Lady Moonlight

The round and wondrously bright disc was hanging in the clear and starry night. Chords of moonlight gleamed across the sea of trees. It was that time of the month when the moon would appear more gloriously beautiful than ever. For werewolves, Full Moon was both exciting and frightening. It used to be a challenging moment for werewolves—half human, half wolf—to face a Full Moon, as it was the exact time when they would turn into their wolf counterpart. Now, hundreds of years after the Dark Ages, werewolves had mastered to control themselves. Full Moon became a celebration of life. Every Full Moon once a year, the tribe would gather at a small clearing on the hill, with each family bringing a peace offering for the Moon Goddess—which we believed to be the reason why we found each other here, why we were blessed with such a good life. The other Full Moon was still celebrated within the family or pack. On a Full Moon in one October night six years ago, I had my f

The last thing I wanted to do in the most boring event in the history of werewolves was to meet the very people who forced me to run into the woods in tears and almost got killed in the end. If my brother wanted to blame someone for our migration, he should look at himself and his pack full of jerks first.I tried to tell my dad that it was okay to celebrate Full Moon on our own, but he seemed to make up his mind. It was all thanks to Selene who just had to reminisce all the good things we had in Grassmere.I was lifting some stuffs in Ashborne High School gymnasium when I accidentally knocked down a stack of boxes that my friend Olive Hartwell arranged five minutes ago. An uncontrollable strength was unleashed alongside my anger that one of the boxes was dented.Gasping, I quickly kneeled down to fix it. The box contained sets of gold-colored draperies that would be use to decorate the gymnasium. In exactly four days from now, there would be a homecoming party

I was staring at the handkerchief for the millionth time when I heard footsteps approaching. Two knocks on my door were enough to send me into a tidying up frenzy. It wasn’t safe to bring the handkerchief around, so I put it back to the box along with other stuffs and slid it under my bed. My door was opened as soon as I jumped on to the bed, posing as natural as I could.“Hey, Mom,” I grinned widely as my mom opened the door. She couldn’t just find out that I had been keeping the dirty handkerchief she had thrown out before. She would ask questions and that would end up with me having to tell her about Carson.“Someone’s here to see you,” she said.Another figure appeared behind her. A boy with a neck length, black hair smiled radiantly as our eyes met.“Elliott?” I gasped. I got on my feet and just received the hug from his muscular body, still with a bewildered expression. “Elliott Calloway?&r

Dad wasn’t amused hearing my story about how some people were hunting deer at night in the woods that wasn’t even a hunting ground. Elliott, who joined the dinner, backed up my story. “The place was perfect for gathering, but we don’t think it’s safe,” he said. I really thought he would hold on to his ‘hunters-don’t-exist’ view in front of Nathan, but fortunately, he went with what I suggested. “It’s forbidden to hunt outside the hunting ground,” Dad said. “I should report this to the Sheriff.” “And tell him what?” Nathan chimed in, with his mouth still full of mashed potato. “That two teenagers—one happened to be your daughter—snuck into the woods at night and witnessed the shooting?” Here we go again. Nathan gaslighting someone on the dinner table wasn’t really a new thing. “Yes, that’s exactly what he should say,” I insisted, ignoring how the wording could put Dad into shame for having a teenage daughter going into the dark woods wi

The stories about hunters had been circling around werewolf tribes for long, as the history of supernatural beings was shaped partly because of them. There were two kinds of hunters—the ordinary one, humans who just liked to hunt wild animals; and the ones who hunted the supernaturals. The latter was what we always feared of, although many werewolves just fended it off because there had not been many cases about our kinds dying because of them. Nathan was definitely one of the skeptical ones. He thought being hit with a silver arrow was just a coincidence, or just Little Thea craving for attention. He couldn’t prove me wrong back then, but he still stayed with his principle: hunters were real, but they were not a threat to us as long as we stayed hidden. Mom’s explanations just struck me like a lightning bolt. If Nathan was right, both kind of hunters didn’t just threaten wild animals out there, but also humans. I heard from my parents once that hunters would