Novels by Bluey

The quiet that followed Draven's withdrawal felt even more foreboding than his attack.The broken grove was strewn around Kale indiscriminately, his chest rising and falling with short jerky gasps. The moon shield was gone, but Aria's sense of connection between them vibrated like the sound of a plucked lute. She touched her fingers to his shoulder before he fell."Kale!" The cry ripped from her throat as she fell to one knee beside him, her hands scrambling down his chest as she sought to comprehend why he was hurt. He was alive, his heart rate steady, but something was irrevocably broken. Black veins were creeping beneath the skin like ink on water, spreading outward from the three parallel gashes across his chest that she was positive she hadn't seen a matter of seconds before."The shadows," he whispered, hardly more than a breath. "When I held you.They marked me."Going-away gift. Although their escape had been worked out, the dark sorcerer had managed to injure them. Wounds were

The world divided into radiant patches.One instant, Aria was screaming as Draven's shadows wrapped around her belly. And the next, she was elsewhere, standing in a location between heartbeats, between the position of thought and reality. The vision hit her like a bolt of lightning, sudden and intact, yanking her mind off the battlefield even as her body remained trapped in mortal peril.She stood in a clearing that was and wasn't theirs. The trees were the very same oaks, but they burned with a light within them that seemed to indicate they were constructed of starlight. The earth beneath her toes throbbed with life so intense it made her weep. And there, laughing like silver bells, was a child.Her son.The small child couldn't have been older than three, Kale's moon-clutching hair and silver eyes, but the light took the wind from Aria's lungs. The girl didn't simply reflect light, she radiated it, like she'd consumed the moon and inhaled it within her. Each step she took brought sm

The initial shadow cut like a knife across moonlight.Aria sensed it before she saw it, something that had misfired that had her spirit retreating in horror. The wall that had resisted three waves of Eclipse wolves shook, and she stood immobile in horror as tendrils of pure shadow started seeping between her pack's forms."Hold the line!" Kale's voice growled in the uproar, but even his alpha voice could not conceal the tension. His silver gaze met hers across the field, and in that brief moment of eye contact, she could read what he could not speak in words. The rites were having their effect. Black magic from Draven was undoing all that they had established.Rebecca broke ranks, and Aria's heart missed a beat as she looked to see why. A huge Eclipse wolf, whose coat was clotted with glyphs etched in something that looked like blood, had shredded a hole in the protection ward with blades that shone like obsidian. It attacked the young wolf, still not quite past his first full moon, a

The change resonating within the grove's sorcery shouldn't have been mended. Aria felt it deep within her spirit—the dark imprisonment that had surrounded Kale for months gradually dissolving as other patterns emerged in its stead, patterns that complemented the thumping of her soon-to-be-born daughter's heart. The babe within her wasn't merely transforming Draven's sorcery; she was assuming it, warping it into something entirely unique.But Draven's original astonishment had already evolved into something much darker."Smart," he said, his voice that of a veteran tactician who had altered course due to unanticipated events. "You've gone and spoiled my bonding with your Luna essence, come up with something which doesn't quite work for both of you completely. But by doing that, you both hastened a plan which took shape with a timeline of years."The fighting around them went on unabated, but Aria sensed the change of mood. Shadow-beasts were coalescin

The two words poised in the red air like a blade waiting to descend. The commotion surrounding them held still, as if the wood itself were holding its breath, waiting to determine if the plan formed centuries ago by the old wizard would be frustrated by a plot to alter the very nature of the plan.Draven gazed at Aria with the calculating interest of a collector looking over some valuable relic. His shape rippled in the light of the blood moon, darkness gathering around him like a living entity as he considered choices that lay beyond mortal understanding."How interesting," he said finally, his tone laced with sarcasm that crawled across her skin. "The Luna throws herself on the grave of her mate. How very selfless. How very poignant.""Take me," Aria said again, still with palms against the ward barrier between them. "I am stronger than Kale, my magic deeper. I would be a better vessel.""ARIA, NO!" Kale's angry roar shook the warfield as he thrashed uselessly in unseen bonds which

The shadows moved.What had seemed forest shadow mere moments ago now writhed and twisted into impossible forms—creatures of living nothing that seeped along the periphery of the grove like oil in hatred. They were led by Draven, who cast aside any semblance of humanity. His form towered over his minions, hemmed about by darkness that devoured light, and where he stepped upon consecrated earth, blades of grass turned to ash.Aria planted herself smack in the middle of the line, magic crackling around her like some kind of cosmic warning sign. Luna power—full-on silver, lighting her up against that blood-red moon. On both flanks, her pack lined up, all tough stares and squared shoulders, but come on. She could smell it—fear, sharp as pennies—hiding under their bravado. No amount of training wipes that away when you’re staring down a nightmare."Wards holding!" Elena cried from her position by the eastern anchor stone, though worry furrowed each line of her weathered face. "But they're