The Witch and the Wolf Pack
Book Eight
Moonlight Whispers
by
K.R. Alexander
Copyright © 2019 K.R. Alexander
kralexander.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Dear Moonlight Pack
Chapter 1
I watched dark clouds grow pale through the Jeep’s wet windows. Storm gray, soft gray, white, then, just there, above the distant peaks of Snowdon, a strip of shining, radiant light. Another minute … any time now…
A single warming sunbeam broke through to bridge the gap between earth and sky, touching down in the fields and woods of the lowland we’d just driven up from. I imagined that ray embracing the camper trailer that we’d left behind for this trip into the territory of the Traeth Pack—Welsh shifters for whom we had awkward questions. Wolves who may or may not want us dead. I wished we were back at the trailer instead, curled up together in the sun.
This mental picture overrode even natural beauty in lush greens and rolling landscapes of the national park. Nothing could be better right now: just the seven of us, the sunlight, the outdoors. It almost made me smile.
Yet, I didn’t smile. My nerves were too stretched, pulse too quick, stomach too tight. I’d kept the nausea at bay this morning. In fact, with crystalized ginger in my mouth, I was pretty sure I would have been feeling fine if not for fear that tangled my insides.
The silver Jeep Wrangler sat parked in an ancient farmyard, a couple inches deep in mud. It had poured rain all night while my whole pack of six had remained in the trailer with me, warm and companionable. Down to a drizzle at dawn, now all still, the heavens gentle, the first sign of returning sunlight reaching us on this early September day which would soon be steaming.
The farmyard itself was no longer part of a farm. At least, it didn’t seem to be. There were no animals in sight, sound, or smell—not even a chicken. No farm vehicles either, and most of the outbuildings were crumbled, some to the extent of roofs caving in. A couple of these buildings, plus stone farmhouse, looked habitable. But were they inhabited?
We’d seen no sign of life since pulling up. None at all since leaving the village of Rywnish behind and passing a few sheep in a field to drive up this long, private road.
At last we’d reached a spot as lonely as any setting for a horror flick in which the car breaks down and the phone won’t work.
This was not scaring me. The Jeep was fine. So was my phone. Anyway, I had plenty of protection. What scared me was this whole splitting up thing and the fact that, once again, I could see no one outside.
Isaac, Zar, Andrew, and Jason had climbed out into that mud in their motorcycle boots and walked around the yard together, alert, sniffing, knocking first on the farmhouse door, then checking the old barn. They’d been met by nothing. No one home. Or no one wanting to be caught at home.
Despite being in skin, Jason and Andrew had sniffed the doorknob and Jason pressed his nose to a corner of window glass—as if to detect if someone was cooking inside.
They’d stopped together on a slate walkway after checking around the place, talking quietly so I could hardly hear even the murmur of their voices with the two back seat windows cracked an inch so they wouldn’t steam up and we could listen. Then, in agreement, they’d nodded back to the Jeep as if in reassurance and walked away. Out of the yard and around the house. Out of sight.
When I’d agreed to stay in the vehicle, I hadn’t meant “And you all go wander off wherever.” They didn’t want me along—concerned the Traeths could be hostile to a human even if they weren’t otherwise. And, if they were hostile anyway, it came to the same thing: keeping me safe. But what about safety in numbers? What about the strength of the pack? And what about magic? If they needed it, I could do some protecting myself.
I watched clouds until a second, then third sunbeam broke through, each distinct, like a postcard—a travel brochure of Snowdonia National Park. Maybe on that brochure they could Photoshop out this wreck of a farm and put in, say, a castle.
Even from this splendor, I shut my eyes, the better to listen.
Pant, pant, pant in my ear.
I looked around. “Shhh.”
Kage shut his mouth. Apparently hearing nothing, he let his jaws part once more, keeping his tongue inside this time on soft panting while saliva pooled down his lower incisors and black lip instead of being able to drip off his tongue. He swallowed and kept panting.
I reached over my shoulder to twist my fingers into his luxurious ruff. “Sorry.” Keeping my voice a whisper and not elaborating.
In the far back of the Jeep, also watching out the windows, Jed sat stiffly upright and vigilant, panting in the same quiet way.
Kage’s Jeep had been as freezing as the morning when we’d all piled in to drive up here. Andrew and I—and everyone in skin—had been so cold we’d run the heat. Just enough time to make the inside nice and toasty. Our two furry companions had not been impressed by the heating system. Now they were steaming up the windows after all.
I had the keys but couldn’t reach to turn them in the ignition far enough to roll the windows down another inch or two. I sat on the back bench seats with Kage. Anyway, I’d said I wouldn’t. If we were attacked by wolves up here, we didn’t want them slamming their heads through an open window like Cujo.
We waited, watched, listened.
Fogging of the window was beginning to obscure my vision. More sunlight started to break through, lacing the green valley like a watercolor painting.
Saliva dripped onto the shoulder of my light jacket: tup … tup…
I looked around again.
Kage swallowed and licked his nose. He shifted on the seat, easing his weight from right to left, still sitting close beside and behind me. He lowered his head so his ears were not touching the Jeep’s ceiling—and returned to panting.
Still nothing.
They should have walked back around by now. They’d had enough time to circle the farmhouse and gardens at a leisurely pace several times.
I reached for the door handle.
&n
bsp; Kage “grabbed” my arm, hooking my elbow joint with his massive paw. Jed also looked around. Both wolves gave me what I can best describe as stern looks.
“Just a crack for the air,” I said under my breath. “We need the windows to clear. It might help to hear also.”
I carefully opened the door an inch to the cool morning, keeping a tight hold on it.
They sniffed. You’d think the air coming in that way smelled different than air from the top of the window. Did it? The door air lower—earth and mud? The window air more drifting from the hills?
Still, we waited.
Sunbeams faded as light began to break through in earnest.
One thing we had not discussed about this splitting up situation which I’d been opposed to from the start: what if they didn’t come back?
No … I was getting carried away. It felt like a long time trapped in the Jeep—a helpless, worrying bystander, nerves jangling, terrified we’d just walked into the territory of murderers and done exactly what we shouldn’t: divide our pack. But it had only been five minutes since my last sight of them. They would be walking around the buildings and beyond, maybe checking something out, and, if anything came at them, there would be noise. Certainly a noise the wolves could hear, even if I could not.
Deep breath. Yet I couldn’t. My palms were beginning to sweat, though I was not hot. Any breath seemed like a lot to ask just now—forget deep ones.
This window had mostly cleared. Still, I held the door open a tiny bit.
Kage’s white paw remained resting on my purple jacket. All three of us faced that door.
When the noise came, though, I didn’t hear it. I knew only because both wolves sprang to their four paws, filling the bench seat and the far back, hackles bristling. Their eyes were locked toward the farmhouse. Kage gave a whisper of a growl. Neither were panting anymore.
We all froze. Their ears twitched, focused.
A breathless hush, then Kage stiffened, leaning forward.
Now I also heard something.
Chapter 2
Raised voices sounded from beyond the farmhouse. Perhaps not shouts of pain or outrage, but someone was upset. I couldn’t tell whose voices they were, much less what was said.
I pushed the door open another couple inches, heart in my throat.
We were ready to back them up if they were in trouble. Was this trouble? Or had Andrew tripped someone into a mud pit? No, he wouldn’t get carried away like that in a situation so potentially volatile. Were they shouting to someone? Saw someone in the distance? Not very loud for that or I’d have been able to decipher more.
A lull, at least to my ears. I leaned forward, knuckles white as I clutched the door.
Something flashed past the glass. I jumped. Then…
Only barn swallows.
Another yell reached me, clearer, louder, an angry cry that might have been, “Trespassers!” Or, “Kill them!” Or, “Daft sods!” I couldn’t tell. The words were in Lucannis—and the voice was female.
I pushed open the door.
Jed growled, leaning over the seat backs in my face.
Kage shoved past me, himself leaning into the doorway, head and mane out in the diffuse white light, nostrils quivering.
I thought he would leap into the mud. Instead, he stopped like that, forepaws on the edge of the seat, his barrel ribs in my face, woolly mammoth coat smothering me.
I shoved an elbow into his side and mashed down the fur. “Go on.”
He didn’t budge, only listening.
If there was a fight happening, surely Kage and Jed would know it. That was just the sort of trouble we were standing by to help with in case of emergency. Exactly why these two were in this form. As long as they didn’t jump out, did it mean they thought our pack was okay, or were they just trying to watch over me?
I shut my eyes, grabbing Kage’s fur again, and tunneled into magic of air and earth. It was not easy to scry under stressful conditions and without reaching any sort of trance state. I found I could do it because of the subjects, however. Isaac, Zar, Andrew, and Jason were so close—not by distance, but in personal, emotional, spiritual connection—I could follow them, even if very poorly.
With my heart pounding, grabbing at the magic as if on my way out of a burning building, opening my third eye revealed pieces—jumping images as I saw one, then the other, then from their eyes in quick snatches. Like seeing a room from fragments of broken mirror.
They were out well beyond the house: returning to it, backing away. A door stood open in the grass, in the wall, in the … something. There was a door in the ground, or a door in a structure bursting up from the ground. There were people there. People in the doorway that opened upward into the sky. People beyond the doorway, down in the dark, unable to see the sky.
Isaac was talking, soft and steady in Lucannis. Andrew backed away. Zar’s hands were up at waist-height. Jason spoke louder and quicker than Isaac, pointing. He was asking questions. A female shouted at them.
Smell of mold, dark caverns and muddy banks. A smell of … swamps?
In fresh panic, I leapt from the Jeep, taking Kage so by surprise I slung him out with me as I crashed into him. Launched from the seat, he threw out his paws and splashed into the mud. My trail shoes and jeans were splattered along with his fluffy white paws. He snarled as he landed, prepared to face something that he was clued into by my rush of fear. Behind, Jed leapt into the seat, ready to bound after us.
Then I understood. Just like waking from a dream of a spider: one blinding moment of thrashing at it, leaping almost out of bed, turning on the light. Then knowing. It wasn’t a spider. It was a dream. It wasn’t a swamp. It was a cellar.
“They’re hiding,” I gasped. “They think we’re the ones who have come to kill them. They’re in a root cellar out back.”
As I spoke, Andrew came around the corner of the stone house, shaking his head. He scowled when he saw us. “Bloody hell—what are you doing letting her traipse around out here, mate? Get back in there.” Flapping his hand at us.
Zar hurried after him. “Let’s go. Cass? What—?”
“Zar, we need to talk to them.” I didn’t get back in.
“We just saw them,” Zar started.
“Hardly as if the buggers are sweeping off the front step for us,” Andrew said. “Go on. They just want us off their territory and Isaac said we’d go.”
“They were trying to hide, Cass. But we’ve cornered them. They didn’t mean us any harm. It’s spooked them—us showing up after Peter came through asking questions.”
“There’s more of a reason than that,” I said. “That’s what Jason’s asking them, isn’t it?”
Isaac, with Jason following, came into sight around the slate path beside the house. They were arguing.
“Yeah,” Andrew said. “He said we wanted to talk, and why did they all have their tails tucked and hackles up? Only they won’t talk.”
“You didn’t try very hard.” I turned my attention to Isaac, who’d clearly been working to defuse, but not to gain information.
“We have to go,” he said, catching my eye. “What are you doing?”
“I need to talk to them.”
“What? No, Cassia. They have wolves in fur and they’re ready to fight if they catch scent of us again. Let’s leave them be. They’re not hunting us.”
“No, but someone’s hunting them.”
Everyone looked at me.
“Thank you,” Jason said. “That’s what I asked about. Peter told Diana they claimed to know nothing about this. Not predator or prey, just going about their normal lives. Now we show up and they’re terrified? Hiding, threatening us?”
“Because, in the few days since Peter came through,” I said, “they’ve found out they have something to be afraid of.”
“Why else?” Jason nodded. “But if we scarper now we’re not going to find out what they know.”
“Only they won’t talk,” Zar said. “And they’re scared, Cass.
The most dangerous and unpredictable predator.”
“We can talk. We just don’t push.” I started through the mud, taking long steps for the driest patches to reach the also muddy slate walkway.
“Wait—” Isaac moved to block me. “They’re content to let us go. That could change. If you want us to speak to them again, we’ll try, but you wait here.”
I understood he was concerned, yet I also felt a sense of urgency as I wondered if this pack might indeed be mustering themselves for more direct action to drive invaders away.
I dodged Isaac by cutting through a cluster of feeble shrubbery, then across soggy grass. Getting near the house, I could smell it also: like a cross between a kennel and a butcher’s shop. Flies buzzed around the window sills. I avoided the temptation to peep in through grungy glass.
With Jason right beside me and Zar trying to catch my hand, I hurried around to the back of the house.
Isaac also rushed after me. Kage reached me first, but not to block. Head up, ears pricked forward—aggressively—he marched at my left side through the wet grass—which helped to clean his paws.
“Cassia—” Zar and Isaac scrambled after.
I just caught Andrew’s muttering about who around here needed a leash—“lead” to them—then stepped out to the uphill slope of the backyard and empty, overgrown pastures.
Dispersing beams of sunlight had begun to reach this gentle slope, an inset stone archway projecting out enough that the double doors were not flush with the ground but rose up at an angle. They stood wide now, both flapped back against the stone supports. At the dark interior, two gray wolves stood with all four paws still inside.
The wolves were lean, scruffy and mottled in appearance, gray and tawny above pale cheeks and underparts. One had a chunk missing from the base of his ear. They’d been merely standing, listening. Now they bristled, teeth flashing in the new light, yellow eyes blazing. They glared, not at me, but at Kage, who gazed back imperiously.
Jason, in balance, held up his hands in a placating gesture as a female voice—hoarse and bitter—barked out something in Lucannis. It didn’t take much to guess at the meaning. Something along the lines of, “We told you to get lost!”
Before Jason could answer, I had the leather bracelet unbuckled from my wrist. I hadn’t meant to, yet it seemed as if I’d known all along.
Moonlight Whispers: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 8) Page 1