SINS OF THE MOON

Sera The words of the healer were like a knife stabbed in my ribs. “It is like Finn is refusing it all,” Mara said, her hands still clasped to the little chest of my son. “The fever is rising so quickly. There is but one rite left, which may save him--a primitive tie of the blood of sire. It must be the blood of his real father.” I couldn’t breathe. Finn was lying on the small cot in the hut belonging to the healer, his small body flaming under the thin blanket, his dark hair sticking to his forehead with sweat. His storm-gray eyes--my eyes--were tearful with pain, but still managed to find mine and attempted to smile. “Mama… it hurts,” he whispered, voice cracking like a five-year-old should never have to. I fell on my knees next to the cot and laid my forehead on his. His odour--sweet juniper and warm milk and something that was unmistakably Ryker--enclosed me and knifed the knife to the hilt. “Baby, I know, Mama is here. I am going to fix this. I swear on the moon I am going to fix this.” Mara withdrew to give us room, but her voice remained kind and pitiless. “Until tomorrow evening at the latest, Sera. The ritual must have the sire blood under the full moon. If you wait farther.” She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. I kissed the wet temple of Finn, and tasted salt and fear. Five years had I maintained this secret. Five years of deceiving all of us, including Elias, the new pack, and myself, to make sure that no one would ever know that Finn was a member of the one man pack that law had prohibited me to love. Ryker Blackthorn. Alpha. My stepbrother once wickedly on the eve before his own father compelled him to have relations with Lira Voss and tear our world to shreds. Now the lie was going to kill my son. I was looking at shaky legs, smoothing the hair on Finn. “Okay, Rest, sweetheart. Mama has to call a phone, okay? I’ll be back in a moment.” His small hand grabbed me. “You look scared.” I had strained a smile that was like cracked glass. “Only weary. I adore thee as the moon at night. You see that, all right?” He nodded his head, and his eyelids were drifting down once more. “Love you bigger.” The door swung behind me, like a lid of a coffin, and I stepped out of the hut into that cool evening air of the distant Ridge Pack lands. My wolf walked under my flesh, and howled with that same horror tearing my throat. I fumbled my phone out of my pocket with trembling fingers and looked at the screen until the numbers became blurred. The day I left Blackthorn territory I had erased the number of Ryker. But I did know it by heart. All the figures were branded into me. I was typing it with trembling fingers and my eyes were streaming. Ryker, It’s Sera. I understand that I have no authority to come to you five years later. But our son is dying. Finn is five. He’s yours. The medicine man says that your blood in the full moon alone will heal him. I’m begging you. Please. I’ll come to you. I’ll do anything. Just don’t let him die because of me. I’m sorry. I was scared. I still love you. Sera I read it, read it, read it a hundred times. I hovered my thumb over send. Had I done so, all was over. My union with Elias. My cautious life I had made here. The delicate peace I had was fake. Ryker would despise me to deny his son him. He might refuse. He might come. In any case, the secret I had been holding like a second heartbeat for five years was going to open both our worlds. I hit send. The message swept off into the night. I stood there a long time under the swelling moon, and heaved my chest, and smelled of pine and rain and heard the ghost of the cedar-and-smoke smell of Ryker that lingered in my memory. I might have sworn that I felt his hands on my hips the last night we had stolen it in the kitchen five years before--his forehead against mine, our mouths just open, the pledge of tomorrow that was not to be because his father announced the mating to Lira the very next day. I had peered out of the shadows as Ryker stood at the altar in his black ceremonial robes with his jaw set and his eyes closed and Lira smiling like she had won the moon itself. Two months pregnant and invisible, I had been. And all I had gained that night was the clothes on my back and the child within me. And I was pulling him back in the fire now. There was a buzz on my phone. I pulled it up so quickly the screen almost broke in my hands. One new message. Of unknown number, though I was aware of the area code. Blackthorn territory. The text was short. Brutal. “Prove it. Or don’t waste my time.” I almost fainted. Ryker. It had to be. And nobody would reply like that--cold, and stern and angry beneath. I wrote back tremblingly with my fingers. “I have pictures. His eyes. His smell when he moves a bit. He resembles you at one time when you were angry as a boy--Marcus showed me the old photos once. Please, Ryker. I’m not lying. I would never tell a lie concerning this.” Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Then: “Send them. Now.” Then I flicked through my secret album, the one with the password and deep buried one, till I came across the best portrait of Finn with a smile at the camera last month, those midnight eyes staring point-blank at the camera, like he already knew how to defy the world. I appended it and sent it without a second thought. The response was quicker this time around. “He had the jaw of my father. My mother’s nose. How ever can you keep him out of my way for five years?” Tears blazed along my cheeks. I clanked on them. “Had they willed him to take it. Since your father would have referred to it as a mistake. I was afraid you would pick the pack again and not us. I was wrong. I’m sorry. But right now he needs you. I need you. Please.” It seemed like it was eternity, the three dots dancing. Then the word that made my heart's pause: “Bring the boy. In case this is the truth you and he remain under my roof till the ritual is performed. No arguments. No running. And Sera, if you are deceiving me, I tell you I will never forgive you, on the moon.” My stomach dropped. “Remain with his roof. In the Alpha house. With Lira. Marcus and Delphine gazing round. And his ring is still on my finger.” I was still a married woman. And still feigning to love a man who had yet never in his life caused my wolf to sing like Ryker did with one glance. Finn was in danger of losing his life. I struck a single word, the most difficult I ever wrote. “Okay.” I sent it. Then I wheeled and went back to the home of the healer, with numbed legs, and heart racing so that I only half caught the sound of the wind in the pines. I had to pack. I must say something to Elias, something--anything--that would not lead him after us. I was forced to take my son into my arms and assure him the moon itself because I had to. But as I pushed the door open I heard the weak voice of Finn. “Mama… who were you texting?” I stood in the doorway with the phone still smouldering in my hand as evidence. Since the truth had finally come out there, as racing towards Ryker on invisible wings, and there was no recalling it. The man with whom I had never ceased to love, was to know he had a son in less than twenty-four hours. And the life I had five years of guarding was going to be burnt to ashes.