by Kat Zaccard
Heading back to the changing rooms, we wagged our tails goodbye. I sent a telepathic “thank you” to Nadia and Diego, then Shea and I went to change. Coming out of the locker rooms, Diego held out a fist and I bumped it with mine.
“Nice run,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m so glad we’re here for a few days. It’s so tough keeping my wolf contained in the city.”
“I can imagine.” Being a Sliver, Diego enjoyed the freedom of shifting almost whenever he wanted. He could relate to me feeling cooped up in a way Shea couldn’t.
“I wish I could run patrols again this year,” I complained. Jack, Head of Patrols at Mt. Henley, had let me join patrols last fall when he learned about my extra skills. He helped me learn to control my unusual talent for telepathy while in my wolf skin. Legend was the first queen who brought the Great Pack together had the same skill, that it was the mark of a true alpha.
“Me too, but to be honest, it might be easier this way.”
I glanced at him in surprise. What did he mean by that? Did he have feelings for me after all?
He went on, and my hope died. “With all the new students coming in, it’d be hard to hide your alpha telepathy from all the seasoned patrols coming as well.”
“Oh, yeah, I suppose so.”
Diego looked like he wanted to say more but didn’t. He nodded goodnight, and we parted ways. I caught up with Shea, and she linked arms with me to skip into the house.
“Someone’s happy,” I teased her.
“I did it! I wasn’t sure I could again, but I did! That’s a whole extra day of shifting for me!” She beamed with pride.
“Hey, maybe two! We get to try while the moon is waning too. Then you’ll be up to five!”
We high-fived. Then Shea pressed, “So Diego had a pretty good idea, huh?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t want to get my hopes up.”
“But it’s pretty cool he was trying to figure out a way to help you.” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
I grinned. “Knock it off, Shea. I don’t think he’s interested. And anyway, he made it clear he wasn’t going to pursue me if I’m unavailable.” I sighed.
Shea put her arm around me. “Well, step one is ditching Logan; the rest will sort itself out.”
We said goodnight and went to our rooms. I wanted to believe Shea was right, that everything would sort itself out. After Kulani’s death, however, I was disenchanted with the idea of a fairytale ending. It seemed too farfetched to be real. I didn’t know how to sort through my feelings about Diego. There was something about his presence that calmed me. When he was there, I felt more at ease, more … myself.
I blushed, remembering that Diego has also told me I was too young for him. He was only a year or so older than me! But he was eighteen now, and I was only turning seventeen this September. Shea had speculated that the age thing was more of an excuse to hide behind, and it was the royal thing that really held him back. The thought made me angry and hopeful. Argh! It was too much to think about! I had to focus on the upyr threat. That was my biggest problem right now. Not Diego, not Logan, not the crown.
By morning, the lawyers had left, and Nadia, Shea, and I spent the day playing with Nolan, who loved chasing us wolves, but pouted when he couldn’t catch us. We all went swimming in the afternoon. We spent the next few evenings training with Diego, and by the end of the trip, the awkwardness was gone, and we felt like friends again.
Shea was thrilled to be able to shift five days in a row. She couldn’t quite make the shift the next night as the moon was waning. She waved me off and wouldn’t hear of me skipping a run to babysit her. “Besides, an extra night might keep you inside in Wisconsin.”
I flicked my tail at her and chased Nadia and Diego out of the stables. We ran and practiced drills for an hour or more. Nadia signaled that she was going back. We shifted to make our goodbyes. The night was warm. Fireflies were flickering through a stand of birch trees. Nadia’s property was beautiful.
Diego and I weren’t quite ready to head back, so we opted to play a round of hide and seek, always a werewolf favorite. We took turns, having a hard time fooling each other for long. It was my turn to seek, and I was pretty sure Diego was behind the nearest tree. I pounced with a wolfish “aha!” but there was no one there. Annoyed, I sniffed around the trunk. I wanted to find him without reaching out with my mental telepathy. There! I picked up his scent and darted through the brush.
I lost his scent again near a stream. The smell of mud and water was too overpowering. I sniffed along the water’s edge then turned back towards the trees. Where could he be? I was making my way back into the undergrowth when I heard a twig snap behind me. I whirled around.
Searching with my wolf vision into the night, I didn’t see a thing. But I felt something. Someone. My heart quickened. Suddenly, I felt afraid. I waited for a few moments. The air shifted. Something changed. Then a twig snapped to my right, away from the presence I had just felt. I spun to face the new intruder.
Reveal yourself. I put every ounce of power into the mental command. I lowered my torso toward the ground, growling and preparing to fight.
Diego stepped stiffly out of the brush. He stood awkwardly a moment then shook himself head to toe, sending water droplets everywhere. I guess he had crossed the river. He shimmered into his human skin.
I sighed in relief and took a step toward him, shifting into my human self as well.
“Diego! I’m glad it was you!” I took another step toward him, and he took a step back. His look made me pause. My smile wavered at his wrinkled brow.
“What was that, Alice?” Diego had a curious look.
“What was what?” I looked around. “I thought I felt something, but you must have scared it off.”
Diego gave a snort and shook his head. He may have muttered something then said to me, “I felt something, Alice, you.” He tapped his temple for emphasis.
I was nervous. Would he hate me for using my alpha influence on him? At least he already knew about it. “I’m sorry, Diego, I swear I haven’t been using my alpha powers all night, but like I said, I thought I sensed something, and,” I paused to take a deep breath, as I was rambling like my mom despite no DNA connection, “I got scared. When I heard you, I instinctively used my telepathy to call you.” I searched his eyes for some glimmer of understanding.
“You’ve gotten a lot stronger.”
“I have?”
“I figured you’d try to use your alpha powers at some point, so I tried to block you. I didn’t want to reveal my presence at first, but I couldn’t resist your, well, your command.”
My nerves jabbed at my insides like lead butterflies. “It’s the alpha influence. I honestly don’t know how I do it. When I feel threatened, maybe? I don’t know. But sometimes I project a command and the other wolf listens, just for a second or two. You and Shea know about it, but I’m scared if I tell my friends, they’ll freak out.”
Diego looked at me thoughtfully. “I remember the first time you spoke in my head. It’d seemed more like a suggestion then. This time though, I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t like it.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He continued in a matter-of-fact way. “It did only last a few seconds. After I stepped out of the brush, I realized I could run off if I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t want to.”
I looked at him. He looked perplexed but not scared.
“I try not to do it, you know, influence people against their will. It seems wrong.”
The look he gave me was priceless. The dry tone said it all. “Yeah, it seems all kinds of wrong.” He laughed to take the sting off his words. “Look, it makes sense that your alpha powers would continue to grow. You are a Luna. Who knows what your ancestors could do.”
“Thank you. I promise I am trying not to use my alpha influence. I wouldn’t want anyone to be able to influence me that way.”
“That
sounds like a good rule of thumb.” He grinned at me then looked out over the water. His posture was relaxed, and I exhaled in relief.
“I thought you’d hate me,” I admitted.
“Hate you?” Did I imagine that the idea sounded preposterous to him? “For what?”
“For using my alpha influence on you.”
“Well, you said you felt threatened. That’s a pretty good reason.”
“Yeah, well.” I shrugged. “Shea gives me grief about the ethics of it all, and well, she’s not wrong.”
“True,” he agreed. My spirits fell. “But I could never hate you, Alice.” He looked into my eyes and my heart swelled. I wanted to reach out to him but resisted. The thought made me blush and I glanced down. Holy Moly! Glancing down was a bad call, which only made me blush harder. I looked up in what I assumed was a hilariously shocked expression, given Diego’s reaction. He burst out laughing as I tried to look anywhere but at the naked werewolf in front of me.
We both laughed. I was glad for the levity to break through the tension but secretly wished the moment-before-the-moment had lasted just a bit longer.
“I know what it’s like to have a power you can’t control. I know how heavy a secret like that is.” His chocolate eyes met mine again. Diego really did understand me in a way no one else could. His uber shift or super shift or whatever it was called, must have been an incredibly difficult secret to keep. I wished he didn’t have to. But knowing the fear of rejection, I understood why he kept it to himself.
“At least we can keep each other’s secrets company.” I grinned at him.
He smiled back. “Sounds like a plan.”
We shifted and made our way to the stables. Once showered and dressed, we met again outside to walk up to the house. The moon was waning, but still large and hung brightly. The air was warm, and early birds were starting to squabble. I knew I could sleep the whole next day, but I didn’t want this night to end.
I glanced over at Diego. My fingers twitched to grab his hand. I walked closer next to him. As I accidentally bumped into him, the back of my hand brushed his. Without a word he gently wrapped his palm in mine. We walked back to the patio door in the loveliest harmony.
◆◆◆
By the time I awoke late that afternoon, Diego had already flown home to Dryden. Shea and I thanked Nadia for a wonderful few days and reluctantly boarded the plane to take us home. Nadia reminded me that our next visit would be at the Winter Palace for the council meeting.
Back home in Greenville, my parents asked about our trip and seemed a little surprised by the opulence of Nadia’s home. I reminded them that they knew Mount Henley had some seriously rich students and they thought it was nice that Shea and I were accepted without wealth.
We didn’t tell them that Nadia was an exception to the rule, and most royal families didn’t treat Shea with respect. My parent’s didn’t know I was the last Luna Princess, and there was no way to explain anything more without revealing our werewolf secret. Having spent time at home and with Nadia, my life never felt more fragmented. At least Shea was there to keep me sane as I pretended to be just a normal teenage girl.
Chapter 6
The next few weeks passed with relative calm. Shea and I spent our days riding bikes or swimming in the lake. We ran into Sir Levi around town a few times, but he gave us a wide berth. We also spotted Carianne, but her taunts were stale and we simply laughed. I marveled that having Shea by my side melted away the insecurities Carianne used to exploit. I wasn’t a feral orphan anymore. I was learning who I was, and I had the whole pack to support me. Well, maybe not the whole pack, but Shea was more than enough.
We also spent a lot of time at Gwendolyn’s shop, Crystal Song. I usually avoided thinking about my past. I felt trapped by the betrothal, my royal lineage, and my preordained destiny. But having met the woman who took me from the werewolf world to my human parents, I had to know more.
Sadly, there wasn’t a whole lot more to tell. Gwendolyn had known my birth mother from childhood. They’d met at a museum when they were each on school field trips. They were eleven and, even though my mother couldn’t shift, Gwendolyn had known she was a werewolf. The discovery made them fast friends. They’d snuck off together to play in the displays before their teachers caught up with them. Not knowing the extent of their discovery, the adults had assumed that was that. But the girls had exchanged addresses and began a long-distance friendship as pen pals.
I asked Gwendolyn if she still had any of their old letters, but they’d all been destroyed. Eventually, my mother, Marguerite, had become a werewolf and queen. They still kept in touch, but all evidence of their correspondence was destroyed upon being read. The Great Pack and the witches’ covens were not allies and communication between the groups had been expressly forbidden by both cultures. Gwendolyn told us that she and my birth mother had hoped to change that. I felt the weight of another responsibility fall to me.
Gwendolyn agreed she wasn’t convinced my mother’s and brother’s deaths were accidental. The way my father had arranged for my disappearance had been more than fishy. I had to lay the blame at the feet of the one who gained the most, Christina Reynolds. She was an obvious suspect, having ascended to the throne with her tenuous claim on my guardianship. She was a powerful enemy I could no longer ignore.
“Can’t you make Alice a protective amulet or something?” Shea asked one afternoon.
Gwendolyn shook her head. “A protective amulet is fickle magic, and how would you carry one as wolves anyway?”
“We have the same problem with smart phones,” Shea joked.
We did speculate about buying wolfsbane, but Gwendolyn smacked us each upside the head and called us idiots.
“You girls can’t get within three feet of the stuff, even after I sealed it in jars and cleaned up the display. How do you expect to transport a highly illegal substance into school? You’d be expelled before you hopped off the bus.”
“Well, what can the witches offer?” I asked as a joke, but my wording made Gwendolyn pause.
She drew herself up and responded with dignity, “As the High Priestess of the Greenville Coven, I offer you what I offered your mother and father: friendship and the support of the coven should our common enemy return. That common enemy will make its way to the Americas.
“It’s only a matter of time before the upyr become a serious threat to us all. I believe we can bridge peace between our people. With your blessing, I’ll seek permission from the covens to meet your High Council and bridge peace between our nations.”
I was humbled by her faith in me and I rose to take her hands in mine. “Thank you, Gwendolyn Knight, High Priestess of Greenville. I, Princess Alice of the Royal Clan Luna, accept your friendship and pledge my own. Our people are stronger together.” I smiled, thinking that Nadia’s diplomacy lessons were paying off.
“Right,” she said, dropping the formality along with my hands. “Back to business. I’ll discuss the upyr threat and a possible alliance with the werewolves at the next meeting of the covens, which will be around Samhain. We’ll be in touch. In the meantime, take this book, and use it to help with your training.”
She pulled an old leather-bound journal from under the counter. It was a thin black volume with no writing on the cover. We carefully turned to the title page, which was in a language we couldn’t read, though the word upyr stood out in stark letters.
“What is it?” asked Shea.
“It is a very old Slavic account of upyr and how to kill them. I can’t translate the archaic texts, but there’re very fine drawings and woodblock prints that should be useful. The parchment that accompanied this book contained three words in an ancient Slavic language: Влькъ, Old Church Slavonic for wolf; Вампир, the Serbian word for vampire; and Вештица, the Serbian word for witch. This book had belonged to the coven but disappeared long ago. We’d been searching for it ever since.”
We carefully paged through the book, noting pictures of upy
r anatomy with weak points marked and depictions of groups of men with long spears surrounding a cornered upyr. I paused at a page that showed a pack of five wolves facing a small horde of upyr. “These are werewolves!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, this book is very unique. I believe it predates the schism between our people. Some of the pictures look like recipes for potions or spells. Others clearly depict werewolves fighting upyr. We believe some even show witches and wolves working together. That’s what makes it so unusual.
“We got it back this spring, and it took some doing. So take it, study it, and see if you can glean more from the pages. I’ve spent the better part of a month trying to replicate some of the potions. I believe I’ve perfected one, though I still don’t know what it does.” She rifled through a box, then pulled out a small corked vial.
“I couldn’t translate the recipe, but I recognized the herbs from the drawings.” She turned to a page that looked like a recipe with illustrations of herbs decorating the page. “I believe I’ve successfully deciphered the ingredients. I’m not familiar with this combination of herbs, and that’s saying something. Some of the ingredients I wouldn’t considered particularly magical. I don’t know what it is. Maybe upyr poison? There’s no way to test it, and I can’t translate the rest of the page. I’ve made inquiries at universities across the country.”
We gratefully accepted the book and promised to take good care of it. Gwendolyn reminded us not to shift in the city. Not everyone in her coven was convinced peace with the werewolves was a good idea, and that the presence of the Luna heir was still a secret among the witches and most of the wolves. The warning made me question who else knew of my parents’ home in Greenville. I vowed to protect them at all costs. Again, I felt angry that my birth parents had left my family in danger and me ignorant of political intrigue and upyr factions. I was catching up, but I still had so much to learn. We hugged Gwendolyn goodbye and promised to visit again before the summer ended. It was nearly time to head to the Winter Palace for the council meeting, and we’d have only a week afterward in Greenville before heading back to school.