Se connecterIanRhett frowns beside me, both of us leaning on a neat stack of logs yet to make it through the mill for processing. It’s well past nightfall, but the village of New Glade is bright under the haze of firelight. Music and dancing takes up my vision, but I’m keeping a close eye on Oakley while she stands in a group of young women a few yards away. I stayed close to her throughout the ceremony, which I’m sure can be daunting and a little outlandish, even for people from the tribes. Funeral pyres were a big deal in the Glade when our people were in Pantharas. Death was everywhere, according to my father and the elders. Now, people live long, happy lives, or will, anyway. All the children here live past their fifth birthdays. No one has to worry about their fathers, brothers, and sons getting swept into servitude or cullings. This ceremony is how we honor who was lost before the wolves of the Glade finally found freedom. Oakley took the ceremony in stride. She was interested, which ma
OakleyI need to see a healer, I think. A priestess actually. Yeah, that would be more helpful in my situation. I’m either cursed or losing my mind, along with chunks of memory, because I do not remember hurting myself last night. I meet my bloodshot reflection in the mirror in the bathroom while rubbing my swollen wrist with a potent healing salve I pilfered from my Aunt Shuna. It’s from Teshka, of course, like she is. It feels gritty on my skin, like the rough sand beaches in that territory, but it does quell the incessant tingling. A sharp knock on the door tears my attention from my reflection. My mom’s voice rings out, “They’re here! Prince Ian is downstairs waiting for you.”“I’m coming,” I murmur, shaking my head several times like I can somehow knock loose the wool rolling through my mind like a ball of yarn, snatching memories and rational thought with it. When I step out of the bathroom, every female hand in the house begins to fuss over me like it’s my wedding day. By t
Ian“Ian?”I haven’t even closed the front door to my childhood home before Mom’s voice rings out through the foyer. For a house in New Glade, it’s rather nice. The foyer connects to two front rooms and a wide staircase leading to the upper floor, where three bedrooms and a bathroom soak in late afternoon light. Downstairs, a small, seldom-used kitchen is tucked in the back, as well as another, larger room where my parents spend most of their free time. I find her there, at a worktable, priming arrows. Shelves line the walls, full of weapon-making supplies and little trinkets of past adventures. Family pictures hang on the wooden walls, alongside blades dangling from hooks. My toy box is still in the corner of the room collecting dust, but I used to sit here, at this very table, playing with little carved effigies of warriors and wolves while my parents talked in quiet tones about hunts and the occasional skirmish between packs and tribes. I can still feel that silver chain around
OakleyIt takes three days for my arm to heal. Even so, the wound itches like mad and will definitely scar when the scabs heal over. But, there’s work to be done. Chores, as well as avoiding my mom and aunts, are all I plan to do today because, if I’m out of bed, I’m able to return to the forest tonight under the glare of the moon. I’d like to stop that from happening. Allison moves a few feet ahead of me in the garden behind the fiber shop. It’s an expansive space with fruit trees and flowers galore, as well as herbs and very specific flora we grow for even more specific reasons. Grandma Freya planted all of this decades ago, when she first came to Silverhide and the village was nothing but a few buildings, a packhouse, and the forge grumbling behind me. My Grandpa Andrew gave her anything she wanted and needed, carving out a sanctuary for his mate in the village that grew around them. My fingers are already stained a bright greenish-blue as I set down my container of true indigo
OakleyThere’s an epidemic in Silverhide. It’s a slow creeping kind of affliction that takes hold of almost every young woman starting around the age of thirteen. It turns some into raging, spiteful monsters. Jealous gremlins with sharp teeth and even sharper tongues, to be honest. Lifelong friendships suffer endlessly during those long, overwhelming years of late girlhood, and there’s only one thing to blame. Men. Handsome, slightly sweaty, gleaming men. I have never been, to be fair, one to go all goo-goo eyed over the boys who work the fields while I run my errands and do my chores. I’ve never seen the need to let the straps of my tank tops, which I’m not even allowed to wear, fall off my shoulders while hanging laundry on the line. I listen to my friends purr and giggle over their crushes and let those same friends shed tears on my shoulders when those crushes went awry. But I’ve never caught the bug. The love bug. I am just… too busy. I’m sure that’s the reason.Granted, I’ve
IanI wake in a cold sweat at first light to shouts beyond the rain-smothered glass of my bedroom windows. My dreams swim, turning into a muddled cacophony of fractured, made-up memories that vanish before I have a chance to rub sleep from my eyes. My cabin is cast in calm, silver shadows like I left it the night before, but unlike the night before, I’m completely, utterly naked. Another trio of shouts rings through the still morning air. I can taste the fog. It’s too early for the first streams of morning sunlight to illuminate the forest floor when I slowly swing my legs out of bed and fist the damp sheets. I sweated through them. The trail of clothing on the side of my bed gives me a single shred of an idea of what happened over the course of the past few hours. The cold, aching prickles erupting all over my skin are just the remnants of a dream. A bloody nightmare. Several howls break through the stillness and fully rouse me. I pull on some clothes, stumbling on my way to my dr
AvivaMoonlight ghosts over my skin as I stand at the highest point of the valley that overlooks Silverhide. Wind whispers through my fur, and my keen eyes scan the valley below for movement before I move along the narrow rocks, careful of the steep drop-offs hidden in the shad
SarahAfter the BallAlpha Sydney of Shadowcrest pauses during the long trek down the stairs leading out of the temple of the Moon Goddess. He extends a hand to me, and I take it, finding his hands warm but slightly clammy.I meet his eyes. Goddes
SydneyGuests are arriving–extended family I haven’t seen in years–when I meet back up with Ryan and Sarah on the second floor landing. I wave down to my great uncle Ben and his mate, Emery, the long-standing Alpha of Obsidian temple. Some of my grandma’s other siblings are here, too, bringing their
SarahEverything hurts. My head feels like someone took a hammer to it.I open my eyes to slits and quickly close them again. Pain rushes through me in waves like it has its own tide, and my breath is driving the current.I know where I am. Sydney’







