I thought back to the SpringHide Alpha, who had gasped it’s not supposed to be like this as Gabel killed him, and the SaltPaw who had simply run away. Marcus of MarchMoon had been the MeatTaker. He’d struck his deal with Aaron of IceMaw.
Aaron claimed he could smell my lure-scent. That I smelled of the night-blooming cereus.
I had never revealed to Gabel the details of the MeatTaker vision, and the MarchMoon’s disloyalty. I hadn’t needed to in the end. MarchMoon had tried to abduct me when I’d gone to GleamingFang to recruit Ana.
I still hadn’t told Gabel Aaron was the one pulling Marcus’ strings, not that I needed to. Gabel had decided there were two prime suspects to be pulling strings: Gabel’s absent father, Magnes of SableFur, or Aaron of IceMaw. Hell, they probably were both pulling strings.
“Reinforcements are too far away,” I mused.
“Neither Aaron nor Magnes will show their hand by sending reinforcements to MarchMoon, just like neither of them helped SpringHide or Shadowless,” Gabel said. “MarchMoon is expendable. It’s too deep into IronMoon to be useful as more than an outpost for spies. They will let it go. MarchMoon has not realized this yet.”
I did not want to deal with more bloodshed. I knew I would have to. The IronMoon crown would always be soaked in blood.
Gabel misread my quiet. “Buttercup, I promised I would keep our den safe.”
An impossible promise to keep. He would keep it as best he could, which would be better than most.
He rose out of his crouch and looked at my wrapped lumps of obsidian. “How long?”
“Six weeks, then they have to be carved. Spring.”
“But you still have the blue stone. You could use that, yes?”
“The tourmaline?” I gasped. It was wrapped in silk and on the shelf, my body still bruised and aching from the last time I had touched it. “I can’t control it! Even meditating over it is dangerous.”
“You think the same thing will happen again? That it will drag you to the Place Beyond the Tides?” He cocked a brow.
“I don’t even know what happened the first time.” I shuddered. The memories of being dragged through that glowing blue water, where I could neither breathe nor scream, bubbled up from the surface of my memory and washed over my brain.
“I researched it. It’s a rare stone, but not extremely so, and hardly considered precious. Don’t you think if it was dangerous you’d have been told?”
“Maybe not. Maybe we weren’t told about powerful but dangerous things. Temptation. Anita warned me against using the Balance rune too.”
He frowned. “I find that foolish logic. Like humans who believe if they do not tell their children about sex, they will not have sex. Plenty of babies to show for that idea.”
“Please, Gabel, I don’t want to touch it again.” My brain tumbled around as if it were back there, and the Moon’s Eye opened and closed, and those endless dark stairs.
Creases on his face formed, deepened a bit. “I’m only asking if you still have it. I was here in this room when you woke, remember? But if the need were great enough, would I have to ask?”
“If you think the MarchMoon are worth it, think again.”
“Of course they are not. I didn’t want you to waste yourself on that petitioner wolf months ago, I would not ask you to waste yourself on them again for my sake. I will simply deal with them myself. Where is the stone?”
I got to my feet, and reluctantly pointed to the shelf. “I was thinking of putting it out in the yard as a demented garden gnome.”
“May I?”
There was no reason he couldn’t touch it. I figured I’d have it carved into some kind of statue. It would probably be very beautiful decorating the koi pond. Eventually. Where it had taken me still quivered under my awareness, ready to leap out and scare the shit out of me all over again.
He flipped back the silk and cradled the tourmaline in his large hands.
It seemed to clutch light within its sea-and-blue depths.
I turned away.
“I could look at it for hours,” Gabel said.
“Bad idea. I know what happens if you gaze at it for ten minutes.”
“If it’s of no further use to you, may I have it?”
“What would a male want with it?”
“It reminds me of you.”
“Now you are talking crazy.”
He chuckled. “It reminds me of you. Let me have it for my office.”
“Keep it if you like, but be careful with the thing.” I didn’t trust it. The way it held light, the shifting blues and greens... no. No trust at all.
“I enjoy dangerous things, but you know that.”
“There is no escape or rescue from where it took me. Haven’t you learned not to toy with the Moon?”
“I am male, buttercup, and the Moon grants us nothing but bone and claw for use on this earth. I’m sure this thing is harmless to the likes of me.” He tossed the silk back onto the shelf, but tucked the blue stone under his arm. “It’s lovely. Perhaps it would make a beautiful crown for you.”
The MarchMoon’s silence didn’t break before dusk. Gabel told Hix to choose a team and go south.
“Be wary of an ambush,” Gabel warned him. It was a long trip to MarchMoon, and plenty of time for the MarchMoon to make sure a careless IronMoon party would meet with an... accident.
Arms folded across his chest, Hix grunted and nodded once. His shirt obscured the gash still healing on his torso. He and Gabel were still scabbed and raw from earlier injuries. Hopefully the First Beta was as hale as he claimed to be.
As if he sensed my worry, Hix gave me a stern look. Well, couldn’t he just pass for a grouchy school marm.
Gabel went on, “Bring them to heel. No abuse of females or pups. No pillaging. They are IronMoon. They are just...”
“Naughty.” I supplied the word Gabel was looking for.
“They are more than naughty,” Gabel growled.
“They are also IronMoon.”
Gabel’s face twitched, but he told Hix, “Go as far as needed with the males. Kill them all if you have to. Gianna will have to decide what to do with the females and pups.”
My mouth dried up. Not even a Luna for a week. First Platinum’s execution, now this. It was my place, and what I had agreed to, but...
Hix grunted again.
I wanted to tell him to be careful, but he wouldn’t appreciate it. He’d be as careful as the MarchMoon allowed. I wished he and Gabel would value their flesh a bit more.
“Buttercup,” Gabel whispered against my neck as Hix left to prepare, “should I be jealous?”
“Of what?”
“That you worry after our First Beta so.” He nipped my skin.
I sighed.
“I think you are a little too fond of him.”
“Does victory leave you bored?”
He chuckled. “I just wanted you to admit you notice he’s alive.”
“I’d certainly notice if he were dead. Dead things smell and decompose. I also wouldn’t have a training partner.”
The Bond shone like the twinkle of stars, laughing and quivering with amusement. Gabel turned me around. “You know I don’t approve of you training.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I need it. Or do you think kneeing Gardenia’s face so effectively was something I know by instinct?”
“And what about pups?” he asked. “We might not know until it is too late.”
“Then what’s the line?” I retorted, frustrated. I needed to be have some physical skills. I was a Luna. Every Luna, unless she was very old or infirm, needed to be able to do a little bit on her own, and recent events had unfolded like they had because I could at least handle myself for thirty seconds in a fight.
Gabel’s concern was also valid.
“I know Flint crossed it,” Gabel said.
“Oh, come on, that wasn’t typical,” I scoffed. “Hix barely hits me. I hurt my knuckles worse punching him than he ever does to me.
He hates sparring with me. Maybe if you watched, you’d see that—”
“You clearly have no idea how difficult it is for a male to watch that sort of thing,” Gabel growled.
“It’s just training.”
“It is another male leaving marks. It doesn’t matter, buttercup. It’s instinct.”
“Well, you’re smart. Get over it, Gabel. I’m in a lot more danger day to day being Luna of IronMoon than unknowingly having a pup in my belly while I spar.”
He grumbled, “How can you even negotiate the safety of unborn pups.”
“How many times have I needed to use my teeth and claws since getting here?” I retorted. He was right, but so was I. Six months of instruction wasn’t going to make me a warrior, but it did make me more than a soft, squishy target.
“We’ll figure this out a little later. There has to be a middle ground.”
“We’ll make one if there isn’t.”
Before midnight, Hix left with his team. He had a breakfast date with the MarchMoon.
We still hadn’t heard from him by dinner the next day, and I told Gabel, “He hasn’t called.”
“Are you always so nervous when a warrior goes to do his job?” Gabel asked with annoyance.
“Yes.” Before it had been my father, and that had been frightening enough. Now the weight of the entire pack pressed on me, and the awful question of what would happen if things went badly. A lot of eyes would turn towards us for leadership and a solution, and I, frankly, wouldn’t have either.
I hadn’t been trained to rule.
Gabel sighed tolerantly. “Buttercup.”
“You aren’t nervous?”
“These things either take no time, or a good deal of time. I guess the MarchMoon put up a fight.”
He meant full-scale rebellion. Gabel’s lack of concern grated, but he did have more experience with this than I did. Still, Aaron’s threat about Gabel not knowing how to hold on to what he had echoed in my head. Gabel could conquer, but could he hold on to what he won?
Gabel’s phone rang a few hours before dawn.
The MarchMoon had been half-ready for them, but in the oddest way possible. The IronMoon hadn’t found themselves trying to suppress a full-scale revolt. MarchMoon itself had been in revolt.
Part of the pack refused to fight and wanted nothing to do with Marcus’ betrayal. The other half were loyal to Marcus. Chaos tore everything apart while Hix had tried to figure out who was the enemy and who wasn’t. At first Hix had thought it was a clever trick, and he’d be double-crossed, but realized soon enough MarchMoon was in genuine splinters.
“A pack divided at least two ways,” he told Gabel. The best he’d been able to figure out was to fight those who attacked, and leave everyone else alone, except that had resulted in some back-stabbing. The IronMoon forces had overwhelmed everyone, and rounded up any runners, and only now did he feel like he had the situation corralled.
“We are still going through houses now,” he added. “But it seems the guilty expected us. The pack is in tatters and shock. You are needed here, Alpha. It is not my place to make sense of this.”
Accusations, Stated And Implied
We arrived in the early afternoon at the center of MarchMoon: a single story farmhouse in the middle of a cleared field. It had once been a working farm, but now the fields were thick and overgrown under the blanket of snow.
The house had taken damage, with broken windows, the front door splintered, a hole in the siding. Blood on the snow, the mud, the house timbers.
Hix greeted us. A new gash split his cheek, and his skin had a faint pallor. He moved stiffly around his mid-section and I belatedly remembered the wolf still had stitches in his belly from the revolt in IronMoon.
Hix glared at me, then at Gabel. “She shouldn’t be here, Alpha. Your enemies will catch word your Luna comes to battlefields. You are fully capable of punishing females.”
“Do not tell me what I should do, First Beta,” Gabel growled.
Hix stood his ground. “She should not be here. She needs to be safe. This is not safe.”
Gabel snarled at Hix. Hix looked down and placed his hands behind his back, shifting his weight between his feet, but smelled of resentment and anger.
“Show us where they are,” Gabel commanded.
Hix took us around the back of the house where a group of three dozen or so MarchMoon waited. About half of them were prisoners, bloody and roughed up and bound, a mix of males and females.
“The females of rank,” Hix explained. “A mix of loyal, confused, and rebellious. The rabid ones are tied up.”
One of the bound ones spat in his direction and growled a challenge at him. Hix gave her a tolerant look, clearly unimpressed at her absurdity.
“Come on, big boy,” she growled at him. “Big IronMoon Beta afraid of a little female?”
“I tied you up for your safety,” Hix replied.
She snapped her teeth. She snarled, squirming like a snake in her silver-laced bonds. Just enough silver twisted in the rope to prevent her from shifting, but from the snarling, it seemed she might be able to generate enough fury to overcome the silver.
“Keep an eye on that one,” I told Hix. “Enraged females can overpower silver.”
“Really.” Hix looked at the female with newfound respect. “I would like to see that.”
“Keep picking a fight with her and maybe she will,” I said dryly. “Who is the highest ranked female here?”
“That old matron. Marcus was a bachelor.”
“And the pups?” I asked.
“Elsewhere. Safe,” Hix assured me. “I’ll fetch them if you wish, Luna, but I didn’t see any reason that they should witness this.”
“There’s none, I just wanted to make sure they were safe.” It would also make the females less frantic. My first concern would have been for my babies, and to hell with any wolf who tried to tell me different.
Gabel selected the male with the most prestige. With Hix having killed his MarchMoon counterparts the next in line seemed to be this older male about my father’s age.
The male snarled at Gabel.
Gabel kneed him in the kidneys. The male crumbled into the snow, chuffing and coughing.
Gabel said, “If you’re going to stage a rebellion, best to have the whole pack on board with it, mutt.”
The wolf wrestled himself upright and snarled at Gabel. “Fuck you.”
“This explains why we didn’t get a writ of war, my Luna.” Gabel kicked the male away from him. The wolf howled in pain and tumbled into the snow. “The rebels didn’t want their own pack to stop them. Traitorous from both ends.”
The wolf shuddered on the snow but still managed to spit at Gabel.
Gabel snarled and grabbed the wolf by his shoulder, his left hand extending and darkening with oily fur. Bones in the wolf’s shoulder creaked and blood spurted around Gabel’s claws. The wolf shrieked in sudden, startled pain.
Gabel slashed his claws across the wolf’s throat.
Blood exploded outwards in a thin horizontal curtain. Gabel released the body, and the wolf fell forward into the snow, gurgling and his blood steaming, congealing in the icy cold.
I licked my lips and swallowed the nauseated lump in my throat. The bound female scooted back a bit and re-evaluated her situation.
Gabel’s partially-shifted claws melted into something more human. His eyes swept the males again, identifying the next male of prestige with the instinct males had for such things, and approached him. He bent down and shoved his face in the male’s face, weighing him, then pulled back in disgust. “This one knows nothing I care about. Just takes orders.”
“Perhaps you should not have killed that one?” I nodded to the dead one.
“He spit at you, buttercup.” Gabel stepped over the dead body, his bare feet stained red from the blood.
I was not having a good first week as Luna. “He spit in my general direction.”
Gabel cricked his neck in response. “
Intolerable insolence. These males have nothing of value. That leaves the females, my Luna. Will you question them, or shall they just be killed to save us time?”
I resisted the urge to bite my lip. This was what I’d signed on for when I’d agreed to take the vows, although I hadn’t had so much of a choice in that either. Blood and bone were the reality of being an IronMoon.
I surveyed the females, looking for some sign or clue that some of them knew something useful. Gabel wouldn’t force me to kill them, but that wouldn’t be necessary. If there were enough loyal females, I could leave the traitors to their tender justice.
My attention fell on the old matron. Hix had brought her a little stool, so she didn’t have to sit in the snow. He was a civilized sort of monster.
She stared up at me with an unimpressed, unwavering gaze. Reminded me of Anita, smug and oh so serene, like her age gave her immunity against respecting rank and prestige. Her pack was in tatters, her Alpha had betrayed his Lord, and now her pack and home were about to be razed, and she stared at me like somehow she was exempt from caring?
Deep inside a dark, angry part of me, I growled. “We know Alpha Marcus had betrayed Lord-Alpha Gabel. Who is he working with? Who else is involved?”
Interrogation was not my strong suit.
She didn’t reply.
“Why did he order my abduction in GleamingFang three weeks ago?” I pressed. “He wasn’t going to bring me back here to MarchMoon. Gabel’s Hunters would have found me within days and butchered you all. Where was I supposed to go? Was I going to be delivered to someone?”
The whole abduction attempt had been so half-assed that I believed it could have been Marcus’ foolish idea, except I suspected it was Aaron, counting on Marcus to bungle it for reasons I couldn’t fathom. Just to rattle Gabel? Prove he could? “How did Marcus know I had arrived in GleamingFang he had a team on me within hours?”
The old bat knew. Maybe not all of it, but there was information shifting around in her brain. She curled her lips in a tiny smile as if I were an insolent child and she didn’t have humor me. I was just the little upstart Luna, and she wasn’t impressed in the least. If she had hissed at me, spit at me, snarled, growled, refused, fine. But instead she acted like oh, wasn’t I adorable, silly little girl.
Iron Oracle Page 2