tug that had been guiding me since I first felt it. Nothing in these records explained it.

Neither did I also find the engraving from my pendant in the documents I had gone through.

If this was the usual brand of their civilisation, it was ought to have been all over the documents.

I slowly walked up to Rowan, reaching into the collar of my shirt to pull out my grandmother’s pendant.

The silver chain was warm from resting against my skin. The pendant itself caught the light, its intricate symbol glinting faintly.

"I should have brought this to your attention earlier. Now I just feel silly. My grandmother gave me this, but I haven’t been able to find anything like this in any of the documents."

Rowan looked up from the document he had been reading, his eyes immediately fixing on the pendant in my hand.

His expression shifted.

"That symbol," he said slowly, rising from his chair. "It looks familiar... I didn’t know you had this."

He crossed the distance between us, his gaze never leaving the pendant. When he reached me, he took it gently from my fingers, turning it over in his palm.

His brow furrowed. "I really am surprised I haven’t seen it on you before."

"I..." I hesitated, guilt twisting in my stomach. "I’ve been keeping it hidden. Kael told me I should. He said people might recognize it, and that it could put me in danger."

Something flickered in Rowan’s expression at the mention of Kael’s name. A tightening of his jaw, a brief shadow in his eyes.

I felt a bit sad for bringing him up in front of Rowan, but he didn’t comment on it.

"You should have shown me earlier," he said instead, his voice carefully neutral. "I might have been able to help you find answers sooner."

The frustration I felt was directed entirely at myself. He was right. I should have trusted him with this from the beginning.

"I’m sorry," I said quietly. "I should have."

Rowan shook his head, already moving toward one of the older shelves. "Don’t worry. We’ll find what we’re looking for now."

He scanned the shelves with practiced efficiency, his fingers trailing along the spines of books and counting strangely through large and small scrolls until he found what he was searching for. He pulled out a large scroll, thick and heavy, and carried it to one of the wider tables.

When he spread it out, I stared.

The scroll unfurled from top to bottom, not side to side like the ones I had seen, and it was long. It rolled out across the entire length of the table and kept going, cascading over the edge like a waterfall of parchment.

"What is this?" I breathed.

Rowan’s expression was a bit serious. "This is one of the things my ancestors used to track down Lycans during the hunts. It contains the insignia of every major Lycan household that was known at the time."

My stomach turned.

The wolves back then had really been that thorough in getting rid of Lycans?

I felt uncomfortable.

"They were thorough," Rowan said quietly, and there was no pride in his voice. Only a heavy resignation. "They documented everything."

I swallowed hard and stepped closer to the table.

"I thought..." I hesitated, trying to remember what Kael had told me. "I thought the pendant was a universal symbol. Something all Lycans shared."

"It’s not. Not necessarily." Rowan shook his head. "Each household had its own insignia. Its own crest. This—" He gestured at the scroll. "This is a catalogue of all of them. The ones they could document at least."

We began to search together.

Rowan went through each line and section and I leaned in beside him, also scanning the symbols. There were dozens of them, a little over a hundred, and each one was slightly different, representing families that no longer existed.

It was overwhelming, and I had to force myself to keep looking even as it felt painful to do so.

Why had the wolves been so cruel?

What for?

Because a race was stronger than they were?

I pushed the thought aside to focus on the present, and at times, I found myself trying to make sense of what the symbols would have meant. They were all similar patterns of the moon and sun joined together with different patterns and positions.

Then I saw it.

"There."

My voice came out strangled.

Rowan stopped, following my gaze.

The symbol on the scroll was identical to the one on my pendant. The same intricate lines, the same notches and curves. Everything.

Beside it, in faded ink, was a description.

The Rector Household.

I stared at it, my heart pounding.

Rector.

That was my family’s name. My real family’s name.

"The Rector Household," Rowan murmured, his brow furrowing. "I don’t... I don’t recall reading much about them."

He straightened, his expression thoughtful.

"They weren’t one of the larger houses," he continued slowly. "Not as well-documented as some of the others. But I am surprised I haven’t come across more information on them."

He turned to me, something curious in his gaze.

"Your grandmother gave you this pendant?"

I slowly nodded.

"Did she ever tell you about where she could have possibly gotten it? A family member would have passed it down to her. Had she ever mentioned the name?"

"No." The word came out quieter than I intended. "She never... she never told me about it in detail."

She had said a lot, but never in precise detail.

My parents had never let me have the family name, and my grandmother, who had pressed this pendant into my hands and told me I had a far better name than the one my parents ought to have given me.