Moon Child: A PNR Shifter Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 2)

by Serena Akeroyd

  “Shifters heal faster—”

  “I know we do,” he said on a sigh, his tongue fluttering around the bud, which was so much darker and, I guess the word was ‘fuller’ than it had been before Knight.

  My whole body had changed during pregnancy, and it was completely different than the first time when I’d been a teenager.

  Even though I’d shed the baby weight quite quickly, my shape was just different now. I was actually happy with the changes, and I knew my men were too, if the way they looked at me was anything to go by.

  In all honesty, I knew this last week was going to be the hardest. I’d already noticed that the longer this milk moon went on, the more Ethan and Austin bickered, and Eli was walking around with a scowl most of the time.

  Apparently, sex cheered my men up!

  Who’d a thunk it?

  My lips curved at the thought, until they all grumbled in my head, telling me I’d projected my amusement onto them.

  Well, I couldn’t help it.

  It was their silly tradition, not mine. The second I’d been healed, I’d been ready to ride them, but nope. They wouldn’t have it.

  I’d even thought they were joking at first, until I’d learned they weren’t.

  That they were being very, very serious.

  Even now, all these weeks later, I felt like it was a practical joke just waiting to get to the punch line.

  With each week that passed, I had an internal countdown that was leading me toward the day I could finally get laid.

  That was going to be a great day.

  As Eli’s tongue drifted over my belly, everything south clenched, as I knew he was going for gold.

  The old me would have considered this sex. I’d blown them so often that it was a wonder I hadn’t managed to dislocate my jaw, and I’d had them eat me out more times than if I was a banquet.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  It was never enough, because nothing compared to the feel of them coming inside me, to the way the knot bound us together.

  There was a peculiar emptiness inside me whenever I climaxed now, and I knew they found it equally as frustrating to have to hump the air as they came when I sucked them off because I could never swallow their seed thanks to the knot.

  I’d even begun watching it form and had been flabbergasted by the sight of it—it had stunned me more than seeing them shift for the first time.

  It wasn’t like a knot. It had nothing nautical or scout-like about it. The tip grew wider, engorging to the point of pain, and the mushroom glans seemed to curl up, almost as if it was creating a seal.

  Having seen it, having heard tales of Maggie May being orally knotted to her husband’s dick for hours on end when they’d had a misplaced experiment with Viagra a few years back, no way was I going to risk it.

  Which, of course, meant all their lovely cum was going to waste.

  Tragic.

  Sure, they could jack off into my mouth, but it wasn’t the same. Knowing that you might inadvertently be cleaved to someone’s penis, even if you loved the man to whom the penis was attached, was a definite buzzkill.

  I pouted at the thought, ignored their snickers to focus on Eli’s tongue as he started to lick my clit. It wasn’t the best moment to think about my kid, but I sensed that one of them had put him in his bassinet at the foot of the bed, so I knew I could relax and get jiggy with it.

  I sighed, loving the delicate lapping motions as I wriggled my hips, trying to get comfortable, trying to find my mojo. Just as he did. The perfect spot.

  Ugh. You know which one I meant.

  Where suddenly, it wasn’t like he was just gnawing at you, but when he was doing shit right.

  I moaned, long and low, my back arching as he started to flick my clit hard and fast, when he alternated between sucking down on it and lapping from underneath, and generally driving me crazy. I began humping the bed, uncaring as I jerked my pussy into his face, because each time I did so, it triggered a wave of sensation that had me feeling like my mind was caving in.

  I growled, long and low, my she-wolf getting in on the business, and when their wolves rumbled back at me, I wanted to howl with the power within this bedroom, atop this bed.

  It whispered through the room, leaking from us all, staining the air with its power.

  It was like the best kind of aromatherapy because tomorrow, I’d still be able to smell it.

  Which was an incredible thing.

  Every time I did? It was a reminder of how strong we were as a unit, and I felt like it imbued these walls with a power that was very much Mother-blessed.

  My thoughts drifted, as thoughts were want to do when you had a man going down on you and that man was incredibly talented with his tongue. I felt my eyelids start to flicker as he slipped a finger into me, rocking it back and forth before hitching it inside me, rubbing the front wall of my pussy, which was craving the thick fullness of his dick.

  The emptiness inside me made me want to wail, but I could be a grown up about this.

  I moaned when Ethan was suddenly there, his dick between my tits. As he grabbed my admittedly massive boobs—goddamn you pregnancy, as if I hadn’t already been hefting around enough weight—he used them to create a tunnel.

  To someone else, I knew what happened next would probably have been odd. But it was, if anything, oddly natural. Austin came to me, kissing me, even as his brother’s cock was incredibly close to where our mouths joined. But it wasn’t about dicks. Wasn’t about crossing incestuous swords.

  It was about me.

  Fuck.

  I loved that.

  It always blew my mind too.

  It was all about me.

  And that was what did it. That was what had me keening into Austin’s mouth as his tongue did the tango with mine, as he primed me and pumped me, nipped at my lips, and tangled our tongues while Eli rode out my orgasm, and Austin stole my breath.

  I could feel Ethan’s dick hardening, and I could sense it changing, physiologically, as his cock started to prepare for the knot, so when his cum splashed onto my throat, I wasn’t unprepared.

  Austin might have been if he got caught in the spray, but he didn’t say anything. Just carried on kissing me. Just carried on riding me through another wave of delight that was born of intimacy and not pleasure.

  I felt Ethan begin rubbing his seed into my tits, and because my boobs were so sensitive right now, the move had me twitching around like I’d been electrocuted. Which, admittedly, didn’t sound all that great, but trust me, it was.

  It was like little sparks were dashing around my nerve endings, blinking to life, popping into being in a way that made me grateful Eli’s fingers had somehow doubled inside me.

  Not by magic, just by him slipping two more in.

  The feeling of fullness was enough to set me off again. I widened my legs some more as Ethan continued rubbing his cum into my skin like it was a cream, and the scent was powerful, like a fucking drug. I could feel it tripping all my wires, slamming into my system with the strength of a derailed freight train.

  As Eli fucked me harder with his fingers, as Austin stole my breath, and as Ethan intoxicated me, I shot my lady wad and nearly exploded with the strength of my response.

  Maybe they weren’t surprised when I passed out, but I was. Of course, I wasn’t so happy about where I woke up.

  That goddamn clearing.

  I moaned in distress when all those lovely pheromones and hormones and the dazed moments of before, as I experienced a pleasure so acute it was addictive, disappeared like they’d never existed.

  I would’ve pouted, but there was nothing to pout about here. There was something to be scared of.

  The cackle came. Louder than ever. Closer than ever. My skin prickled with fear, the gooseflesh standing up and surging into life as I tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

  But like always, I didn’t understand.

  I was standing in a kind of dazed twilight that reminded me of the r
ealm where I’d claimed my mates. Only it was a little bleaker.

  I was surrounded by trees still, and something that made me think there was water nearby. Maybe my she-wolf could scent water, or her ears were picking up on something that my human mind couldn’t focus on, not when that damn animal kept on cackling the way it was.

  It hit me on a primordial level. Each. And. Every. Time.

  It was like it was hunting me, taunting me into running, but if I did that, if I ran, I knew that was it. It was the end of me.

  I just knew it like I knew my name was Sabina.

  In my world, I was sure of only three things—my name, who my mates were, and who my baby was.

  Baby!

  I peered at my stomach which, until now, had shown no signs of a baby bump. But when I looked down, I saw the deep red tracks, the slight pooch of a belly that had borne the brunt of carrying a baby to full term.

  The notion resonated in a way that very little could.

  It made me aware of the fact that this was a dream. Lucid, nevertheless, still occurring while I was asleep.

  It made me realize that I could see things from a different perspective. The dreams of before had been a portent. Telling me that what I was dreaming would take place after I’d given birth.

  Knight was alive and well. And the dream was still happening, still on repeat, which made me think that the timeline had shifted.

  I’d been so scared before that my lack of a baby bump meant that I was going to lose Knight, but I realized each time I’d been here before, I’d been clothed.

  Now I wasn’t.

  Now I was naked.

  And because of that, it was as simple as breathing to shift.

  I had no idea why I’d stayed like a human in my dreams before, but this time, I felt no compunction in shifting. Maybe it was the lack of the bow and arrow that was another prompt, or maybe it was just time—the time for action.

  The time for dream to become reality.

  As my she-wolf pounced into being, she did what I was too cautious to do. In my human skin, I stayed in the clearing, I remained watchful, waiting on the creature to come to me.

  But in this instance, I didn’t. I leaped into action, darting through the forest toward that horrendous cackle which, now, had shifted slightly in this form.

  My body didn’t react with unnatural fear. I wasn’t scared of anything in this skin. Or at least, very little. I was strong as a she-wolf, powerful. She would kill for me, protect and defend me in ways I would never think to as a human.

  And this beast recognized the sound.

  Another animal.

  A very normal creature who was also a Mother’s child.

  I didn’t know what it was until I saw it, and even then, it wasn’t like anything I’d seen on the nature documentaries. But then, of course, that made sense. Shifter wolves were a lot bigger than naturals, and it only figured that shifter hyenas would be the same too.

  All I knew was that I scented the Mother on the animal, who, at the sight of me, paused, his eyes darting from left to right, which made me wonder if it was going to attack or run away.

  Now it had seen me, the cackle had died off, which told me it was scared.

  Well, good!

  I was damn glad about that.

  For months, that noise had been haunting me, making every night’s sleep restless, but tonight, I’d vanquished it, and I decided to vanquish the fucking beast who’d tormented me for what felt like far too long.

  I dove into action, running after the beast, but when I leaped high, pouncing up into the moonlit sky so that I could take it down, I heard a scream. I remembered it from when I was young. From when Lara had yelled bloody murder after father had slapped her, and the scream entwined with sobs I just knew belonged to her too, and like that, I was torn from my dream and back into my bedroom.

  My mates were asleep, dozing around me. Eli was curled up between my legs, which would have been hilarious if he wasn’t so fucking big. Austin’s face was tucked into my shoulder, and Ethan slept on the side where Eli usually rested.

  I sat up though, wide awake and jarring them into the same state as I twisted around, needing to act.

  All day, I’d been trying my mom’s number, but she’d been unresponsive.

  I just knew she’d answer now.

  How I knew, I wasn’t sure, but I just knew it.

  Lara needed me. I felt that so keenly it was an ache in my chest.

  My mates jerked into wakefulness when I started moving, and they watched me dopily, not even asking any questions as I scrambled to get my cell from the many wireless chargers on the nightstand.

  As I sought out the number, a number to a person I’d never imagined wanting to call again, a number that I’d rang a dozen times today, I was actually relieved when I heard a rasped, “Who is this, and why won’t you stop phoning me?”

  Her voice hadn’t changed in all these years.

  That was my first thought.

  It was soft and whimsical, a little lyrical. She’d told the best bedtime stories, and when she’d sung lullabies for us, it had been so easy to drift off to sleep, to ignore the sounds of a new pitch where we’d pulled up to park for however long we could stay before we moved on, and to just fall into a restful slumber.

  But she was weak.

  Always had been.

  She’d never protected us from our father’s wrath, had never stopped him from slapping us. His favorite move had been to backhand us, just a gentle tap, but because Draga Krasowski was a brick shithouse of a man, it was enough to send us flying as we went soaring onto the floor.

  Jana had even earned herself a scar on her lip where he’d split it open with his signet ring. I remembered that particular occasion so well, because her gift? An ability to get small glimpses of the future. A gift he’d tried to monetize. That one particular time, when he’d asked her to pick a winner of a football game and she’d messed up, he’d slapped her.

  The memories flooded me, flashing me back to a time that I didn’t necessarily want to forget, because I didn’t believe in looking back and forgetting everything. If you did that, you learned nothing from past mistakes.

  Because I knew she was getting impatient, I sucked in a breath, knowing I had to shove aside past differences and do this to get to Lara, to help Lara… to help my baby sister who needed me, I whispered, “Mama, it’s me.”

  Lara

  When the creature slammed into my door, I felt sure I was a goner.

  In fact, I’d never been surer of anything in my life.

  Aside from the fact that I was going crazy, of course.

  But I was pretty sure I’d been going crazy since I was a kid. Since I’d first started sensing people’s feelings, reading things into them that no empath should be able to read.

  When I’d started seeing things inside them? I’d known I was losing my mind, but I’d hidden that talent, that so-called gift, and had played at being normal.

  I knew what psychiatric hospitals looked like. I’d been to one once when I was a kid, when I’d been hospitalized after Jana’s death, which came so quickly after Sabina’s abandonment when she’d run away from home then died soon after, and it hadn’t been pretty.

  In fact, it had been horrendous, and I’d made myself a promise that I’d do everything in my power to stop that from happening ever again.

  So to hear my sister’s voice in conjunction with the rattling door was more bewildering than I could have imagined.

  To hear the woman who I thought was dead talking to me on the phone, telling me shit about our mom that no one except for us kids could know? Even worse.

  I had to believe, but even as I started to, my fear got tangled up in it, and I had to deal with the fact that the hyena was trying to break down my fucking door.

  Until, of course, it wasn’t.

  Until the noise stopped and there was a heavy slump, a loud bang as if—

  My brow puckered as all went silent. And I meant silent.r />
  I lived in the forest for a reason—to get peace and quiet. Out here, there were very few people, and even if there were, they were hunters who were traipsing in and around the forests a few times on the weekend. I’d purposely picked a town that was quiet, with a forest surrounding it that was large and plenty, and wasn’t on the tourist trail.

  I’d picked somewhere where I could enjoy a tranquility that wasn’t often found in the real world.

  I went to Kinsdale every week to pick up my groceries, but that was where things had gone wrong this weekend.

  That was where everything had changed.

  I’d learned that maybe I wasn’t so crazy after all.

  Maybe the creatures, the spirits, I saw in others weren’t key signs that I was deranged.

  Maybe they were people like the hyena out on my front porch. Maybe they were able to turn from an animal into a human and back again—

  If there was more to the world than I ever knew, maybe I wasn’t insane.

  The thought was enough to trigger a panic attack.

  For so fucking long, I’d thought I was losing my mind, I’d thought I was losing my sense of self. I’d preserved it for years by living in the backend of nowhere, by keeping to myself, by staying alone, but I was, I had no shame in admitting, lonely.

  I missed people. I missed doing normal things.

  I missed the cinema and popcorn that was way too expensive for what it was, but that never tasted as good elsewhere.

  Kali Sara, I missed the taste of a burger that I hadn’t cooked myself and which had been griddled on a stove that cooked a thousand burgers a day and was seasoned with that flavor.

  I missed eying up a hot guy and watching his butt flex as he strolled down the street, and I missed coffee. Genuine barista coffee.

  “Lara! Lara! Are you there?”

  That voice. So uncanny. So Sabina.

  She’d explained that she hadn’t died, I registered. Had explained it, but my brain had barely managed to process it. She’d told me our dick brother, Cyrilo, had come at her in a truck and had shoved her off the road with her baby boy and her husband. She’d told me that she’d been running for years, running from our father.