The Lost Pack (Paige) novel Chapter 158

Chapter 158

Jake’s lab smells clean, like antiseptic, now mixed with the fresh coffee I’ve just brewed. Machines hum softly in the background, lights flicker across monitors, and I can hear the faint rush of water running through the filtration tanks that line the far wall. He’s somewhere behind me, muttering to himself as he retests the samples from the creek.

I’ve been here for three hours, staring at data that doesn’t make sense. The readings from the creek are unlike anything I’ve ever seen… pure, balanced, almost self-healing. Water doesn’t do that. Not even water touched by Moon Child energy.

“Paige’s DNA sample would really help,” Jake says finally, not looking up from the machine.

I rub a hand over my face. “I know. She’s been through enough, though. I wanted to wait until she’d had some time to adjust before I asked.”

“Well,” he says, straightening, “if what you’re telling me about her gifts is true, then we can’t wait much longer. I need something to compare the readings to.”

He’s right, of course. Every instinct I have says we’re running out of time. I reach through the mind-link to Ryder.

“I need a favour.”

There’s a pause, then Ryder’s voice, steady but wary. “What kind of favour?”

“I need you to ask Paige if she’d be willing to give us some DNA to test. Just a swab or a hair sample. Nothing invasive.”

“Is it safe?”

“Completely. I just need to rule something out, and it goes no further than this lab. We will even label it

under a different name.”

He pauses again for a moment. “I’ll ask her,” he finally says, sounding reluctant.

Thirty minutes later, the door opens. Paige steps inside with Remy, and the sterile air of the lab seems to

ease around her. She looks tired, but strong. She carries a quiet kind of strength that never asks for

attention.

She’s smaller than most of our females, more delicate in build, and maybe that’s why people still underestimate her. They see her size and think fragile. But standing here, watching her, I know better. There’s nothing fragile about Paige. The power she carries hums just beneath her skin. It’s subtle, but once

you know it’s there, you can’t miss it; it seems far too much for the body that holds it.

“You wanted to see me?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I nod, gesturing toward the workstation. “We wanted to look at your DNA to see if we can identify anything that way and to confirm a few readings.”

She hesitates for only a moment before nodding. “If it helps you figure out what’s happening to me, take what you need.”

Jake hands her a sterile swab and a small vial, talking her through it in that calm, doctor’s voice of his. She follows the instructions without complaint and hands it back, her expression unreadable.

“Thank you,” I say quietly.

She gives a small nod and glances at the machines. “You’ll let me know if you find anything?”

“Of course.”

She smiles faintly and leaves. Remy gives us a single nod before following her out, the door clicking softly

shut behind him.

The moment they’re gone, Jake slots the vial into the machine. “We’ll have preliminary results in about an hour,” he says, typing a command into the system.

“Good. In the meantime, I’m going to go through the old records that were sent over.”

He glances at me. “You really think something in these ancient texts is going to explain this?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I have to try.”

“Okay,” Jake says, pressing a few buttons on the monitor. “Let me know if anything beeps or bursts into flames. I need to go check on Poppy. She’s covering the clinic alone because my assistant decided to

abandon me.”

I glance up. “Nina? I thought she was doing well here. Promising young healer, if I remember rightly.”

He sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “She was. Smart, focused, good with patients. But things changed

after Paige was officially announced as Luna and mated to both Alphas and the Betas.” His tone tightens a

little. “It stirred up a lot of emotions in the pack, not all of them positive.”

“Jealousy?” I ask.

He huffs a quiet laugh. “That, and misplaced ambition. At first, Nina just got a bit of an attitude. Nothing

too bad. But then she turned her attention to me. Flirting. Hanging around late after shifts. It wasn’t

anything over the top, but… I could feel it.”

“And then Poppy came along,” I finish for him.

He grimaces. “Yeah. And you can imagine how well that went down. Nina’s been skipping shifts ever since. Guess watching me and Poppy work side by side was more than her pride could take.”

I lean back, thoughtful. “She’ll come around. She’s got talent, it would be a shame for her to throw that away over something she can’t control. Her pride is probably hurt, but she knows the Moon Goddess is the one that decides these things.”

Jake gives a half-smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You’re probably right. Still, it’s hard to fix what ego breaks.”

“True,” I murmur. “But time has a way of reminding people what really matters.”

He nods, gathering his things. “Let’s hope so. For now, try not to blow up my lab while I’m gone.”

“No promises,” I say dryly, and his laughter follows him out the door.

I move to the other desk, where my laptop is already open. A series of digital images fill the screen, scans sent by one of Josh’s archivists from his pack’s private library. The Book of First Light. The oldest surviving text on celestial beings. I can’t believe I’m even considering this as a possibility, but I’m out of ideas at this point.

The pages are old, discoloured, cracked parchment; the ink faded to near-invisible brown. The lighting in the scans is also not great. But it’s all I have.

I zoom in on one section, squinting at the looping script. It’s written in a mix of Latin and something even older that is apparently a dialect that pre-dates the Moon Goddess era. I recognise a few Latin words and write them down as I go, hoping I can piece enough together. Light, dawn, balance, creation, the list goes

Jake comes back after what feels like hours, leaning over my shoulder. “You’re sure that’s the right section?”

“As sure as I can be,” I sigh. “It’s the only one that mentions dual-energy signatures.”

He hums thoughtfully. “And it says… what exactly?”

“That’s the problem,” I mutter, scrolling slowly. “The translation doesn’t make sense. It keeps referring to a child of two lights, one born from the sun and moon together. Says something about restoring balance.”

Jake frowns. “Poetic nonsense.”

“That’s what I thought too.”

But my gut twists. The more I stare at it, the less like poetry it feels. There’s a drawing at the edge of the

page, faint, barely visible, but when I enhance the contrast, it becomes clearer.

A figure, with her hands raised, palms out, a sun in one, and a crescent moon in the other.

Jake whistles low. “Looks like your ‘nonsense’ had a name.”

I lean closer, tracing the faded inscription beneath the illustration. The letters are warped, smudged with

age, but one word stands out, repeated twice in the text, once beneath the drawing, once near the margin.

“Lunarae,” I whisper.

Jake straightens. “What does it mean?”

“I… don’t know. There’s no direct translation. Lunar is the obvious part.”

For a moment, neither of us speaks. The hum of the machines fills the space between us.

Then, Jake moves to check the monitor. “You might want to see this,” he says quietly.

I turn toward the screen. It glows faintly blue, streams of code and graphs scrolling faster than I can track. To me, it’s just numbers and coloured lines, but Jake goes very still.

“What am I looking at?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer right away. He leans closer, adjusting a few settings, eyes flicking between two graphs displayed side by side.

Finally, he exhales. “Okay… this shouldn’t be possible.”

I step closer, frowning. “Define ‘shouldn’t.””

He gestures to the data. “That top line? That’s baseline human, what we all have. Even shifters fall within a

predictable range. But the second line…” He taps the screen. “That’s new. Completely separate frequency

pattern, but still undeniably hers. No contamination. I double-checked. She’s expressing two bioenergetic

signatures at once.”

I stare at the two lines, pulsing in perfect rhythm. “So what does that mean?”

“It means her DNA is doing something I’ve never seen before.” Jake’s voice drops lower. “It’s… harmonising

opposing energies. One’s reactive, lunar-based if I had to guess. The other’s constant, closer to solar

radiation. They shouldn’t be compatible. They should cancel each other out.”

“But they’re not.”

He nods slowly. “No. They’re coexisting. Perfectly.”

For a long moment, all I can do is stare. “How? I mean, scientifically…”

He laughs. “Scientifically? It doesn’t make sense. This is like trying to fuse fire and ice without either melting or extinguishing the other. Her DNA isn’t fighting the contradiction… it’s using it.”

I turn back to my laptop, where the old manuscript still glows on the screen, with the faded symbols and looping script from The Book of First Light. I scroll to the margin, heart thudding faster.

The text had mentioned balance before, but now… now it feels like it’s staring me in the face.

When sun and moon find harmony within one vessel, the veil shall tremble and be remade.

I whisper the line under my breath, more to myself than to him.

Jake looks over. “What does that mean?”

“I can’t be sure,” I say. “I thought it was an old poem about balance and rebirth. But this…” I gesture between the graphs and the screen. “This is the same thing. The same pattern.”

He steps beside me, scanning the image of the faded page. “We need to run Poppy’s DNA.”

“Jaxon too,” I nod.

Paige’s DNA isn’t just abnormal; if I’m piecing this together correctly, it’s ancient. Balanced in a way no mortal or shifter bloodline ever could be.

Jake’s still staring at the graphs. “If this gets out, Ronnie… if anyone realises what she is…”

“I know,” I drag a hand through my hair. “That’s why we keep this quiet. For now.”

“1

He nods once, grim and certain. “I’ll rerun the tests and encrypt everything. But whatever she is, it’s rewriting the laws we thought we understood.”

My gaze drifts back to the screen, to the twin rhythms pulsing in perfect harmony.

If the texts are right, Paige isn’t just rare. She’s the bridge between forces that were never meant to meet.

The Lunarae, and Goddess help us if the wrong people realise what she really is before we do.