Page 24 of Moon Guardian
She might have saved me, but she was still a wolf.
Her striking gaze watched me with a measure of patience as I took my fill of the delicious cave spring. Her eyes glowed with a pale emptiness I had seen before, only in the eyes of those like my sister infected by the Moon Shadow Plague. Where my sister had grown fail and ill, blind and weak, this wolf thrived.
Just like me.
“Can you… talk?” I asked when I had finished. I wiped my hands on my pants, wincing when I realized how many cuts I had earned on my palms after climbing a tree.
My shoulder, though, didn’t hurt anymore. Taking a deep breath, I rolled it, my eyebrows shooting up when it didn’t hurt.
I had… healed.
The wolf paced back and forth, shaking her mane as she grew restless.
I realized after a moment that she was trying to shift, but it didn’t come as easily to her as it did to the other wolves I had encountered.
Her body twisted and she yipped in pain. Her bones cracked and her body reformed, forcing itself tighter as the fur retracted and fingers took shape.
With a final moan, the beast turned into a woman as she stretched out on the floor naked and gasping for breath. A mane of silver hair glimmered with moonlight, billowing over her shoulders, the sight even more impressive than her beastly form. She brought a hand to her chest, dried blood caking around a long gash.
“Are you okay?” I asked, finding myself concerned for her. The entity inside my mind seemed fond of this shifter, and she hadn’t given me a reason yet to distrust her.
On the contrary, she displayed a similar ability as my own, intriguing me, and she had stood up against four crazed alphas to save my life.
“I… will be,” she croaked as she slapped a hand on the ground and dragged herself up against the wall. She winced as the last few bones clicked into place, then she relaxed. “There. It’s done.”
I chewed on my lip, not sure what question to ask first.
A howl caught my attention, followed by a snarl as multiple alphas engaged in a fight outside the cave.
A fight to decide who would have the privilege of killing me first.
“They can’t enter,” she assured me, leaning her head against the back of the wall. She draped her hair over her body, the silver waves glimmering as the moonlight shimmered between us. “I enchanted this place yesterday.”
“What do you mean… enchant?” I asked. As far as I was aware, the only power wolves had were purely physical. They could shift. They aged extremely slowly. They had supernatural strength and speed, and they were a giant pain in my ass.
She grinned, her features as gorgeous in a way that marked her decidedly inhuman. “Do you think you’re the only one blessed by the Goddess?”
Cryptic much.
Frowning, I focused on the other part of her statement. “So you knew I would need sanctuary here?” That suggested a few things that didn’t make her my friend.
She chuckled. “While I do have the occasional vision, I did not know how or when I would meet you, only that I needed to be prepared. The High Moon Ceremony is an ominous event. I had my suspicions that it would not end well.”
Sighing, I slumped back on my heels, picking up a smooth rock to examine before I chucked it across the stream. “That’s a fucking understatement.”
A million emotions roiled inside my soul. I wanted to grieve, to rage, to scream, to put my head under my pillow and pretend all of this was a horrible dream.
But it was real.
And somehow, I was still alive.
Perhaps I could return in time before my family assumed the worst. I had accomplished one thing, at least, and that was to stop the storms.
Charlie might have died.
But we had won the battle.
I picked up another rock and examined it, watching how the moonlight emanating from my fingertips glistened against its surface.
