Page 66 of The Wolf Moon

“Why not?” Cate interjected easily, “You have her ability, don’t you?” I looked to her at a loss, my limbs beginning to tremble at the insane idea they had presented before me.

“She must have, I don’t know, given it to me like she did Roman,” I said, refusing to budge from the comfort of my prior world.

“You were the one who gave it to that boy,” Cate responded just as stubbornly. “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re asking why you were chosen. You weren’t. You chose him, don’t you understand?” A hint of irritation came across Cate’s features as she rose her hand to her forehead in slight frustration.

“You’ve been going on and on about this beast for centuries. Don’t curse him. No, I won’t take away his blessing. He can change. My word,” Cate turned to look at Cynthia with a groan, “Like I told you, when she asked me to take away his punishment, it was like she was back all over again.” Cynthia nodded mutely.

“Lovesick,” She agreed, “Since the beginning.”

I had paled entirely. They were adamant on this truth. I couldn’t help but to look at myself, as though my own body had betrayed me. Was it all true? I couldn’t fathom it… but was it true? An unknown pain was rising within me. This idea that I was who they said I was… it was painful.

“If…,” I couldn’t say it. The pain was sharpening. I shook my head.

“Go on, my sister,” Cynthia coaxed me gently. I shook my head again.

“If… you’re telling me the truth,” I choked, the pain like fire in my throat. I covered my eyes with my hands suddenly, beginning to struggle to breathe. “Then, I… I cursed them.” The thought was like knives in my lungs, slicing at me dangerously. The Maiden’s blessing… if I was the Maiden, as they said, which I couldn’t even imagine… I recalled Logan’s words.

She was pregnant with a pup nearly two decades ago when the Maiden took away her blessing. She was one of many who lost their child in their own bellies.

I could hear Roman’s words echoing behind this.

Birth; that’s her blessing. The Maiden took away our ability to exist.

I felt hands wrap around my wrist, pulling my own from my eyes gently. Tears were flooding my sight, but I could see Cynthia’s blurry form before me. My mind was overwhelmed. I recalled my hand on Diana’s own stomach as she prayed for fertility; that surge of power the flowed through me to her. Had it truly been me all along?

“You had to make a sacrifice,” Cynthia said to me carefully, “The birth of werewolves are a blessing only you manage. When you became mortal, you weren’t aware of yourself any longer. The infertility was an unfortunate side effect, though temporarily, Mila. Temporary, as long as you want it to be, this I promise you.”

“I don’t understand,” I responded in frustration, looking to Cate. “You’re here, like me. You’re here as wolves or humans or whatever, but you remember everything. I don’t remember any of this. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s what you asked for,” Cate answered firmly. “Look…” She gestured from her to Cynthia and back again. “We were done. The King Alpha was an insult to us. Constantly. He took your blessing, one you never gave to anyone else before, and used it to take over the entire werewolf species. Instead of vying for peace, as we demanded through the Oracles, he systematically began to oppress and destroy the humans and any strength they had.”

“Hecate,” Cynthia called her name in warning.

“I’m telling her what she needs to know,” Cate answered Cynthia with a hint of irritation before turning back to me. “Selene decided to punish him by not giving him a mate. This didn’t deter him at all. In fact, he got worse. So I decided, fine, he won’t get peace. You would think a couple extra years would give a person time to grow and reflect upon their mistakes. He began to plan humankind extinction instead. And you.”

Suddenly, Cate looked at me with a frown, not continuing.

“You refused to punish him,” Cynthia continued for her in a much less blunt tone. “We asked you to take away his ability, at the least. You refused. You see, you were quite fond of him. And even through his insults, you only saw his pain. Instead of punishment, you asked us to release him.”

“Incessantly,” Cate reminded me firmly. “I thought maybe we could contain him for awhile, give him a bit of solitary confinement for him to come to his senses. This didn’t work. He banished all my oracles in response, cutting off the connection between us and the wolves.”

“Whatever we did, it wasn’t working. He was moving forward with his plan to wipe out the humans. We couldn’t allow this. So we decided,” Cynthia hesitated now, as though she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell me what they decided.

“We decided to restart the cycle,” Cate said for her, echoing a sentiment I recalled Cynthia mentioning the last night I had saw her. “Wipe out the wolves and start over from scratch. The King Alpha had already poisoned so many minds, it wasn’t worth the headache. You weren’t a fan of this idea, even when I said the King Alpha would be taken as well. I mean, we were offering him peace essentially, right?”

There was a moment of pause as Cate gave me time to take her words in.

“Well, you asked for a last chance,” She continued simply. “You asked to become mortal; a human with no memories of your past, so that you could grow to love him all over again and prove that the man you cared for was still there behind all the anger.”

“I came to assist you and Hecate, too. I would help guide you. She would stay close to you. But this is your path, the one you chose and have been walking. That is why nothing you do will be considered a failure to us. You can stop this, if that’s what you want to do,” Cynthia spoke me to kindly, reaching to grasp my hands. I was too stunned to pull away.

“We could just stop here, I mean,” Cate suggested with a shrug before smiling deviously. “As I said, tonight seems like a great night for a massacre, don’t you think?” Cate was suddenly much more terrifying than she had ever been before as the Shadow of Death. This was the Crone. She had no qualms with taking the souls of the werewolves here tonight.

“No,” I rejected her offer, my voice firm despite my internal feeling of being so much smaller than the two creatures before me. “No. If what you say is true, you… no, we caused this. We… interfered. And we have to try to correct it. I can’t just give up on them. And I can’t just give up on…” I thought of Roman, an image of a man that seemed to shine differently in my mind suddenly. Had my own fondness, before I even knew it existed, contributed to this? I couldn’t even imagine it.

Cate made a noise of satisfaction in her throat. “Memories or not; Artemis in the flesh.”

Cynthia looked entirely pleased and relieved.

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