Page 32 of Moon Guardian
Vern
“Fuck!” Ryker shouted, tossing a rock so hard that it splintered a tree, the crack reverberating throughout his lands.
We’d all shifted back into our human form, but it didn’t mean we’d lost our supernatural strength. It made me grateful our mate had escaped.
Yet, coming out of the night had been like waking from a nightmare in the middle of fucking nowhere, with no mate, and only our exhaustion as a reward.
I limped, nursing a wound on my leg where Ryker had bitten me. He turned, glancing at it and frowning.
He wouldn’t remember doing it. I pretended I couldn’t remember which wolf I had fought with, either. It was better if the alphas didn’t know I had managed to exit the rut on my own during the night. They wouldn’t have believed it, anyway.
“She’s gone,” I said, limping to the nearest tree to slump down. My wounds would heal soon enough with rest. “We won’t find her now.”
Ryker snorted. “She’s here, inmylands. When my pack returns, we’ll hunt her down.”
“And then what?” Dash asked, the wolf who had nearly ruined the moon ceremony by being late. I would have been furious at him had the human not made it a moot point.
“Then I kill her,” Ryker snarled.
“No,” I said, the word sharp, sure and confident. “We are not killing ourmate.”
The alpha of the Midnight Wolves snarled. He towered over me, naked and his body caked with dirt and blood, but his dark eyes blazed with heat. “We should have killed her before any of this happened.” He cocked his head, the motion animalistic as if he hadn’t quite shaken off his wolf. “After what she did, you dare to call her ourmate?”
I huffed a humorless laugh and leaned back, exposing my throat. The motion made his nostrils flare with rage, because I wasn’t afraid of him, and I made sure he knew it. “We’ve already mated her, you idiot. That’s what she is. Finishing what has been started is the most logical course of action. I, for one, do not wish to live out my years broken with a wolf who’ll never speak to me again.”
Because my wolf most certainly wouldn’t forgive her death, no matter her origins.
She was our mate, and we had made a grave mistake rejecting her.
“She destroyed the Crescent,” Ryker said with a snarl. “She must die.”
I tilted my head, ready to reason with the alphas now that they had exited the rut. “Did she destroy it? Orabsorbit?”
Silence descended as the alphas pondered my question.
Struggling to my feet, I drew on my remaining strength and matched each of their gazes. “Think. You scented her magic, yes? She proved formidable under the power of our High Moon, not weak as a human should be.”
Ryker would be the most difficult to convince, given his loyalty to our Goddess. If he thought She had been harmed, he would shred the human down to the bone and wear her heart as a crown.
But if she was a vessel… a reincarnation of our Goddess come to walk among us… that changed everything.
“Arguing is pointless until we find her,” Shadow supplied. His shaggy dark hair hung over his gray-slate eyes. His nostrils flared as his gaze unfocused, looking past us across the rocky terrain. “She’s here. Somewhere.”
Dash took a stick from the ground and broke it over his leg, wielding the point at us. “I caught her once,” he boasted. “I’ll catch her again.”
I snorted. “You mean when you dragged her to the ceremony in the first place? Excellent work.” I gave him a slow clap as I enunciated my words with thick sarcasm. “You saved the day, soldier boy.”
He snarled at me, not giving me a chance to dodge as he launched his makeshift weapon at my chest. I couldn’t afford another injury, not while I was trying to heal and make a stand against multiple alphas, so I turned, letting it nick my arm instead of anything vital.
I could have taken the blow just to prove my point. But right now there was something more important than my pride.
Our mate running out there scared.
But… not alone.
“She has help,” I reminded the alpha of the Soldier Pack. “You know the Outcasts better than anyone. Where do you think they went?”
He lifted his lip, but surprise flashed across his features. He didn’t expect me to ask his opinion.
