First Moon (The Koto Chronicles, #1)

by Morse, Jody

  “Fine.” I sighed. “I agree.”

  “Good. I’m glad we were able to come to a compromise.” His lips tilted into a slight smile, and he pretended to zip them. “My lips are sealed from now on.”

  Chapter 15

  “But you said I could take the first human shower,” Hunter protested as a half-naked Chance walked into the bathroom. “Ashton’s already in the upstairs one.”

  “That was before I knew what it looked like, though. And you can turn the handle to the left for hot water, or to the right for cold water. But, I don’t know why anybody would choose cold water,” Chance said, shivering at the thought of it. At home we usually bathed in the streams, or washed out of a bucket. We never had an option of hot water without boiling it first, which we often skipped, because it was just too difficult. If it was cold enough, cold water actually hurt, since our body temperature was naturally so much higher. But, it was something we’d all needed to get used to.

  Hunter’s jaw dropped as he glared at his brother. “You already took a shower, didn’t you?!” he exclaimed.

  “No. I was just testing it out. It’s different,” he said, closing the door and locking it.

  “We’ve already been here for two weeks, and neither of you has taken a shower? Why don’t you stink?” I asked, wrinkling my nose at them.

  “We’ve still been bathing, Skye,” Hunter said, rolling his eyes. “There’s a lake not too far from here. Chance thought it would be weird to shower indoors, but now, he wants to be the first one to do it, even though he promised me that I could go first. Remember when you promised me, Chance?” He asked him through the door as he began pounding on it.

  As Thane came into the room, he said, “Guys. One of you can use Akar’s shower.” He motioned to the master bedroom, which was right next to the downstairs bathroom.

  “But…,” I started to protest, but before I had a chance to say anything, Chance had already pulled the door open.

  “Okay!”

  Hunter grabbed him by the elbow, pulling him back. “Why do you get to use Akar’s bathroom?”

  I knew how private of a person Akar was. He would never let one of the twins use the shower in his bathroom. “Thane, you can’t just let them use Akar’s bathroom. We haven’t even asked him yet,” I said quietly.

  “So? He’s barely ever around. I doubt he’ll even find out. It’s fine. I don’t want to have to listen to this argument every day. Do you?”

  “No,” I agreed. The twins already had plenty of arguments daily as it was.

  I looked up, just as Hunter was holding Chance an arm’s length away and trying to close Akar’s bedroom door.

  “Guys, what’s the difference?” I called over to them, loud enough for them to hear. “A bathroom is a bathroom,” I told them, trying to remind them that they were fighting over something stupid.

  “Akar is Alpha. So, his bathroom is practically a royal bathroom,” Chance replied, looking over at me. Hunter took the distraction to his benefit, and was able to close the door without his brother even noticing.

  I shared a chuckle with Thane. It was the first time in a while that things hadn’t felt completely awkward between us and like we were just best friends again. I knew it was probably just a rare occurrence, though. “I’m sure the bathrooms are exactly the same.” I was glad that Akar wasn’t here to hear them refer to his bathroom as royal. It would make his head even bigger than it already was.

  “Nope!” Hunter called from a distance. I heard the sound of his feet scuffling over the floor, as he ran across the bedroom. Then, from the other side of the closed door, he told us gleefully, “This one has glass doors. Akar’s really been holding out on us.”

  “Glass doors?” Chance asked disappointedly. “Can we draw sticks?”

  “Too late!” Hunter replied, and I heard him scurry over to the bathroom, shutting that door, too. A few moments later, the water turned on, and he yelped. “Cold, cold, cold!”

  “Serves him right,” Chance said with a grin. Satisfied, he turned to his own bathroom.

  I shared another smile with Thane. It looked like he was about to say something when my cell phone blared from its place on the kitchen island. Anxious to see who was calling, I hopped up and rushed over to it. I was surprised to see that the caller ID said it was Amanda. I wasn’t expecting to hear from her, Jenny, or Kristina until school on Monday, where I expected them to give me the cold shoulder or scold me over how abruptly the party had ended.

  Heading upstairs so that Thane wouldn’t overhear my conversation—even though he probably would, anyway—I swiped my finger across the phone’s touch screen and held it to my ear. “Hello?” I asked cautiously, afraid that Amanda was calling me to let me know that she was mad at me.

  “Hey, bitch.”

  “Amanda, I’m so sorry. Please just let me explain,” I pleaded into the phone. I knew that she would be angry with me, but calling me a bitch threw me off-guard. I planned to tell her about how there had been a family emergency, but before I had the chance to offer her any sort of explanation, she laughed on the other end of the line.

  “Skye, you have nothing to worry about! Seriously, the party was a major hit,” Amanda said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “People from school have been calling and texting me all morning saying how much they enjoyed the whole thing. As it turns out, all of the girls from school think your cousins are major hotties—especially the twins.”

  “Really? The twins?” I asked, surprised. Even though they weren’t bad-looking, their lack of maturity made it difficult for me to see them as anything more than a bunch of overgrown children at times. I’d expected all of the girls to think Ashton was the cutest one of my “cousins”, just like the girls back home.

  “Yeah, I guess there’s just something sort of unique about twins,” Amanda said, snapping her gum into the phone. “Everyone thinks they’re, like, mysterious or something.”

  “Oh. I guess that makes sense,” I replied, remembering that twins weren’t that common among humans. If only everyone knew how common twins were in the werewolf world. Almost every pack had at least one set of twins; some packs had even more than that. The reason was because werewolves were much more fertile than humans, since it was in our nature to have as many pups as possible to expand our packs as much as we could.

  “I, however, have my eyes set on another one of your cousins,” she went on. “Ashton is such a hottie. When we were dancing last night, it felt like he was really into me, too.”

  “Oh, I didn’t even notice,” I told her. The truth was, I had been so caught up with dancing with Davis and then in my bedroom talking to Gage that I hadn’t even paid attention to either of them, but I didn’t want her to know that.

  “It was really hot. In fact, everyone seems to think that we’re a couple already, but we’re not. Of course, I’m not actually going to correct everyone on that just yet. If the other girls think we’re an item, then I know for sure that they’ll leave Ashton alone,” Amanda explained. “But I need to know, for sure, that he actually has feelings for me. I mean, I wouldn’t want to tell him that I think he’s cute if he doesn’t feel the same way, you know? Girls aren’t even supposed to be the first to say anything to guys.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” I agreed, even though I really had no clue. All I knew was that she was making the whole dating thing sound really complicated. In the werewolf world, everyone usually knew who they were meant to be with right away, so it didn’t matter who made the first advance. It was actually sort of rare to be in a situation like mine. All of the other girls in my pack had been mated to someone when they made the transformation to werewolf at sixteen years old; some of them even knew before they made the change, because they’d been able to hear their mate’s thoughts.

  “So, Skye, I was wondering if you could maybe ask Ashton if he has feelings for me?” Amanda asked. Even though I couldn’t see her face through the phone, I imagined that her lips had turned pouty on the
other end of the line.

  “Yeah, I can ask him,” I replied. “But the thing about Ashton is that he’s usually really private about his feelings for people. I’m not really sure if I’ll be able to get an answer out of him.”

  “Well, don’t worry. I have a few backup plans in mind if you can’t get him to tell you, but I’ll need you to help me out with them.”

  “What are they?” I questioned, hoping that her backup plans weren’t anything that could get me in trouble again.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet. We’ll just wait and see if Ashton gives you an answer before we move forward with any of the backup plans. Why don’t you try to get it out of him today and give me a call later?”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  “Thanks. Love ya,” Amanda said before hanging up the phone.

  When I went back downstairs, Chance and Hunter were both finished with their showers. They glanced over at me expectantly when I entered the room.

  “Skye? We’re hungry,” Chance whined.

  “Yeah, we were wondering if you could make us breakfast,” Hunter said, more of a statement than a question.

  I raised my eyebrows at them. “Why can’t you guys make your own breakfast?”

  “Because we’re tired. We were up all night, so we don’t feel like it,” Chance said, patting his wet head with a towel.

  Hunter shot him a look before turning back to me. “It’s not that we don’t feel like it. It’s just that you’re such a better cook than us.”

  “Yeah, we always burn everything,” Chance added.

  I rolled my eyes, even though I could feel my own stomach start to growl. “What do you guys want to eat?”

  “Sausage,” Hunter said. “And bacon. Oh, and scrambled eggs, too.”

  “And those things you made us the other day. What were they called? Cake circles?” Chance asked, tapping his chin as he tried to remember the name.

  “Pancakes?” I asked with a laugh.

  His eyes lit up. “Yes, those!”

  “Okay, I’ll make you pancakes, but only under one condition,” I told them.

  “What is it?” Chance asked, just as Hunter said, “We’ll do anything.”

  “I want you to vacuum the whole house. There were so many people here last night and the place is a mess.” I’d noticed that people had tracked leaves into the house and someone had spilled a bowl of popcorn in the living room that they hadn’t even bothered to clean up.

  “Okay,” Hunter agreed with a nod. He turned to Chance. “You can vacuum.”

  His brother narrowed his eyes at him. “Uh, no. You can vacuum.”

  “But I don’t want to vacuum,” Hunter insisted.

  I chuckled to myself. “What happened to you guys fighting over who gets to vacuum first?”

  “I hate vacuuming,” Chance complained.

  “Yeah, it’s the worst,” Hunter agreed.

  “I guess you’ll just need to draw sticks to decide who goes first, then.” I laughed. I knew that the newness of cleaning supplies would wear off quickly.

  Chapter 16

  An hour later, the four of us sat around the round kitchen table munching on our breakfast when Ashton sauntered in the room. His golden blonde hair was a disheveled mess; his tired eyes made it look like he hadn’t slept very much the night before, either.

  “Good morning,” I said cheerfully.

  “Morning,” Ashton replied, as he stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed a plate. He plopped down into a chair across from me and began to pile food onto it. “So, last night was pretty crazy, huh?”

  “Yeah, I was pretty sure that someone was going to need to call the wolf doctor,” Chance said in a singsong voice. “I thought Akar was going to have a heart attack.”

  Ashton glared at him. “You know as well as I do that werewolves can’t even have heart attacks.” Turning his attention to me, he added, “Akar did sound really angry last night, though.”

  “Yep, he did. We heard him yelling at you from all the way outside,” Hunter chimed in. Leaning in closer to me, he asked, “Did he punish you?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m not a child.”

  “No, but you sure act like one sometimes,” a voice said from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and found Akar staring back at me, his lips curved into a slight grin. He grabbed a few pieces of bacon from the platter in front of us and then turned to the guys. “What happened between me and Skye should stay between the two of us. Stop questioning her over it. You’re all too nosey for your own good.”

  “I’m not nosey,” Chance said with a huff.

  “Yeah, you are,” Hunter replied with a laugh. “But that’s okay. I’m nosey, too.”

  “Anyway,” Akar said, already seeming to grow impatient with the twins after only being in the same room as them for a few minutes. “I need to head over to Quick Grocery. I have an interview there this morning. Oh, and I just wanted to let you know that I heard from the Shondi pack last night. They’re ready to try going through initiation again tonight, just as long as there are no more outbursts.” He shot a pointed glare in my direction. “So, I want all of you to meet in the backyard at midnight, alright? And I want you all to be on your best behavior.”

  I nodded. My breakfast suddenly didn’t taste so good anymore. Even though I knew that we needed the Shondi and I wasn’t planning on having any more “outbursts”, as Akar put it, I still got a bad feeling about them.

  I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to accept them as a part of my own pack.

  *

  As Ashton helped me do the dishes from breakfast, I turned to him. “Hey, you know my friend Amanda, right? The one I introduced you to at the party last night?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I know who you mean. What makes you ask?”

  “Well, I know the two of you only just met, but…what do you think of her?” I wasn’t sure how direct I should be about this. It seemed clear that Amanda didn’t want Ashton to think that she liked him yet—not until she found out whether or not he liked her, too. But how could I find that out without telling him that she felt something for him? It was just another reminder of how complicated this whole dating in the human world thing really was.

  Ashton shrugged his shoulders as he dried one of the plates with a dish towel. “I don’t know. She seems nice enough, I guess. Why?”

  “Well, it’s just that I was thinking. The two of you might make a cute couple,” I said, hoping that this reason for asking sounded believable enough.

  Ashton glanced over at me with wide eyes. “Are you serious? You really think I should be with this human girl?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

  He laughed a little bit to himself. “That’s real cute, Skye, but come on. She’s a human.”

  “So?” Remembering the discussion I’d had with Akar the night before about Gage being human, I asked, “Why does everyone on this pack make it seem like humans and werewolves aren’t meant to be together?”

  “Because we’re not,” Ashton said, grabbing another dish from the pile and then scrubbing it with a sponge.

  “I don’t understand how you can know that for sure. Have you ever even tried to have a relationship with a human before?”

  “Obviously not,” he replied. “But I don’t think I ever want to find out, either. Not unless I could hear her thoughts, at least. Otherwise, I just know that it would never last.”

  “How would you know that?” I questioned, knowing that I probably sounded sort of defensive about the whole subject, but I couldn’t help it. I was being completely biased, but only because it was nearly impossible for me to remove my own feelings from the situation. I was being biased, but I couldn’t help it; I hated that everyone around me seemed to think it was impossible that Gage and I could work out, even though I did have hope for the two of us.

  “The chances of a human being one of our mates is really slim, Skye,” Ashton said, meeting my eyes. “And even if we
wanted to be selfish enough to bite a human and force them into this life of immortality just to see if it’s possible that they could be our one true mate, it means something much bigger than that. Being with a human—or at least a human whose thoughts you can’t hear before you turn them—means that you’re wasting time. Because, chances are, your real mate is out there waiting to find you. It’s better not to keep them waiting, just because a human seems tempting.”

  I sighed. I had a feeling that he wasn’t going to budge on the way he felt about this, which only meant one thing: Amanda would want to move onto her backup plan.

  *

  “What do you mean he doesn’t want to be in a relationship right now?” Amanda asked into the phone, sounding completely horrified by the news I’d given her.

  I thought of the best excuse that I could come up with. “I don’t know. He says he’s just really busy lately. He doesn’t have time for anyone.”

  She scoffed. “Well, that’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard of. Every guy who goes to our school has time for me. It sounds like an excuse if I’ve ever heard one.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. Deciding that it might add some realism to the story I was feeding her, I added a little extra depth. “There’s also this girl back home who he was really into,” I lied, remembering Lucia. “I think he just really misses her a lot.”

  “Well, he should know that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else,” Amanda said, the frustration obvious in her voice. She sighed loudly. “Don’t worry, Skye. I have a plan. Well, I have a few plans, actually. Do you think you can hang out with me and the girls tonight so we can start putting it into place?”

  I hesitated, knowing that it was probably wrong to help her with this plan of hers at all. But, at the same time, Amanda was my friend. Even though we’d had the party at my place so that I could meet people, not a single person who I’d given my phone number to the night before had called me or sent me a text message. And, truthfully, I didn’t want to spend my entire Saturday in the house with the guys. I needed to get out and live a little, or I was going to go insane.