Nerves hit me then as I watched him, praying that she wouldn’t notice, but Jana was so far gone that Todd could have flashed her and she wouldn’t have noticed. Her hands started shaking as she shrieked at me, “The Lindowiczs. They’re my clan.”
“Your clan?” Lara countered with confusion. “You’re not a shifter. I’d see that in you if you were.”
Her mouth tightened. “No. I’m not. But females lead the clan, and my mate is from a strong line, so his power is mine. They accepted me because of my trust fund and my gift, but I worked my way up, made them trust me. Now, I have a position. A place. You won’t take that from me.”
I scowled at that. “You purposely went to the people I spent my whole life avoiding? Are you crazy?” I screamed, hopping around with rage by now, because fuck, if she’d wanted to marry one of them so goddamn badly, she could have, and our father might have left us alone!
“No, I’m not crazy,” she snarled. “I’m very sane. I’m just protecting myself. Giving myself a future.”
“You keep saying that, but the only person who’s endangering your present is you,” was Lara’s sage retort.
Jana’s hands trembled at that, the one on the trigger, and the one she’d stacked under the gun to hold it steady. “No. I’m not. I’ve been waiting for this to happen. I knew it would, I knew it would,” she rambled.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded.
Jana’s words were a whisper, loaded down with a terror that was genuine, as she repeated, “When she ascends to the moon and becomes the guardian of the past, your future will be no more.”
My brows rose at that. “Sorry to tell you this, Jana, but that sounds fucking crazy to me.”
“It isn’t,” Lara corrected, never taking her gaze from our other sister. “But it’s happened already, Jana. What are you going to do? Shoot me now you know?”
Jana’s head whipped from side to side. “No, it isn’t too late! I’d know if you’d ascended. I’d know,” she screamed.
“Apparently not, because you know shit. Just like always. You’d see the future, but it was never the whole picture, was it? You’d see a horse winning, but you’d never see that the horse might fall over and lose. You should have figured out by now that your visions weren’t infallible, because you’re not that talented. Your gift is true, strong, but it never took one thing into account.”
Jana trembled at that. “What?”
“Free will,” Lara breathed, and as she did, Choi shifted.
I’d never seen anything like it. He was sure as hell no wolf, but a kind of… My nose crinkled as I tried to figure out what the fuck I was looking at. It was big. Almost as large as a wolf, but its bones were smaller, a little daintier somehow. The snout was more pointed, and it was bright red with gold-tipped fur. More important than any of that?
The tails.
Yep, plural.
Not one, not even two. Not even five.
Nine.
Fucking nine.
I gaped at the sight, and so did Jana. Choi leaped forward, his intent clear, to bring her down, but as he went for her throat, as he started to tug it free from her skin, Jana had the last say.
She pulled the trigger.
And Lara’s screams would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Lara
“NO!”
The word seemed to reverberate around my head as I dealt with what my bitch sister had done, at what she’d—
Fuck, she couldn’t have just died, could she? No, that was too easy. Too kind.
She’d orchestrated her own ending, she’d brought it about, but why did she have to bring about the end of my mate too?
I scrabbled over to him, rushing and almost diving onto my knees as I turned him over. When I did, I saw the blood, saw the wound, and knew I had minutes with him.
Minutes.
Barely.
Would I die too?
The prospect of a world without him in it, though I’d only known him a couple of days, made that bearable. I didn’t want this, any of this, without him.
I had knowledge, so much of it in my head. Rolling around and around, over itself and under itself in my brain, ramming me and giving me a migraine that surpassed any other I’d ever endured, but it was nothing to the pain in my heart.
Putting pressure on the wound, I started sobbing, started bawling and watched as my tears dripped onto my panting mate’s belly. I peered up at the moon, trying to assimilate the knowledge I had, to figure out how to save him, but instead, I could only do one thing.
“Mother! Please help me! Kali Sara, please help!”
When I heard Sabina call out, “Please, Mother, help her! Please, Kali Sara, help her!” I wanted to sob with thanks, wanted to hug Sabina and bless her for her ever-generous spirit. She had to know that her mates were in danger, but she pleaded with the Mother for me. For my mate.
“What is it, child?”
The voice boomed in my head, and I knew where it came from—the moon.
It was still heavy and pendulant, still full, and its aura still weeping into the night sky.
I’d done that.
I’d stopped time to make the battle come to an end. I’d used it to call Jana out, to bring her forth, because I’d known she was behind it. But equally, I’d called Sabina out. That was by accident, but I should have known she was integral to the night’s proceedings.
Proceedings that had only taken place for one reason.
My ascension.
When Todd had made me choose, though I’d had no real idea of what I was getting myself into, I’d accepted his kiss.
Just the memory of his mouth on mine, delicate at first, soft nips that showed his teasing side, tender pecks here and there, little lashes of his tongue, all of it gentle and cherishing, had made me realize I was so much more to him than I could ever know.
I only recognized that now.
His kiss offered the fox marble, a bead of knowledge that I had to swallow. It had felt like I was deep-throating his balls, because that fox marble was pretty frickin’ big, but the way he’d started our first kiss?
Infinitely tender.
Filled with a loving adoration I’d never had in my life before, that I could never have known I’d experience.
He’d teased my lips into parting, before he’d kissed me with a tenderness I couldn’t bear. I’d tilted my head to the side, getting a better angle, loving how it made his nose and mine brush together, how there’d been no space between us as his hands came to my waist so he could move me into him tighter, and finally, he’d let me feel his tongue against mine.
He’d thrust into me, like he was mimicking sex, and as my heart started to pound, as my being started to expand to encompass the feelings he inspired in me, I’d groaned, reached down, and grabbed his ass, my body undulating against his as I reacted to what he made me feel.
With a groan, he’d started to thrust into me faster, until I was breathing his air and he was breathing mine.
And then I’d felt it.
Where the fuck it had come from, I had no idea. But it was there, in my mouth, and he pulled away just in time for me not to gag, and had said, “Swallow it.”
Before I could ask him how the hell I was supposed to swallow something whole that was the size of a peach, I recognized it wasn’t actually solid. It was energy. It still made me panic, though, but I’d done it. I’d managed to swallow the bead of light, and he’d urged, “Look at the moon. Look at it and nothing else until you feel it.”
I couldn’t even ask what I was supposed to be feeling, I just obeyed. I tipped my head up to the sky, and he’d made the moment perfect—he’d moved behind me, my spine coming to rest against his belly, the back of my head coming to rest on his shoulder as I tilted it slightly so I could relax in the angle of his throat.
Together, we’d looked at the moon, and even though I hadn’t known what was coming, I’d just been aware that I’d never forget this moment, not for as long as
I’d live.
I loved the night sky, but it was even more beautiful with Todd at my back.
I’d just appreciated the moment until, with the power of an open book clapping shut, a book the size of the Earth and with the weight of it too, everything had changed.
Like a boom inside my head, I recognized things I never had before.
The trees that thrust up into the sky, marring my total view of the moon were a Douglas fir and a western hemlock. The stars around the moon? Cassiopeia and Ursa Minor.
And that was the tip of the iceberg. A tip that I couldn’t even think about breaching to see below it, because it was too extensive. Too mind blowing.
I truly knew how Indy had felt in that alien council room in Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull, because, sheesh, this was something crazy.
But what had made it bearable? Todd.
Him at my back. Grounding me.
He’d always do that, I knew.
Just like I also knew that the scents in the area were mixed in a way they shouldn’t be. And part of the problem?
Me.
I scented of it too.
Hyena.
I didn’t understand that, but I didn’t need to understand it to know. Somehow, I was of hyena heritage. Mother had obviously been bitten when our father had pimped her out. And because of that, because of his cowardly and shameful actions, I was…
Kali Sara.
That hideous beast I’d killed, the other who’d died at the front door of my cabin, I couldn’t be that.
I just… I couldn’t.
But the scent was undeniable, as were the myriad other smells in the area. I could perceive a large number of them here, more than that, I could scent that godawful perfume on a woman I hadn’t seen in over a decade.
“How are you feeling?” Todd had whispered in my ear.
Huskily, I’d told him, “I’m feeling fortunate that you’re patient with me.”
“Patient? Why?” he asked, his tone back to being amused.
Only, this time, I wasn’t annoyed by that.
“If I’d known what I did then, when I tried to tell you I wasn’t interested in being your mate, I’d have slapped me.”
He snorted. “No need. We’re destined. And now you know what that means, don’t you?”
I bit my lip. “To a certain extent.” If I focused on that, on us, on how right this felt, I could forget about the rest.
Forget about the fact Mama had given birth to a child who was part shifter.
A hum escaped him, and the sound soothed me further. “We can explore that later.”
“I’m pretty sure my sister is here,” I whispered cautiously.
“Sabina?”
“No. The one I told you was dead.” I twisted to look at him. “I am the Moon Child, aren’t I?”
He nodded, but his eyes were troubled. “Yes. I don’t know what that means, and I think even though we have a kind of universal knowledge that few have, there’s actually little spoken about what the Moon and Sun Child can and can’t do. What their eventual purpose is.”
Yes, if there was a Moon Child, there was also a Sun Child. That knowledge had hit me too. But he was right in that there was definitely a black hole surrounding that particular truth.
When I tried to look into it, tried to see further into that segment of my brain, a segment I didn’t even know how I’d found, there were only shadows.
A hazy future, knowledge that had yet to be written.
I gulped, well aware of why that was—because I hadn’t lived it yet. How could there be a tale to be told if I hadn’t actually endured it? My ascension was only the start of another story. One that would end with the Sun Child’s rise to power.
“I need to help,” I rasped when another howl speared the night sky.
Before, I hadn’t understood what that was, but now I did. It was one of the strange wolves. One of the odd ones. The large ones.
I heard her, and she told me everything.
The clearing. The totem circle. Death everywhere. Blood shed and bones broken. Hyenas slaughtered, wolves ripped to shreds.
And an urge hit me.
For things to just slow down for a second.
For the world to just stop turning until I figured out what to do.
And that’s what I did.
The howl, even though it was ongoing, died. But it wasn’t because the bitch had stopped, it was because time had.
I twisted around, wondering if he was frozen too, but Todd was there, watching me, a proud smile on his face.
“I can’t do that, you did that.”
His eyes gleamed with his feelings, with his pride, only I wasn’t sure I deserved it, because I hadn’t exactly meant to do what I had, but instead of focusing on that, I asked, “Why am I special?”
“We don’t know. And even though you stopped time, it won’t stop forever. It won’t even stop everyone. Some things are written, and only the Mother and the Father are privy to what will happen.”
I gulped at that. “Why can I smell Jana?”
“I don’t know, but we can go and find out.”
So we had.
And we’d learned that Jana was a psychotic bitch with a god complex, and she’d just murdered my mate.
I blinked up at the sky, wondering if I could freeze time again, hoping to the Mother and the Father and Kali Sara and whichever God was listening in that it would work and that Todd would be frozen until I figured out what to do, but nothing changed.
Nothing except for one thing.
I heard pounding footsteps, dozens of them, and out of nowhere, we were surrounded in a circle of those strange wolves. The big ones again.
The female, who’d told me about the totem, was there, bleeding and weary, but alive. She moved toward me, and I didn’t even have it in me to be scared. Not even when I looked into her eyes, when all I saw was her until I didn’t even see her.
Not anymore.
I blinked, taken aback at her sudden disappearance, expecting to find the other wolves there, to see Sabina running toward me trying to help.
But I saw nothing.
It was full night, but wherever I was now, it was twilight.
I peered around, intent on understanding where the hell I was, when it hit me.
Lidai’s soul.
Where her heart bore fruit, the past was stored, and the future was written.
Todd was panting, but his wheezing breaths told me he was near the end. He wasn’t even looking at me, his eyelids were closed, but I knew what to do.
I needed a heart fruit—a loenai.
Spinning around, I disregarded the dozens of beautiful trees, all of them coming in colors that were otherworldly, literally from another plane, until I found the one I needed.
It was big, and I wasn’t. I’d never climbed a tree before, but I didn’t have time to worry about any of that. I just had to do.
So I did.
I took a running jump as I leaped into the air and managed, barely, to catch a hold of the lowest branch. It was so thick around the middle that it didn’t even quiver at the momentum of my jump or at my weight, and I hung there, wasting precious seconds as I figured out how to get from my dangling position and onto the branch itself.
As I peered up, I saw a heart fruit was actually on this level.
It hadn’t been there before.
“Thank you, Lidai,” I whispered, and like I’d done as a kid on the monkey bars, I managed to move forward, jerkily shifting down the length of the branch as the jaenerai, a strange fly that I knew accelerated healing, buzzed around the fruit.
When I made it there, my arms aching, my body electrified with adrenaline, I snapped out a hand, knowing I had only one shot—I had to grab it, because the second I let go, I’d fall to the ground.
Lidai must have been on my side, because the fruit was in my hand, and I was back on the ground, heading back to Todd.
As I ran, I tore open the fruit, revealing the flesh of the Mothe
r’s heart. I grimaced at the sight, my human sensibilities making me want to puke as I skidded to a halt at my mate’s side, shoving the loenai at him.
He was too far gone though.
He didn’t even scent the blood.
I shoved it in his mouth, uncaring if I hurt him or if my hands were nicked on his teeth, and I forced him to eat. I went so far as to push it down his throat. Weakly, he swallowed, and I felt like weeping some more with relief.
I knew this would work. I knew it.
When the hum of the jaenerai made itself known to me, I carried on shoving the loenai down his throat, making him eat all of it, not content until he’d swallowed every fucking bite.
And then, and only then, when the jaenerai came, did I take my eyes off him. I didn’t move away, even though I knew the jaenerai, as they healed, caused a massive explosion of energy, I stayed for the fallout. My hand on his paw, sticking with him like I’d stick with him through everything, as I let the Mother heal my mate.
When the heat and light came, I was thrown back because of my proximity. But as the jaenerai died, as they gave their life for Todd’s, I started sobbing, even as my eyes ached from the light, my skin was tenderized from the burst of heat, and my ears were deafened by the blast.
I couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him or scent him, but blindly, and on my hands and knees, I crawled toward him, unerringly finding his warmth. When I knew he was well, if unconscious, I curled up at his side, needing nothing more than to be with him.
Forever.
Sixteen
Austin
I jerked when a hand slapped my cheek, and groggily, I peered up at my brothers, well aware they were filthy, doused in blood and gore that had my nose crinkling at the sight of them.
“Why are you so gross?”
Eli muttered under his breath, “Why are you so gross?”
Groaning, I reached up and rubbed my forehead. The last thing I remembered was being leapt upon by a hyena, but I was pretty sure that was a dream. It had to have been a wolf, but shitty luck and bad timing had me falling back, and colliding with the ground.
Moon Child: A PNR Shifter Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 2) Page 24