The Cursed Luna’s Rise

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The entire moonlight shone on the clearing and converted all the wolves to the colors of pale gold and gray. Elara turned his head about in alarm. Faces swam into one another—some face. Every glance was a stab on her body with a knife. The fire of the sanctuary pyres was flashing; the smoke and pine fumes were in the air. Seris stood in opposition to her, and she did not feel their presence much.

She tried to steady herself. Breathe. Calm. The bond... it had to be true. She may feel it tearing, vicious and desperate, like when the Moon Goddess herself had left this night with the stamp. She highlights the eyes of Kael, who was on the other side of the clearing. He looked at her, and a moment appeared to him as the sun popped out of rain clouds.

He's looking at me. He has to be feeling it too. Right?

Kael's jaw tightened. His mouth was clenched in a narrow line. And then came the saying, and it was more cutting-edge than "fang."

"I reject you, Elara Veyron."

The clearing seemed to pause. The wind stilled. Even the fires were scared to burn fiercer. Whimpering, gasps, and laughter—all this, a deadly echo, pushed her down to despondency.

No. This can't be real. It can't.

She fainted, and the mossy earth sliced at her palms till she was down to earth. It was a low shivering, a series, and it shook her mind. Everything that Kael had ever known about her had become fragments of distress.

"Get over it, Veyron," a sneering voice said behind him.

Elara's head shot up. Eyes narrowed. The pack was staring. Whispering. Laughing. Pointing. All the contempt and all the loftiness hewed their way into her heart. She lacked the fire she had felt, the flight of affinity, of fate, and in its place was ice that held her breast.

Kael moved his hand in the direction of Lyanna Crestfall. Elara's stomach dropped. The smile on the face of Lyanna was the one that crowns success, arrogant, delighted with the light of the moon. Her hand to her own, as though Elara were never born, as though all looks, all touching, and all kissing were false.

"No... cannot," I said, shivering.

"Do you even hear yourself?" Mira was talking to her somewhere nearby. "Get up. Do not allow them to see you.

"I... I can't..." The chorus of the general voices smothered her music. Every eye was a judge. Every aspect bears the epitaph of her failure.

Kael gave another cold and bright note. I chose Lyanna. She will be mine. You... you will know your position.

The fists of Elara, it appeared, were so grippy that she could sense her nails tearing her palms. Anger, heartache, and shame—they were bumped, and she was trembling. Seris shifted, and their relationship grew stronger, and she coerced her.

You are not broken. You are becoming.

Becoming? The word "crooked" was within her. And what could she do when the world had fallen on her? All the wolves she knew, all her friends, all seemed to look at her now, all pitying or contemptuous?

"Why?" she whispered into the wind. "Why her? Why not me?"

The call in the clearing was again increased, and Elara heard the laugh of youthful wolves repeating the words of Kael, but with more violent and inhuman laughter. With every syllable she was sinking deeper and deeper into the moss, but inwardly she was a little inclined to fire.

"I won't... Nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be. Nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will be, nothing I will

Seris was poking at her brain. The flame inside her was alive. Very small, very faint, she could feel it beating like a heart. It was speaking of power, and of power she had never experienced.

Elara was forced to make herself get up on her legs and gasp for breath. She turned around and faced Kael and Lyanna in the moonlight in their hands, and they had not even been humiliated. Her flesh cried out at her to flee, to take refuge, but she did not. She couldn't. Not yet.

You... you will be sorry for this, she thought, not to anybody, but to herself.

Lightly, cruelly, Lyanna broke the night. Oh, Elara, how cute you are that you think you can do anything here.

Kael didn't look back. He didn't need to. His choice was made. He was more devoted to ambition and to status than to other things.

The pack started to disintegrate, grumbling towards the woods. The fires in the ceremonies were dancing, but Elara stood there at the verge of the clearance and still looked. She may even believe that Seris were aroused, and they were firm and insistent in their presence. She was aware that there had been more to her story. She had a fire within her, and she was unable to exhale it.

I am not what they think. I am more.

The taste of the forest was fine and straightforward, and she would like to run through these woods in the night with Kael laughing and free. Those nights could never be forgotten in the woods. The moon still remembered. And Elara herself could feel the pang of power, just below the skin.

"You think this ends me?" she said, with a good deal more emphasis in her voice, raising it to the moss. "You're wrong. All of you are wrong!"

And there was a distant, sharp, desperate howling of a wolf. The chest of Elara was swelling and falling. The fingers of her hand were crawling like worms up the arms in response to the call. The awakening of fire, strength, and rebellion was what she could experience. Raw and untamed, like herself.

"Is this what they wanted?" she asked herself. "To break me? To humiliate me? But they don't know... not yet..."

Then she followed Kael and Lyanna with their wobbling footsteps into the darkness at the side of the clearing and disappeared. The voices of the pack had gone in her, and there was only the crackle of the ritual fires or the shiver of the moonlight on the moss. Otherwise, something cried in every fiber of her spirit. Something stronger.

Her fists clinched again, and her core was a hot pool of simmering blood. The moon that was shining in her eyes and grabbing the tears that had not yet fallen. She did not go lonely, not wholly; she was invaded by Seris.

They, she said, have not heard everything from me. "They will regret this. Every single one of them."

She shuddered and turned as she heard some sound in the woods. Something was out there. Something dark, watching. Her pulse quickened. Was it a hunter? A rogue? Or... something else?

She was ill, and her blood was rushing up her veins. The initial spurrings of strength and the slightest glimpses of something threatening and light flashed to her. Seris groaned in her head, a shiver running through her bones.

"I... I need to wake up," I thought to myself; "I need to. I can't stay... not like this. Not broken. Not humiliated. Not forgotten!"

There was something glowing in the moonlight at the edge of the clearing—movement, shadows, and a figure gradually emerging out of the shadow. Elara's eyes narrowed. It was by no means at first sight, but the presence was strong, overpowering, nearly... animate in the sense that the hair on her limbs stood up.

Her pulse jumped. The pack was behind her, and she was alone. Truly alone. But the fire in her had grown, a little fire that now was pressing against the verge of despair.

A figure, straight, treading the silvered trees—then she might see it very well—a figure. Her breath caught. Her heart thudded faster. The man was standing in motionless silence, and the atmosphere was tense, electrically charged.

Elara swallowed hard. Shamefaced and rejected, she had shaken before the eyes of all those who had known her. Yet here... this time here we were going to see something new, something to see everything. She had it in her bone, in her pulse, in her very marrow.

The man went forward, and the moonlight hit their faces. They were staring at her, exploring her, penetrating her.

Elara ran her fists, and a savage growl arose in her bosom. The shaking of the brain was seriously ill.

Who was this? Friend or threat? Ally or enemy?

The wind blew; a word was whispered in it, almost like a warning.

Elara had a feeling somewhere in her heart that the night was not yet over...