003 | THE MOON GODDESS

I woke up in the medical centre.

Blinking blearily, it took me a while to return to myself. My vision was blurred, hazy streaks of light and dark and other things, colourful things that I could not yet truly recognise, spun together and made my temples throb.

There were voices, too. They were gentle, and too quiet to properly hear. It only made the buzzing between my ears worse, and I breathed through the nausea that spiked with it. My hearing felt wrong, as though one ear was stood outside, pressed up against a thick wooden door, and the other was in the room.

Then came the pain.

I hissed through my teeth, and opened my eyes fully to glare at whoever had knocked me down. It took me another, too-long moment to realise that I was no longer on the battlefield, and that my parents were sat on the edge of the starchy white bed, watching me with worried eyes.

Sheer relief nearly knocked me over. They were okay.

The talking stopped. Then:

“Haile!” Dad’s face flushed with colour. He beamed at me, but his dark eyes remained crinkled into crow’s feet at their edges. He ran a hand through his black, curly hair – so much like my own, only cropped short where I wore mine long – before dragging his hand down his face and sighing, his poor attempt at a smile slipping. “You gave us quite the scare.”

Mum patted my knee. Her usually shrewd eyes were sombre – her blue eyes, I noted with a tiny spark of excitement – and her throat bobbed over and over before she finally managed to speak. “Are you okay?”

Something about blue eyes made my breathing hitch. I chewed the inside of my cheek, and belatedly realised they were waiting for an answer.

I shrugged off their concern. Dragging myself into a sitting position against the lumpy pillows, I waved away their flapping hands. “I’m fine,” I lied. I ignored the dull ache in my head, the strange, distant quality of my hearing in my right ear, and the scratchy bandages around my neck. I flexed my arms, remembering slowly that my foreleg and shoulder had been torn. But my arms didn’t hurt, and a quick glance revealed only a faint pink mark marring the deep brown skin of my bare shoulder and bicep.

Wolves healed fast, but not that fast. Which begged the question: “How long have I been out?”

Mum worried her bottom lip. “Nearly a week, sweetheart.”

“A week?” I frowned, my eyebrows bunching together. “What happened?”

I wanted to blurt that I could see in colour. I wanted to examine them up close, to admire the way the light caught the colours in their hair, on their brown skin. But my needs came after those of the pack, and my stomach churned at the thought of the battle. We had been losing. I had seen no way out for us. And yet here we were, the Alpha, Luna, and their daughter, all three of us alive and (mostly) okay.

Before they could answer, I changed my question. “Are you both okay? And Etta? And Johnea? And Lelai? And Triss? Oh, and–”

“Easy, Haile,” Dad said with a little huff of laughter. He sobered quickly. “There were casualties. The battle hit us hard.”

Mum’s face scrunched up. Agitated, she flicked her dark braid over her shoulder. I was momentarily mesmerised by it. I’d always thought her hair was the same colour as Dad’s and mine – but it was brown, not black. Her lip curled; her sour expression did not match her kindly words. “We’re just glad you’re okay.”

“How – how did we…” The pain was making it hard to think straight. I touched the bandage around my neck hesitantly, brushing my fingertips over the coarse fabric. It made it hard to turn my head. Part of me was glad – I did not want to see who else was lying in the medical centre, bloodied and bruised.

They both frowned, their faces almost identical.

“What is it?”

“Winterpaw retreated.”

My face fell in shock. “What?”

Mum leant in closer conspiratorially, glancing around as though fearful we would be overheard. “I don’t like to admit this. We are the strongest pack in Erandos, after all…”

I smiled faintly. “Come on, Mum. Spit it out.”

She sighed, her fingers flexing into fists in her lap. “They would have defeated us. We were on the brink of collapse. They had splint our ranks, and they were remorseless in their attacks.” She scowled. “There was no way out. All these years of war, all these years of battle – so many good lives lost – and then, when they had their chance, they didn’t take it.”

Dad squeezed her elbow. “We must see this as a good thing, Heras. We have our lives, and our health.” He glanced at me with a twinkle in his eyes. “Well – most of us do.”

“Hey!” I laughed. “I’m healthy as a horse.”

“Sure.” Mum rolled her eyes at us both, but she managed a small smile. “Are you sure you’re alright, Haile?” She reached for me then, and took my hands into hers. They were calloused from years of training and fighting – much like my own.

It was now or never. I swallowed hard. “I…”

My hesitation made both of them frown worriedly. I had to get it together. But I couldn’t tell them that my mate was part of the Winterpaw Warrior Pack – could I? Our sworn enemies, murderers of my kin… No.

But I couldn’t lie to them either. I squeezed Mum’s hands, and looked up at Dad. His face was open, encouraging. The lump in my throat grew.

“Should I call for the medic, honey?” asked Dad.

“No, I–” I shook my head. My clawed neck stung, and I winced. “It’s not that. It’s, well… I can see in colour.” Rather than let that bit of information sink in, I kept talking. Words spilled from me, faster and faster, until I could hardly breathe. “I’m not sure when it happened, not exactly – getting hit in the head might do that to you, I guess – and did I mention that I can’t hear properly in my right ear?”

Mum sighed.

Dad sighed.

Then: “Wait. You can see in colour?” Dad said, at the exact same time that Mum said, “You can’t hear properly?”

I grinned weakly. “Yes. To both.”

“You don’t know who it is, then?” Dad asked, leaning forward in his rickety wooden chair. It groaned as his weight shifted.

I went to shake my head, and – thankfully – remembered the agony of doing so last time. I settled for saying a meek, “No.”

It was unlike Mum to jump straight to the positives – she was far too practical, far too logical, unlike Dad who would wade into any situation with a beaming smile – but, for once, her lips tugged upwards into a soft, sweet smile. “How incredible. I am so happy for you.” She squeezed my bent knee through the sheet.

Her joy turned sour in my heart. She would not be so happy for me if she knew my mate’s identity.

“You’ll have to go around the pack – see who else can suddenly see in colour.” Dad scratched his stubbly chin. “I’m surprised nobody else has come forward about this.”

Mum shot him a look. “Our people have mourned the loss of their loved ones this past week. I do not doubt Haile’s mate will have had the tact to keep their good news to themself until the… Well, until this has all died down.”

I doubted my mate would have any such morals. My mate would only bring shame upon my pack. How could I be mated to a Winterpaw wolf? They opposed every value I held. I sighed.

“Is your ear troubling you?” asked Mum. “We had better call Medic Brown.”

“No – no. Don’t bother him.” I yawned widely, mostly for effect. “I’ll sleep it off.”

I’d been asleep for a week. I had no further need of it. But I could not take another moment of their kind words and gentle touches, not when I was lying to them. I knew where my mate was, and I knew that going from wolf to wolf in the Blue Moon Pack would achieve nothing.

“Are you sure, sweetheart? We should have called for him the moment you woke, it’s no bother for him–”

I cut Dad off. “Really, I’m okay.” I yawned again, and let my eyelids droop. “Besides – you must have loads to deal with in the Pack House.” I waved a laconic hand through the air, my half-lidded eyes watching in delight as golden dust motes swirled around my brown skin. “Go. Do Alpha and Luna things. I’m fine,” I said again for good measure.

Mum scoffed, but she was smiling. “It’s almost like you’re eager to be rid of us.”

“Yeah.” Dad elbowed her in the ribs jovially. “Hasn’t seen us for a whole week, and this is the treatment we get?”

I smiled sleepily at them both. The pain had faded to a dull throb, and all of a sudden my insistence that I was tired felt all too real. I snuggled under the covers, made myself as comfortable as I could with a bandaged neck, and listened through a swirling tide as they fell back into easy chatter about meaningless topics.

I knew they would not leave. Eyes closed, I imagined strangling the Moon Goddess – only to immediately mentally apologise, guilt surging in my chest. Like it or not, my mate had been chosen for me. Somehow, neither of us had died in the battle. For some reason, she thought my ideal partner – my soulmate, my other half, my perfect match – was a member of our enemy pack.

It didn’t make any sense. I fell asleep to the fading sounds of my parents’ conversation, thinking only of how irked I was by the Moon Goddess’s choice. And then, like a flash of lightning, blue eyes swept across my mind’s eye.

- - -

My parents’ words reverberated strangely in my head.

“The pack comes first, Haile.”

“Your duty is to Blue Moon. It is your honour to serve and protect our people.”

They faded into darkness. I was thrown forwards, and tumbled awake in a world of too-bright colour. The sun burned my retinas, making everything look red. My stomach churned. No – that was blood. Red blood, everywhere. It had soaked into the dry dirt; it splattered the hedges; I touched my cheek, and my fingertips came away red, too.

“The safety of Blue Moon is paramount, Haile,” I heard, the words swirling like mist through the air. I stepped forward, trying to catch the faint memory in both hands like a child reaching for a butterfly. It dissipated to nothing between my clasped fingers.

I blinked. My eyes opened too slowly. The world had shifted in my momentary absence. There were wolves everywhere, teeth bared, claws out, and so much red that I wanted to fall back into the darkness. My body ached; I felt weary down to my bones.

“You have to kill him, sweetheart. It is the only way.”

I looked up. There was one man stood amongst the wolves, but I had seen those eyes before in a wolven face. They were blue as the sky and bottomless as the ocean, and set in a face so handsome it made my heart ache for a home I’d never known. It was indistinct: I could not see the shape of his nose or the cut of his jaw, but I could feel his warmth, his tenderness, and I knew, then, that I loved him.

I looked down. There was a knife in my hand.

“Kill him, Haile. Kill him!”

I looked up. The man smiled. All I saw were teeth, stained red with blood. His smile grew, vicious and canine. I tightened my grip on the knife. I had to – I had to –

I can’t.

But he could.

His blade pierced my heart.

I screamed.