Rejected Luna: The Moonborn Returns

Chapter 5: What I Could Do

He spoke to me every night for a week.

Never more than a few words.

Where are you. Please. I'm sorry.

I never answered.

I pushed him out the way Darian taught me, picturing a stone door slamming shut, and every night it got a little harder to hold.

"You can't keep doing that," Darian said on the ninth morning, watching me wipe a nosebleed on my sleeve.

"Blocking him costs you."

"Everything costs me," I muttered.

"True."

Darian had spent the week testing me.

He showed me how to slow my heartbeat.

How to heal a scratch on purpose, and how it left me dizzy for an hour.

How to feel when someone was lying, if they were close enough, and if I was angry enough.

That last one only worked when I had a bond with the person.

A thread, he called it. Blood, pack, mate. Lies tugged on the thread like a bad note.

I hated how easily I could feel it.

Darian never lied to me. But he never told me the whole truth either.

"I'm going to fetch water," I said.

"Not alone."

"It's a stream, Darian. Twenty steps from the cave."

He hesitated, then nodded. "Stay in sight."

The stream ran cold and clear down the hillside.

I knelt, filled the skin, and watched my reflection wobble in the water.

Silver-grey eyes.

They stayed that way unless I got angry or scared.

Then the birds went silent.

Every one of them, all at once.

I stood up slowly. The wind shifted, and I smelled it.

A heavy, wet, iron smell that crawled up my nose.

Wolf.

Not Blackthorn.

Something harsher. Blood and smoke.

"Hello, little omega," a voice said from the trees.

A man stepped out.

Tall, scarred across the face, wearing a black leather vest with a red crescent stitched on the chest.

Bloodmoon. The assassin pack.

"Funny thing," he said, smiling. "Hale told us you were dead. Now he's lying in a bed with a burned arm, swearing otherwise."

I backed up. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't." His eyes dropped to my chest, where the mark glowed faintly through my collar. His smile widened. "There it is."

His body began to shake.

Fur burst across his arms, his shoulders cracked and twisted, and in a heartbeat a huge black wolf stood in front of me, snarling.

I ran.

Three steps.

Then he hit me from behind, and I went face-first into the dirt.

Claws pinned my shoulder.

Hot breath on my neck.

"Darian!"

Too far. I could hear him running, but he was too far.

The wolf's jaws opened.

And something inside me slammed down like a door.

I didn't plan it.

I threw my hand up, palm out, and the whole world went violet.

Power rushed out of me in a wave.

It rolled over the stream, bent the grass flat, and hit the wolf square in the chest.

He yelped.

Then I felt it.

Not his body, but his wolf, the wild, hot thing inside him.

I felt it like a bright coal in a dark room.

And I closed my fist around it.

It went out.

The black wolf collapsed.

The fur melted back into skin and bone, and the man lay gasping on the grass, eyes wide with horror.

"What did you do?" he choked. "I can't... I can't feel him. Where is he?"

He tried to shift. Nothing. He tried again, clawing at his own arms.

"My wolf…"

I stood over him, shaking. My nose was bleeding. My ears rang.

I had no idea what I had done.

KAEL

I was halfway through a pack meeting when my wolf went dead silent.

Not quiet. Dead. As if a hand had closed around his throat.

I dropped my pen. Every Elder in the room turned to look at me.

"Alpha?"

I couldn't answer.

For nine days my wolf had screamed at me.

Now there was nothing but a cold, empty ringing, and underneath it, a pull toward the north so strong it hurt.

Her.

The thought came from nowhere.

That's her.

I stood so fast my chair hit the wall. "Torren. Get the horses."

"Where are we going?"

"North."

"Kael, there's nothing in the north but…"

"Now!"

ELARA

The man on the grass started laughing. It was an ugly, broken sound.

"You can't hide," he rasped. "Not anymore. The Council already knows what you are."

"Who sent you?" Darian had finally arrived, his iron knife pressed to the man's throat. His face was pale with fury.

"Who?"

The man looked at him. Then at me. Then he smiled with bloody teeth.

"Dead was somebody else's order, girl. Mine was to bring you back breathing."

"Back to who?" Darian pressed the blade harder.

The man opened his mouth.

Then his whole body jerked, and he went limp.

The shock of losing his wolf had finally crashed over him.

"What did I do to him?" My voice shook.

Darian stared at me like I was a stranger.

"I don't know. I've only read about it in old stories. The Moonborn could silence an Alpha with a touch."

"He said the Council wants me alive."

"I heard."

"But the others want me dead. Who are they?"

"I wouldn't kill him, if I were you."

The voice was calm. Female. It came from the trees.

Darian spun, knife up.

A woman stood at the edge of the pines.

Silver braid over one shoulder.

Gray cloak. A white crescent pinned at her collar.

She might have been fifty, or five hundred. I couldn't tell.

She wasn't looking at Darian.

She wasn't even looking at the man on the ground.

She was looking at me.

Tears were running down her face.

Then, to my horror, she lowered herself into the wet grass and knelt, pressing her fist to her heart and bowing her head.

"My Queen," she said, her voice trembling.

"We've been searching for you for twenty-three years.”