Miracle of the Moon Goddess

Prologue - A Wolf Is Born

Celeste‘s POV:

Seeing the portal to the other world has closed entirely, I fall to my knees. The feeling of the moonlight lingers on my skin, making me grieve for something I’ve never felt before, except for the mere seconds the portal was open. I touch the ground where the portal once was. Longing for the moonlight.

“Open it again!” I ask my brother Damien.

“Are you crazy?” He accuses me, but he looks more afraid than anything else.

Can’t he feel it? How the lack of moonlight feels like being dropped into a lake filled with ice-cold glacier water. The warmth I once had is now taken away from every pore in my body. My skin screams in pain, and I feel like bursting out of my seams. My joints feel like they want to crack open to making more room for something inside me, but luckily my body stays whole.

Breathing hard to calm myself, I hear a voice I’ve never heard before, and I become aware of a new presence that has entered my mind. ‘Damien doesn’t have a wolf soul as you do, Celeste,’ the voice tells me. ‘And you just got yours.’

I clutch my heart. Did I hear that right? Wolf soul? What in the realm? Who is talking in my head? I’m I going crazy? Mom never warned me about this. Is this real? All the questions pop up at a fast pace, not giving me time to think clearly about them, and I don’t know how to feel about this.

The voice inside me sighs: ‘We can talk about it later, now answer your brother before he does think you are going crazy! And don’t reveal anything about me or the moon!’ But what can I say then? I ask the voice in my head. ‘Talk about your mother’s mate.’

Finding some wisdom in those words, I lift my head towards Damien. He has straightened his back and folded his arms like he does when he feels important. He has always been precariously goody-two-shoes, and right now, he’s only seconds away from tapping his foot. I roll my eyes at him before answering.

“Didn’t you see? That was one of the men mom always talks about. Her mates, as she calls them,” I say, knowing that our father would not like how I talk about our mother so freely outside our home. Father is a stickler for titles, especially when not in private. I guess it’s from him Damien got his need to follow the rules. When Damien only nods like he heard me and doesn't care, I continue with eagerness for what this might mean.

“You opened a portal to her homeworld, didn’t you? We could visit her homeworld! Please can’t we go and check it out? I want to see for myself! I want to meet her mates and learn about her world! We are taught so little about mother’s bloodline and so much about fath..” I stop myself, “..Sire Prince Terra’s bloodline. I want to learn more, don’t you?” Taking a big breath to continue, I smile with joy. “We could bring mom too! She would love an outing like that! A few small hours of rest in familiar surroundings. I would love to...”

“NO!” Damien’s voice is stern, and his face looks red. Is he angry? Or is he embarrassed for making a mistake? I know opening a portal to mom's homeworld is forbidden. Still, I won't tell anyone if we go there. Why should I listen to their rules when they don’t bother telling me why we can’t go to her homeworld? One little peek cannot do that much damage, can it? I know we need to take it to survive, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it in secret, does it?

“No,” Damien repeats more calmly, then sighs. “It wasn’t her homeworld, Celeste; I know what I’m doing. It was a farm world.”

A farm world? Really? If he is right then one of mom’s mates is in a world filled with acres upon acres of fields, but not much else. What is he doing there? Maybe he was enslaved when mom was taken and now works as a mechanic. After all, the farm equipment needs maintenance. It’s a likely scenario.

Or maybe?! Maybe he is looking for a way to save her from this moonless world? Think about it! Them shifting under the moon together, then roam around like their wolves. Sighing inwardly at the romance novel playing out in my head, I try to accept the real world. It’s never like in the books I’ve sneaked into my rooms.