The Prophesied Luna (completed)

The Other Side

Kayla’s POV

             The blinding white light from the explosion dimmed to reveal the lush green forest. I was confused as I remembered that the forest on the eastern border was partially burned and flooded by my attempt to put out the fire. Before I could make sense of where I was, the deer from my dreams with the most beautiful clear blue eyes I had ever seen appeared in front of me. Like in my dreams, her eyes gazed into mine as if they were trying to pierce my soul. Having caught my attention, she took off into the forest and I chased after her as quickly as my two legs could carry me. We entered a sea of lavenders and I was mesmerized by the endless rows of purple flowers before me. The deer must have used that split second of my amazement to escape because when I focused again on chasing her, she was nowhere to be found, just like in all of my dreams. 

            No! Please don’t leave me here! Please come back! 

            My desperate pleas echoed in the clearing to no avail until my voice was finally hoarse from yelling and I sank down to the ground, defeated. I pulled my knees to my chest and rested my forehead on my knees as I cried for everything that I had lost. I had no idea where I was and whether this was another dream or perhaps I had passed on to the other side after that explosion. I had no idea about the outcome of the attack on our Pack and whether everyone was now finally safe or perhaps that explosion had killed everyone on the eastern border, including my brother. I had no idea whether my mate was dead or alive, whether my little pup was dead or alive. As I sat in the middle of the sea of lavender crying my eyes out, a pair of arms pulled me into the most comforting embrace that I have ever experienced. In that moment, I felt every worry fading away, every fear retreating to the back of my mind and my battered heart finally stopped clenching so hard that it was hurting me. 

            “I’m here for you, my child. Everything would be alright,” a gentle voice comforted me and I looked up to see who was talking to me, only to see the clear blue eyes of the deer from my dreams. “How is this possible,” I mumbled in confusion. “Where am I? And who are you?” So many questions were swimming in my head as I stared at the stranger hugging me but I made no attempts to push her away. I couldn’t explain it but everything about this felt right, like this was where I was always supposed to be. 

            “It’s possible because you’re the prophesied High Priestess, my child, and it’s possible because I’m your mother. Our bond allows us to meet each other in the spirit world,” the woman explained gently. 

            My mind struggled to make sense of what she had just said as I stared dumbfounded at the woman. She had the same sky blue eyes as me and the same dimple on the left side of our face when we smiled. In fact, we looked so alike that the only difference I could see between us was the color of our hair. After the battle at the former Council’s grounds, my hair had turned from brown to auburn. The woman’s hair was a familiar shade of fiery red and then it struck me where I had seen it before. Aldrnari’s hair color was the exact same shade of red, which could only mean one thing. This woman is my birth mother, but there was no way for me to remember a woman who had died right after giving me life. 

            “I’m sorry for leaving you right after you were born, Kayla. Believe me when I say it was one of the hardest things that I have done in my life but I was left with no choice. You were the first true werewolf and witch hybrid from the line of the High Priestess in over 300 years and it was only possible because the Moon Goddess had come to me in my dreams during a Blood Moon. She told me that I needed to leave to be with my fated mate so that the bloodline of the High Priestess could produce a true werewolf and witch hybrid to end the feud between her children. You see, in the beginning, witches and werewolves were created equal and the Moon Goddess even blessed some of them with the sacred mate bond. But the original sin committed by the First Witch, her betrayal of the mate bond, was like a curse on fated witches and werewolves who came after her. As if to make up for her mistake, the fated pairs had to face more challenges than they could bear. For this reason, not one pair of witch and werewolf fated to each other had the happy ending that all fated mates desired.” 

            My birth mother’s words chilled me to the bones and I couldn’t help but be indignant about the so-called curse. The shock and anxiousness at meeting my birth mother for the first time had completely dissipated as fury consumed me. Was this the reason why Finn and I had to go through so much? And if the Moon Goddess was truly our Creator, why didn’t she intervene? Surely, she could have prevented this unjust curse!  “How is that fair? How can the Moon Goddess call us her children and still punish us in this cruel way for something that was not our fault? Why are we being punished for the sins of the First Witch?!” 

            A warm hand stroked my cheek gently and I could feel my anger subsiding slowly. Even though I’ve only known the woman holding me for a few minutes, she evoked feelings in me that I couldn’t explain. In her arms, I felt at ease and protected. My instincts told me that she only had my best interests at heart and that I could trust her. Despite feeling indignant and angry, I wanted to hear her out and deep in my heart, there was a yearning for her to be right, for whatever she had to say to be sufficient to redress my grievances.

            “My child, if our Creator didn’t love us, if Her heart didn’t ache for Her children, would She try so tirelessly over so many centuries to make things right again? You’re a mother too, and I’m sure you know that you cannot control your children. Each supernatural being was created with their own free will because the Moon Goddess sees us as her children, not puppets to be controlled. She has our best interests at heart, which is why She bestowed so many gifts on us, including the bond between fated mates. Yet, She couldn’t just stop the consequences when we make bad choices. If your child did something wrong and destroyed something that you bought for him, would you replace the item or would you let him go without? In fact, you’d punish him so that he learns a lesson, wouldn’t you? If you look at things from this perspective, do you not think that the Moon Goddess has been merciful towards us? The bond between fated mates was meant to be a blessing so that two souls could become one and in doing so, one makes the other stronger. If you betray this bond, your soul would have to suffer the consequence but even then, the Moon Goddess made sure that the First Witch was still strong enough. She still had control over the element of fire and if she had wanted to, she didn’t have to go back to the human tribe.” 

            “I don’t understand. If the First Witch didn’t go back to the human tribe, how would she have survived on her own in the forests with a child on the way?” My birth mother’s explanation did put some things into perspective for me but the First Witch lived over a thousand years ago. If I remembered my history lessons correctly, women back then didn’t have the ability to survive on their own because of the way society was structured. Besides witches and werewolves were all communal creatures since our creation.

            “The Moon Goddess is merciful, my child. If the First Witch had repented and asked for help, do you think the Moon Goddess wouldn’t have intervened? Instead the First Witch decided to rely on her own strength and that decision sealed her fate,” my birth mother explained patiently. 

            “Well, that still doesn’t explain why it’s fair to punish all werewolves and witches fated to each other because of bad decisions made by the First Witch,” I pointed out. 

            “No, it isn’t fair, my child. After the First Witch’s passing, her daughter, Lae, had the opportunity to make things right again. The mate bond between werewolves and witches was damaged by then so the pull of the bond was only felt by one side, normally by the witch. You need to see the bond as a kind of magic that was broken by one side. All magic requires a balance of light and darkness, just like how the moon phases, giving us equal amounts of light and darkness. When the mate bond was broken by the First Witch, the balance was tipped towards the darkness and her daughter was given a chance to restore the balance by the Moon Goddess.” 

            Realization dawned on me as I recalled what I had learned about the correct version of history after the battle at the former Council’s grounds. “She was fated to one of the sons of the First Alpha and the First Luna, wasn’t she? But she couldn’t get past the fact that she had suffered growing up and she believed that she should have grown up like a Princess instead, like the daughter of the First Alpha and the First Luna, the White Wolf Luna. She believed that everyone and everything in this world and the next had done her a grievous injustice so her heart was set on revenge. When in fact, she could have been happy. She was loved in the Pack that took her in and by her fated mate even though he couldn’t feel the bond. She had the whole world in her hands but she chose power and revenge,” I whispered as tears rolled down my face. In the end, it was our own choices and our own demons that decided our fates, not the Moon Goddess. As I thought about everything that had happened between Finn and me, I realized that even without the so-called curse, there would still be ups and downs in our relationship, perhaps less dramatic ones but who could say that even then, we’d always make the right decisions?

            My birth mother smiled as she held me tighter, stroking my back and letting me cry my heart out again. “After the White Wolf Luna was given the power to transform humans into werewolves, the number of werewolves increased significantly, just as the number of witches had increased dramatically under Lae, who went on a mad baby-making spree with human men. Without accidents, witches are able to live for a long time, much longer than werewolves in fact, because the First Witch was an immortal. Throughout the centuries, the Moon Goddess gave us multiple chances to make things right. In each generation, at least one witch was fated to a werewolf descended from the First Alpha but for 700 years, not one pair of fated mates succeeded in repairing the bond. You cannot even begin to imagine how painful it was for the Moon Goddess to watch her own children fight against each other, betray each other and hurt each other. Even the second High Priestess, Reioa, who was the granddaughter of the first High Priestess, and Mikill, who was the great-grandson of the White Wolf Luna, couldn’t break the curse and repair the bond. But they gave us the seed of hope that we needed and it took a total of six generations for this seed to germinate. Before Mikill betrayed Reioa, they were in love and happy. The evidence of their love was the twin daughters that they had and the Moon Goddess protected them after their parents’ fall out, ensuring that the coven they were brought to treated them right. And we, my child, we are their blood. Our bloodline descends from both the White Wolf Luna and the First High Priestess, the two most pure hearted children of the Moon Goddess. We are the physical evidence of the love that could exist between a werewolf and a witch.”

            “But if the daughters of Reioa and Mikill had survived, then why weren’t they able to break the curse or bring about peace between witches and werewolves?” I was quite overwhelmed by the amount of information that my birth mother was passing on to me. 

            “How could they after knowing what their father did to their mother? On their 16th birthday, one of them was chosen by the Moon Goddess to take over their mother’s mantle and serve as the third High Priestess. It was the first and only time in our history where the previous HIgh Priestess had died before she could impart her knowledge to her successor, so the Third High Priestess had the great honor of learning from the Moon Goddess herself. She was wise and with her sister’s assistance, they helped many covens who had suffered after the Great Betrayal to survive. She dedicated her life to serving the Moon Goddess but she rejected the part of her that had anything to do with her father until one day, her wolf simply vanished. One day, she met her fated mate, a werewolf, descended from one of the sons of the First Alpha and it tore her heart apart. She felt the pull of the bond but her fated mate didn’t, yet he was saving himself for her, tirelessly waiting for her to appear in his life. Alas, the Third High Priestess couldn’t overcome the demons tormenting her. She couldn’t forget how her mother had died and in the end, she chose her own path and rejected the bond. In the generations that followed, witches from the line of the High Priestess were taught to put duty above everything else. We were taught to dedicate ourselves to the service of our kind and to the Moon Goddess, especially with the dark side of the balance still going strong and threatening to upset the balance. We were also taught that witches didn’t belong with werewolves, so all of us took on humans as our chosen mates. As a result, the werewolf blood in our bloodline became so meagre that we were no longer hybrids until you, my child, until the night when the Moon Goddess told me that I have a choice to make. And I chose my mate, even though it broke my heart to leave my Nari, so that we could have you and finally restore everything to the way that they were supposed to be in the beginning.” 

            My heart clenched painfully as I thought of the price of my birth mother’s decision and once again, I couldn’t help but feel that the Moon Goddess was not the merciful Creator that everyone made her out to be. Why did She force my birth mother to choose between her family and her fated mate? Why did my birth mother have to give up one daughter so that she could have another to save the world? I wanted to protest against what my birth mother had said about the Moon Goddess but before I could do so, my birth mother’s face became blurry and everything around me began to fade away.