Page 56 of Luna Rising

My dream from King Orrin’s chambers invaded my mind. This was not the moment for this conversation. Obviously I needed to tell Ewan the truth, the real reason Zosia had ended the relationship with Stavros. And I would. Soon. After the dust settled from this latest storm.

“Zara?”

I blinked until his face filled my vision and grinned inappropriately for the situation. “Glitch. It’s fine.”

His fangs pressed down over where my pulse would have been, and I swore I felt it throb. The points broke my skin, yet Ewan did sink his fangs in far enough to drink. I wanted him to bite me so bad that my toes curled.

“Are punishing me for biting your beta?” I panted unnecessarily as his tongue flicked out and licked away the drops of blood on my neck.

“Do you want me to punish you?” Amusement and definite interest danced his gold swirls of his irises.

I had started the joke, but when I searched his gorgeous face, I remembered his rage when he found me drinking Charlie’s blood.

Ewan sobered. “You know I would never hurt you, right? I was upset, never with you.” His hands slid up my back and into my tangled hair. “You could have ripped his throat out and I would still love you. You are my everything. The reason I wake up every day. The reason I fight to kill. The reason I exist at all. Without you, there is no me.”

I crushed my mouth to his, needing that kiss more than any we’d shared previously in this life. In hindsight, my fear felt silly. Ewan would never hurt me, not even in the worst throes of bloodlust or alpha fury. I knew that to be true in my soul. Because I would never hurt him. In so many ways, he outranked me, yet in our true mate bond we were equals. I would set fire to the rain if it hurt him. My love had no boundaries or limitations. Same as his for me.

And that was the reason the soulmate bond was so dangerous.

Ewan broke the kiss and gripped my jaw with both hands. “What did you see, Zara?”

Dream Unweavers

I told Ewan about the dream while cuddled together in the cave. He took it better than I had hoped. No throwing things, no screaming, no rumble of alpha rage. Shock had pulsed through our bond as I spoke. Like me, he assumed Nicasia and Ambrose were the soulmates in the story. Since we’d both grown up in wolf packs, neither of us knew if fae families passed this legend on to their children. Luckily, we had a contingent of fae waiting impatiently for our return.

The sun was just peeking over the mountains when Ewan and I left the safety of the cave and raced through the snowy canyon. It was a beautiful day for such a horrible event. Today, every shifter pack and fae coven would pick a side. The Taurus wolves would officially become traitors in the eyes of the Zodiac Councils. The war would begin.

My blood sang at the thought of a battle to the death, and deep-seated rage simmered in my gut. The fae had done this to us, made us warriors, protectors, killers. Zosia had been a naïve child during the games, and King Orrin forced her to make the decisions of an adult. He’d corrupted her love for Stavros and unwittingly created a clusterfuck in the present. The fae weren’t trying to prevent the end of the supernatural world. They simply wanted to clean up his mess and hide their dirty secret.

By the time this was over, I vowed every shifter would know the truth.

Winter, Birch, and Walter were drinking coffee in the living room when Ewan and I returned. The air smelled sweet, like pancakes or waffles, and I could hear Colleen in the kitchen.

“We need to talk.” Ewan tilted his head back and sniffed the air. “Where’s Charlie? He should hear this.”

“One of his sisters had a nightmare. I can get him back,” Birch said.

Ewan replied with a curt nod.

“Is this clothing optional?” Walter asked. “I’d rather you don’t put your bare asses on the furniture.”

“We’ll put on clothes,” I blurted. Ewan was edgy, and Walter’s snide remarks irritated his wolf.

Coffee sloshed over Winter’s hands as she leapt to her feet. She hastily set the cup aside and muttered a spell to clean up the hot liquid. “I have stuff you can wear, Zara.” She made a valiant effort to meet Ewan’s eyes. “Archer has some sweatpants that will fit you.”

Ewan and I went with Winter to get dressed, returning minutes later to find Charlie, Colleen, and Kieran had joined the others. I figured Ewan would send the teenager away, but he only spared the kid a glance and said nothing. Mrs. Wynn and Frann arrived last and, again, I thought Ewan might not want a foreign wolf to hear such sensitive topics. He gave a deferential nod, like she was one of his elders instead of an Ophiuchus wolf.

I did most of the talking, since it was my dream and all. In the cave, I’d told Ewan how the memory really ended, with royal guards carrying Zosia from the king’s private chambers. I left out that part when I recounted the story to everyone else. They didn’t need to know; it wasn’t important to anyone but Ewan and me.

“Fae soulmates are extremely rare. Only one pair is ever supposed to walk to this earth at any given time.” Frann smiled sadly. “Yet two pairs sit in this room.” Her eyes shifted to a spot behind Winter, making me curious if she could see Archer. “That is significant.”

“It’s also a technicality,” Walter said. “Zosia and Stavros were only Gaia-marked because Nicasia and Ambrose were undead in the year of their birth.”

“Unless it’s not,” I said. “Gaia seeks balance. What if she marked a new set of soulmates to destroy the first? I mean, that’s why King Orrin made the wolves, right? To fight the vampires. Humans, too. But it was the war with the vampires that led to the eternal protectors.”

Honestly, I was talking out of my ass. These weren’t memories I’d dreamt, they were just things that I knew to be true. Still, my word-vomit made certain of the older generations in the room uneasy, something Ewan didn’t miss either.

“This is the problem with the stories from the old country,” Frann said. “They were twisted then, and they are even twistier now. Many Kings of the Valley believed the moment they put that crown on their head, Gaia would speak to them. When that didn’t happen, they made all sorts of fantastical claims, dictated prophecies—anything so history would remember them. Fact and fiction are relative.”

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