Page 2 of Moon Guardian
And the moon to rise.
Ryker clenched his fists and widened his stance as the first hit of power rushed through our bodies. “I’m not waiting for the douchebag. If he doesn’t want the blessing of the Moon Goddess, then it’s his loss.”
My best friend kept his gaze skyward. He’d always been a superstitious wolf, and loyal to our Goddess to a fault. He’d gone old school, hadn’t even slept with anyone to keep his future mate-bond pure. I admired him for it, even if I hadn’t abided by that rule before I’d become alpha. I’d never intended to lead, but here I was, fighting the urge to shift and hunt my new mate through the forest.
I wondered if this was what Ryker had always felt. Yearning like I’d never experienced stirred in my core, calling me to release my wolf and let him begin the chase. Something waited for us, all of us, that would change our lives forever.
The other alphas felt it too, their muscles straining as they steadied themselves at the point of each moondial. The ceremony would take hours before the Goddess appeared.
But she was here, watching us. I could feel it.
A sliver of moonlight broke through the clouds as the sun edged closer to the horizon, making me tilt my head back.
The howl that my wolf released came straight from my soul as my first shift in three full weeks finally began.
Katlyn
“Did you hear that?” I asked Charlie as I stopped in my tracks, gripping my bow in one hand as a drew an arrow halfway out of my quiver.
The motion was reflex. One born out of a lifetime of being hunted like the prey I was.
Except, this time the sensation felt different. As if something exciting might happen.
I peered through the thick canopy, moonlight now our only source of light after the sun had descended. I wondered what had shot through to my core and made my stomach twist with anticipation like that. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming. Something wonderful and terrible at the same time.
Although, I hadn’t slept for three days while I searched for Moon Blossoms with Charlie, so there was that. Maybe I was just losing my mind.
“Stop trying to scare me, Kaitsja,” Charlie chided, approaching a glimmering white flower from a hidden curve of forest I’d missed. The moonlight hit it just right, revealing what had been invisible a moment before moonrise.
Plucking it from the ground, he twirled the bloom between his fingers. The mud he’d caked over his face cracked when he grinned, giving him a comical appearance. “It won’t work. I’m not scared of anything.”
Returning my arrow to its quiver, and draping my bowstring over my shoulder, I gently took the blossom from him and placed it in the bag hanging from my elbow with the others. “That’s not true,” I countered. “You’re terrified of my Auntie Daliah.”
He tilted his head in admission. “I stand corrected. Your aunt scares the shit out of me.”
“And don’t call me that,” I said, poking him in the chest. “Only Aunt Daliah calls meKaitsja.”
He grinned. “I know. And you hate it.”
I did. It was some obscure name she’d latched onto when I’d been born. My mother had appeased her, naming me Katlyn, but Aunt Daliah always called me by the name she’d seen in her dreams.
Crazy Aunt Daliah. And Charlie loved to tease me about it.
He gave me a wink, lightening the mood.
“Jerk,” I said, chuckling as I brushed past him and resumed the search, my mood quickly turning somber again as I realized how few blossoms we’d found. My bag dangled from my arm with only four of the prize blooms.
We needed a lot more than that to survive what was coming next.
“Hey,” Charlie said, catching up to me. “We’ll find enough, okay? We still have a few more days.”
A few more days before those damn wolves made my life hell again.
A few more days until those monsters went after my family.
Glancing up again, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we didn’t have much time left. The High Moon had always come on the same night every month, with the annual wolf mating ceremony bringing the worst of the magical storms, but after the massacre, I questioned our timetable. The wolves would be angry, and that meant their Goddess would be pissed off as well.
They weren’t just going to wait around to kill us off this time. Not when they’d lost their alphas. The wolves were already a volatile race. They were outright murderous psychos when provoked.
