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

by Serena Akeroyd

  No wonder my head ached like a son of a bitch.

  Moaning some more, and feeling like I was a thousand years old, I sat up, and as I rubbed the back of my head, where my fingers came back sticky from blood, I peered around and muttered, “Huh. Guess that wasn’t a dream.”

  Their features were grimy after the battle, and they scowled at me as they both sank onto their knees, and then toppled back onto their asses, as we all looked around the outer rim of the totem circle.

  I was lucky I hadn’t died. Fuck, it was more than luck.

  “They must have thought you were dead,” Eli told me, reading my thoughts with an ease that I still wasn’t used to. Especially when I hadn’t been projecting a stream of conscious thought onto him.

  “Get over it,” Ethan groused. “We all know way more about each other than any of us would like. At least you’re alive.”

  “Yeah. Thank fuck hyenas are dumbasses,” Eli agreed, reaching up and rubbing his face with the back of his hand. It smeared more crap over him, but I wasn’t about to point that out.

  “I’m sorry,” I told them both. “I should have been fighting with you.”

  “You should have, yeah,” Ethan grumbled, elbowing me in the side. I couldn’t hiss at him, though, even if that simple jolt to my system made my head bang like I was at a Metallica concert. “What the hell happened?”

  “Is Daniel okay?” I asked, taking my priorities as they came to me.

  “Yeah, he’s fine,” Eli rasped. “Sent him home with one of the others. Still unconscious, but he appears to be well.”

  “Good.” I sucked in a breath. “We were just walking toward the clearing when—” I winced. “The scents were all over the place. Nothing centered, so I just thought they were trying to piss us off by messing with our markers. I never expected there to be so many of them. When we approached, I was listening to something Daniel was saying, and they just leaped at us.” Shame hit me as I admitted, “I didn’t even have a chance to shift before I was down.”

  “Some fucking enforcer you are,” Ethan snapped at me.

  Because I deserved it, I took it. But I wouldn’t take any more. I’d made a mistake, and he made plenty of them, but he’d just fought in a bloody battle and I had to cut him some slack.

  Hell, maybe Sabina had done the impossible—she’d made me grow up. Either that or I was just getting sentimental in my old age.

  We were all alive.

  All in one piece.

  We got to live to see another day, unlike the dead around us, who I saw when I peered at the clearing, and found myself unable to deny that he spoke the truth.

  There were natural wolves that lay forever frozen in time, and then there were our fallen pack members. Brothers and sisters who I’d been raised with, who’d shunned me at every turn, who’d made our lives miserable from the offset. But I hadn’t wanted them to die. I hadn’t wanted their worlds to forever be torn in two.

  My throat felt thick with emotion I couldn’t shed as I took in the bloodbath, handled the loss.

  “How you slept through that I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t sleep through anything, Ethan,” I snapped. “I passed out.” And I was damn lucky I hadn’t had my throat torn out.

  When I looked at the wolves littering the space around me, I knew why though. The naturals had protected me and Daniel.

  Fuck.

  Guilt hit me with the power of Thor’s hammer to my goddamn head, and my head was already a mess.

  He grunted, but his repeated stance made me want to smack him. Sure, he was dealing with the same grief as me, handling the same sense of loss, all while being in pain and having the memories of the battle to deal with, but I hadn’t done it on purpose.

  On the brink of snapping at him, I heard a gentle, “Thank God you’re awake.”

  Her relief hit me the second I processed it, and though I’d known she was okay because of our links, it was still a joyous moment to look out and see her wending her way through the trees toward us.

  She came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the battlefield however, and shook her head, tears forming as she registered the bloodbath. More than that, I knew she registered how many families would be broken wide open. Mates torn apart until they passed over, children left without parents—

  My jaw hardened, and I rasped, “Why did they attack?”

  “We had a couple of betas drag the hyenas that were still alive to the house,” Ethan told me stiffly. “Can you manage to enforce the law on them, or is that too much?”

  Anger hit me with the strength of a car T-boning another, but before I could say a word, snap at him, punch him, Sabina murmured, “Ethan, my love, there’s no point in taking this out on Austin.”

  His lips tightened, and he turned his head away, but the lack of reply told me where his head was at, even if his inability to let shit go made it clear too.

  “I’ll deal with them, figure out why they came and started this—” I started to say.

  “I think I know,” Sabina muttered, tears in her eyes, in her voice, as she stepped around the bodies of pack brothers and sisters who’d died in the line of duty—to protect the pack.

  Ethan was right. They’d done that all while I’d been snoozing.

  Shame hit me, shame and guilt and regret, but I hadn’t done it on purpose. I’d just, well, fuck… wrong place. Wrong time.

  “How would you know?” Eli asked, and that he didn’t get up and go over to her told me how badly he was aching, how much he was hurting.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you everything.” With sorrow in her eyes, she whispered, “My sister was the reason for it.”

  “Your sister? Lara?” I rumbled, shaking my head. “That’s not possible.”

  “No, not Lara. Jana.”

  “She’s dead,” Ethan countered.

  “Apparently she wasn’t. But she is now.”

  “How?”

  “Choi tore her throat out.” She cleared her throat. “H-He’s badly injured.”

  “Will he live?” Eli rasped, his shoulders straightening at her news.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know where he is. Or where Lara is for that matter.”

  I squinted at her. “Huh?”

  “They kind of, well, they sort of disappeared.”

  All of us gaped at her.

  “Don’t look at me like that! I told you you wouldn’t believe me.” Then, she muttered under her breath, “That’s not even the half of it.”

  “Explain why she was here,” Eli ordered, his tone more of a bark than anything, and though she narrowed her eyes at him in warning, she was reasonable enough to spell it out.

  “She used to be able to catch small glimpses of the future. For some reason, she had it in her head that we were going to bring about her death.”

  “Well, she is dead,” I pointed out.

  “Only because she came here and caused all this!” she argued with a huff, one that Knight compounded by squawking his outrage at my stupidity. “She said she was the mate of a hyena. That she led them.” She shrugged. “I don’t know how much of that is bullshit or not.”

  “They’re matriarchal,” Ethan confirmed.

  She twisted around and stared at the massacre, before she whispered, “These are the Lindowiczs.”

  “The family you were supposed to marry into?” Eli asked.

  At her nod, I blinked, but somehow, it fit. “That makes sense.”

  “It does? Why? It doesn’t to me,” she grumbled.

  “Hyenas are rich. They’re from the southwestern states, where they took advantage of the oil fields. But they’re shady fuckers too. Built on legitimate money, they took things illegitimate back when Rockefeller was a billionaire,” Ethan explained wearily. “They’re the only shifters who are heavily involved with humans. Their clans routinely mingle with human society to gain more social standing and to increase their wealth.”

  “From what you told us of your father,” I clarified, “it make
s sense that he’d go to someone like them for money.”

  “Father was such a duplicitous piece of shit. Wouldn’t let me have a cat but was quite willing to marry us off to hyenas!”

  “More than that,” I rumbled. “After what we talked about the other night, it makes sense that they’d be willing to take your mother as partial payment for debts outstanding.”

  My brothers stiffened at that, and that was because neither of us had shared that particular discussion we’d had with them, but Sabina’s down-turned head was confirmation enough.

  “You need to speak with them. Figure out why they were here. It can’t just be because Sabina’s sister had a vision. They’re stupid but they’re not that stupid.”

  I nodded at Eli’s order, then muttered, “Will do.”

  When I got to my feet, groaning all the while as my head started banging, I moved over to her and pressed a kiss to her head. “Be safe, sweetheart. If you have to stay out here, go to the circle.”

  “He’s right,” Eli concurred, “and we need to start building the funeral pyres.” So saying, he got to his feet and hissed under his breath the second he was standing.

  I winced when I saw him, his body torn up, flesh wide open in some parts—it was a wonder he didn’t fall back on his ass. It was a testament to who he was that he hadn’t passed out too.

  Sabina gasped at the sight of him, then rushed over and stuck herself under his arm as she tried to prop him up. Eli just blinked at her, and asked, “Mate, what are you doing?”

  “Supporting you!” she grumbled, and though he peered back at us, a little owlishly, he let her.

  Which said everything.

  “Well, you can support me into the circle,” he muttered. “Least you’ll be safe there.”

  She didn’t argue, and together they crossed the totem circle which, amidst all the blood and gore, was as clean and protected as ever.

  Eli, however, released a sharp cry as the totem’s power sank into him, but when he was allowed through, my eyes widened as the rips and shreds where flesh had parted to reveal torn muscle, were woven together once more.

  He gaped down at himself, then at Sabina, who was also gaping at him, but then I saw it.

  A tiny starfish hand was on his chest.

  I gulped at the sight, then rasped, “Knight was touching you as you crossed the totem circle, Eli.”

  The four of us shared a look, before Ethan surged to his feet and Sabina retreated to the other side of the circle once more.

  Gurgling, a happy smile on his face, one that was so ill-fitting for the occasion, Knight laughed as he smacked a hand on Ethan’s arm, and Sabina and my twin timed it so that they crossed through together.

  Ethan groaned, then cursed under his breath when he made it to the other side, but he too was fucking healed.

  “Holy Mother,” I bit off, seeing their broken bodies in one piece once more.

  “This is happening for a reason,” Ethan managed to get out, his voice strangled as, his arms high, he twisted around to study himself. He was still filthy, still absolutely covered in dirt and blood and all kinds of nasty shit, but Mother, he was whole once more.

  I stared at Knight, his tiny, beaming, beatific face, and I leaned down and picked up Marjory, a bitch who worked at the post office, who never failed to make me feel like a piece of dog crap on her heel, and hustled her corpse into my arms.

  Sabina, picking up on what I was doing, retreated through the circle once more, and when Knight touched her, and we crossed the line?

  Marjory started to move.

  My eyes grew wet with tears, stupid tears, happy tears.

  Grief coalesced with joy, and I stared at our baby, my little shit machine, and whispered, “My boy.”

  As I laid Marjory on the ground, I surged forward, as did my brothers. We gathered around him, each of us pressing a thankful kiss to his tiny head, a head that couldn’t even comprehend what he was doing, before we looked at Sabina and each of us whispered, “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” she argued, her eyes starry as she focused her gaze on Knight.

  “You did. You gave birth to this magnificent boy,” Eli rasped.

  “My sister is the reason for all these deaths,” she countered, shaking her head. “No. This is all Knight.” She kissed him, squishing him to her, and rasped, “This means…”

  I knew why she broke off, too.

  Mates wouldn’t be torn apart.

  Families wouldn’t be ruptured.

  The pack wouldn’t be grieving these losses for decades to come.

  I sucked in a breath. “Let’s get to work.”

  We had a pack to save.

  Todd

  When I woke up, I had no choice but to stare at the sky. I was on my back, my head at the perfect angle for gazing upward, but there were no stars to watch, no clouds to see the shape of a wonky dog or the Tower of Pisa in.

  It was twilight, cloudless.

  The sky was rich with color, making it like no other twilight I’d ever seen before. The purples and the blues, the oranges and the reds, it was like Van Gogh’s Starry Night in real life, except without the stars and only streaks of color.

  I remembered what had happened, could taste Jana’s blood in my mouth, could even feel the memory of the bullet tearing into my belly.

  What I couldn’t remember was coming here.

  Only the Mother’s chosen people were brought to Nevaehai, the Mother’s soul. Her place of sanctuary for Her children.

  I’d never been before, and I knew my father and grandfather had never been blessed either. That I was here told me I’d almost died and that, somehow, Lara had saved me.

  Some things were denied to us, even the guardians of knowledge, and the keys to Nevaehai were one such thing. I had no idea how she’d done it, but I was grateful.

  Even if I knew the Mother had no alternative.

  If I’d died, my grandfather would have been the sole remaining kumiho, and he was too old and infirm to beget another son, to bring forth a generation that would keep our people alive.

  With only two of us on Earth, the Mother had an obligation to save us, but I knew Lara was involved.

  She had to be.

  I twisted my head left and right, trying to find her, and saw her at the Pond of Dreams. It was nothing like I’d imagined. The tales had been passed down, of course. Of the waterfall, of the clear water that was transparent but gleamed as if micro diamonds tainted it. Of the rocks which gleamed like they were dusted with gold. It was enchanting, beautiful to a degree that went beyond words, but the most beautiful thing of all?

  Lara.

  She sat there, her toes dipped into the water, perched on a rock like a siren of old, her legs swaying back and forth, her hair falling backward, brushing the lower curve of her spine as she peered up at the sky.

  She was magnificent.

  Glorious.

  Mine.

  It beggared belief, even though I’d known, somewhere along my life, I’d find a mate. I had to. There was no alternative for the kumiho. Like my father, I was a lucky man. I’d found mine while I was young. My grandfather had been nearly two-hundred when he’d found my grandmother.

  Even though it hadn’t for my parents, I hoped this boded well for our future, a positive portent that would make up for the dubious circumstances of our beginnings.

  Feeling a little sleepy even if, in myself, I felt well, I moved into a standing position and quietly walked toward her. She knew, of course, and when she turned to me, I felt my dick harden as I saw her eyes.

  My smile, when it came, was slow, but she must have sensed the change in me, because her eyes were like silver now. All knowing. All seeing.

  She wouldn’t know. How could she? There were no mirrors here. No physical items that came without a request from the Mother. She was as naked as I, as proud as I in her nudity, unaware that she’d grown a thousand times more gorgeous just by turning her head so I could look at her and see the trut
h—the Moon Child.

  When I slipped into the water, which was the perfect temperature, not too cold, not too hot, I sighed with delight and moved over to her. She watched me with those silvery eyes, and I wondered if, when we returned to the other world, to the real world, if they’d remain silver and she’d have to wear contacts for the rest of her life.

  We lived in an area that was mostly shifter, and the humans tended to know about us, so maybe she’d get away with it. Hiding those orbs would be a travesty.

  I rested my chest against her calves and leaned into her, staring up at her as I said, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  Her modesty had me smiling. “Saving me.”

  “I don’t think I can take much responsibility for that. The wolf, the one Sabina calls Berry, she did it.”

  I arched a brow. “The wolf did?”

  “Yes.” Her gaze turned pensive. “Of course, I know she’s not just a she-wolf now.”

  “No, they’re from this realm, aren’t they?”

  “Yes. But she’s also Eli’s mother. The twins’ mother too.” Her lips pursed. “Very complicated.”

  “Infinitely complicated.” I blinked. “That’s unusual.”

  “What is?”

  “Siblings.” I plucked at my lip. Maybe Maribel and her son, with a child on the way, weren’t the siblings of legend.

  Maybe Eli and his twin brothers were.

  I thought about that for a second, then decided there was little point in worrying about what would be learned with time. Time, all kumiho knew, passed very swiftly, and information that was not yet known would be learned as the clock ticked away.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked her softly, seeing how she was tucked in her mind, not hiding from me, but lost to what she was exposed to.

  I understood. The second my father had died, it had hit me too, and that was why I hadn’t killed Kingsley Rainford immediately. I’d been tucked up in bed as millennia’s worth of information transferred over to me.

  “Tired, I suppose. But I’m the one who should be asking you that.”

  I shrugged. “All is well. You know that.”

  “I do. That fruit was weird.”