002 | STARS ABOVE

My mate was somewhere on the battlefield. I looked around desperately, the reality of the fight falling away. I had to find him.

Where moments ago there had only been shades of grey, I now saw in colour. The sky was blue, the trees were green, and my parents had told me my fur was a brown so dark it was almost black – it was deep, and rich, and tears stung my eyes at the sight of it all. Everything was so vivid, so beautiful.

And then I saw red for the first time. It was everywhere: soaking into my fur, soaking into the green grass, soiling the brown dirt. Overwhelmed, I stumbled.

‘Haile?’ Etta hissed through our mindlink. ‘We need to retreat.’

The same wet, shining darkness I had known to be blood was so, so much worse in colour. ‘It’s everywhere,’ I replied, glad it was a mental conversation. I would not have been able to speak through my too-thick, too-hoarse throat otherwise.

I closed my eyes. Even in darkness there was still colour: bursts of light undeterred by my eyelids, flashing across my vision in great waves of heat and flame. The battle continued, and I felt the heavy press of bodies all around me. I had to get it together. I had to –

‘Haile!’

I was knocked sideways. Determination unfurled in my chest, an unsteady, flickering heat that forced my eyes to open.

There was red everywhere. Gritting my teeth, I urged myself back into the fight. Etta’s white fur – white I knew well, I recognised, but had never seen it so resplendent, had never seen it glowing yellow-gold in the sunlight – was spotted with blood. Bile rose in my throat. A slash slowly seeped red from her back, the curled lip of her skin flapping and splattering more red as she moved.

A wolf was lumbering towards me, heavily favouring their right foreleg, teeth bared in half-grimace, half-snarl. No matter the gore, no matter the red blood, I had a duty to my pack. I tried to make the colour vanish, tried to keep my mind on the battle, but as I lunged for the wolf’s left leg, knocking it out from under them before twisting and clamping down on their right knee, all I could think was red. I felt the red soak into my muzzle as I bit down. I saw it spurt from their knee, saw it spill down their pale brown leg and pool atop the dry dirt.

I watched, as if separate from my body, as I dug my claws into their prone neck. My eyes widened in horror as I ripped through skin and fur and sinew, leaving behind flayed grooves that oozed more and more hot red blood. My heart thundered in my chest, and I could not help but imagine the red blood it was pounding through my veins. It was in me, in every part of me, and then I made the mistake of glancing down at my own injured front leg.

I choked back vomit. A flap of torn skin hung down, a sight I was well-used to seeing in black and white, but in colour it was so much worse. The dark shade of grey I was accustomed to seeing my fur as was actually brown-black, sleek and shining, made darker still by the blood. I gulped. It was slick, the sheen making the wet wound glossy. I could see torn muscle, and, with a shudder, I realised I could see white bone beneath layers of red-pink flesh.

Etta’s body slammed into my line of vision. ‘What is wrong with you?’ she snarled.

I looked up, dragging my eyes away from my leg. I did not want to open my eyes to the violence surrounding me: everywhere I turned there were yet more wolves upon us, lips pulled back from saliva-wet white teeth, white teeth that were dripping with red blood…

‘I can see in colour,’ I admitted slowly, dazed. 'My mate is here.'

- - -

It hit me all at once.

Something looped around my heart, something warm and solid and comforting, like the heat found only beneath blankets on a frigid night. Then the something began to pull, slowly at first, making me look around the wolves before me with fresh eyes – eyes that could see beyond the red and the gore and the battle. My new eyes were searching, and after another, quiet beat of my heart I realised what they were looking for.

No. No – no, it couldn’t be. I twisted wildly, trying to stop my heart from hunting for its other half. Because I could see in colour for the first time here, now, in the midst of a battle against our sworn enemies…

No. I refused to let myself think it.

The Moon Goddess could not be so cruel. The mate bond was a thing to yearn for, to desire – it was not a thing to dread. Wild hope grew like roses in my chest, but their thorns nicked the flesh of my heart and blood beaded along its curve.

Maybe my mate wasn’t part of the Winterpaw Warrior Pack. Maybe my mate was somewhere behind me, lost in the blur of struggling Blue Moon wolves. Maybe one of them had, just this moment, come of age…

I was lying to myself, and I knew it.

I twisted, trying to look back at my pack. They were, inch by inch, making their retreat. But still the Winterpaw wolves circled them, teeth bared, and the colours paired with the speed at which they moved made me dizzy.

‘A little help here, Haile?’

Etta was locked in a furious battle with a wolf almost as large as her. I ignored the red blood, the slick sheen of it, and watched how the Winterpaw wolf, a mess of tangled pale fur matted with blood and dirt, and tried to find its weakness.

I could feel the weight of the battle all around me sink into my bones. Teeth snapped, mere inches from my face, though they were not aimed at me. The frontline of our fight was weakening, wolves split between fighting onwards and falling back. The others needed to retreat; I would protect them for as long as I could.

‘Haile!’

The Winterpaw wolf Etta was fighting never flinched when other wolves, fighting their own battles, came close to their left side. They kept Etta to their right, the single dark eye I could see shifted intently to follow her movements. Whenever Etta drifted to the left, the Winterpaw wolf would reposition – keeping her on their right.

Hoping my instinct was correct, I forced my way through the tightly-packed bodies – relying on years of experience and gut instinct to get me through, even when my head and heart were overwhelmed with shining, resplendent colour all around and the constant, pulling need to hunt for my mate. I dodged swiping claws and sweat-soaked, wolven bodies, struggling to keep my emotions in check.

I had to focus.

Etta was my best friend.

The members of my pack – every single one of them, from my parents down to the Omegas – were my life.

Whoever my mate was, he was not worth losing their lives over.

I slammed into the pale Winterpaw wolf’s left side. As I’d predicated – as I’d hoped – they did not see me coming. Their left eye stared blankly out at the fight, unmoving, unseeing.

I dug my teeth into their jugular and tore out their throat. Beside me, Etta’s chest heaved. ‘Took your time,’ she bit out – and then her eyes widened, as if what I’d said to her earlier had only just registered. ‘You can see in colour,’ she repeated, eyes widening a fraction, before we were both plunged into the battle once more.

We fought onwards. Behind us, the majority of Blue Moon tried to retreat – only to be caught and picked off by Winterpaw’s wolves. My body sagged, my muscles struggling to hold up my weight. Black spots pulsated across my eyes, blurring with my new too-bright, too-red vision. My leg throbbed with every step. My head started to droop.

No! I shook myself. Glum acceptance swept through me. I would not have long to adjust to the colours. If my mate were part of Winterpaw, then I would surely revert to seeing in black and white soon. Grim determination knocked aside the hopelessness that festered in my heart. I would kill him myself if I had to. I would kill him myself, if it would save Blue Moon.

I could never love someone from the Winterpaw Warrior Pack. It would be better to save myself the heartache of ever knowing them.

And then the colours, hazy and blurred with blood loss, turned sharp. My breath settled in my lungs. Heat seeped through my veins, spreading with a rosy, golden light that shimmered and tingled all the way from the top of the scalp to the tip of my toes. I could no longer feel the throb of my wounds, could no longer feel the constant flap of my torn skin slapping against my shoulder as I moved.

I looked up. A black wolf – taller than me, taller even than my Alpha and Luna parents – was staring at me, jaw slack. The wolf’s eyes stared at me helplessly. I knew they were blue because I knew the sky was blue, and they were of a kind, but they were raging and bright and a thousand other things the sky was not. A lopsided white crescent moon marked their forehead, and I squinted at it. I had never seen this wolf before. My breath caught in my throat.

Mate.

I was knocked sideways, lost in those blue eyes, distracted and unaware of my surroundings. Claws ripped through my neck. I felt the tear distantly, felt the blood spill down my fur as if from afar. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears, reverberating off my skull.

Then there was silence, and the colours faded to black.