FOUR: The Secret In My Blood

"You're not who you think you are."

               The words weighed heavily in the cool evening air, ringing in the calm areas of my mind. I gazed at Kael, desperately looking over his amazing features for any indication this was a cruel joke or some twisted fantasy generated by the trauma of the rejection.

                Nothing at all. The Lycan King seemed quite somber.

"What are you talking about?" I murmured, hardly audible.

                 Unblinking, Kael's golden eyes stayed fixed on mine. 

"Your ancestry."

                 My stomach clenched in agony. 

"There is nothing remarkable about my family. I am an orphan."

                  His jaw closed firmly, a dark shadow traversing his face.

"That is just the lie you have been taught to help you follow."

                  His unadulterated confidence in his voice was quite disturbing. For eighteen years I had lived as the Silver Moon Pack's ultimate outsider. I was the frail girl. The charity case dressed in my sister's cast-off clothes. I was totally uninteresting. Still, Kael was gazing at me as though I was holding the keys to a kingdom, a secret I didn't even know.

"You're wrong". I insisted, shaking my head.

"I am never wrong about this," he retorted, his voice thick with an assurance free of controversy.

                 Trying to protect myself from the intensity of his stare, I wrapped my arms firmly over my chest. 

"Then tell me."

                He just watched me for a long time, as if he was figuring out exactly how much truth I could stand before I would break. At last he talked, his voice dropping an octave. 

"Do you know how your mother really passed away?"

                 A familiar, phantom pain cut across my chest. I was taken quite off guard by the question. 

"My dad said rogues attacked her close to the border."

                Kael's face turned into something deadly. 

"Do you even know who handed your father that handy little story?"

                 I scowled; a chilly anxiety started to gather in my stomach. 

"Not at all."

"Because it was a fabrication," Kael murmured softly.

                   Suddenly the ground under my feet felt shaky, the world tilted dangerously on its axis. I started to gasp. 

"What? "

                  Kael walked another step closer, infringing on my space and his warmth pouring over my icy skin. 

"Mindless rogues didn't kill your mother, Aria."

                 My stomach hurt physically. Everything within my head told me to run away from him and his awful theories, to call him a liar. Deeper down, though, an odd, old impulse murmured that he was speaking the truth. It was a stifling sensation, as if a riddle piece I had been lacking my whole life had only now abruptly fit.

"Then who murdered her?" I asked, my voice quivering.

              His look grew flinty. 

"One who hoped your complete bloodline would vanish."

               The clearing fell into complete, excruciating silence. I could only stare at him; my brain was whirling. 

"Vanish? Why would someone go to such great pains to methodically hunt down my family?" I wondered. "I was nothing. I lacked pack rank and authority."

                Kael appeared to interpret the desperate ideas flitting across my face. 

"That is the masterwork of the lie you have been living." His profile bathed in its silvery light, he gazed toward the full moon. "There was another royal family long before the present Alpha bloodlines divided the areas.  

The first rulers."

                I swallowed the lump in my throat. 

"The Lunar Royals"

               Even a forgotten omega like me had heard that story. Every dog was told the bedtime stories of the old kings supposedly personally blessed by the Moon Goddess herself. But centuries ago they had gone. Most contemporary wolves rejected them as a fantasy.

"It's just a story," I muttered, trying desperately to hang on to my reality.

              Kael turned his gaze back toward me. 

"No". They were really real." His cold conviction in his voice sent shivers down my spine.

"How could you possibly know that?"

              His eyes shone a vivid, predatory gold. 

"Because my family served them,"

              I turned cold. The Lycan King was not overstating. He was not talking in figurative language.

"The Lunar Royals possessed powers that made ordinary Alphas look like pups," he went on, moving in closer. "Their blood was sacred. Blessed."

               The breeze stirred aggressively across the canopy above, mirroring the frantic hammering of my heart against my ribs. 

"Why are you telling me this? How does a dead myth relate to me?"

              Kael stepped closer once more. So close I could see the dark circles around his golden irises and could smell the seductive perfume of pine and rain wafting off his skin.

"Because you are among them, Aria."

              My lungs totally lost the air. 

"No. No, that's impossible." I staggered back a step and angrily shook my head. "You have the wrong person."

"You are the last surviving member of the Lunar Royal line," he said, softly

                Deep down, a tiny, buried part of me saw the truth in the words, therefore they hit me with a force that matched Damian's rejection. Things I had spent years dismissing because I felt I was simply weird started flooding over me in quick succession.

                 Occasionally showing up on my skin during the peak of a full moon were weak, shimmering silver patches. The vivid, tiring dreams of places I had never seen. How older wolves would sometimes stare at me with a passing look of extreme surprise before swiftly hiding it with disdain.

               Those anomalies suddenly seemed quite important.

                Kael observed the realization appear on my face, his concentration quite intense.

"You have seen things other wolves haven't, haven't you?" 

                It was not a question; he already knew. I turned aside and my silence validated his doubts. His temples constricted. 

"Tell me."

                 Before the admission came out, I hesitated, running a hand across my matted hair.

"Occasionally... I envision old, sprawling empires I have never seen. And I catch whispers. Voices inside my head."

                 Kael became stiff. 

"Which sorts of voices?"

"I don't know," I said, a shiver running through me at the memory. "They communicate in a language I find incomprehensible. Though it feels like power, it sounds like poetry."

                  Kael froze unusually still, his eyes drilling into me. 

"Anything further? Physical features?"

                  I swallowed hard, my voice going down. 

"The silver marks. On my collarbone and arms."

                  His eyes widened, a flash of real, raw surprise crossing his face for the first time. 

"Have you really seen them?"

                  I nodded silently. 

"Just on the evening of a perfect full moon. I believed it was a skin disease."

                   Kael muttered under his breath a series of low, deep words that caused my heart to sink.

"What?" I said in a state of anxiety. "What does that mean?"

"When were their most recent appearances?" he asked.

"Three evenings ago."

                   The king's whole attitude changed; his presence deepened into something threatening. 

"Then we are running out of time already. They know you've come of age."

                  A furious, soul-shaking roar tore across the jungle before I could inquire who 'they' were.

                  The earth beneath our feet actually shook. Birds burst from the treeline in a desperate mass, sending my wolf into blind fear right away. 

                   Every bit of warmth drained from Kael's face as his head turned toward the sound source. The amused, curious stranger was totally gone; only the deadly tyrant stayed. As a low, rumbling growl vibrated in his chest, his golden eyes narrowed into slits. 

"No."

                   Terror gripped my throat. 

"What the heck was that?"

                   He did not respond. Once more the roar resonated, far closer this time, its sheer acoustic power shaking my bones. My knees buckled, and if Kael hadn't instinctively moved in front of me with his large, broad-shouldered frame to totally block me from the woods, I would have struck the dirt.

                     The protectiveness of the gesture caught me off guard. Why would the most powerful creature on earth care about keeping me safe? Then his words reached up on me. The bloodline, The Lunar Royals, if he was correct, then everything about my pathetic life was untrue.

                    I could smell the metallic stench of ozone and rot in the air as the roar sounded a third time.

"Kael, what is it?" I yelled out.

                   His profile was stiff, chiselled from granite. 

"A Shadow Beast."

                   My blood transformed to ice. Every wolf knew the stories of the Shadow Beasts—old, evil animals made to seek down strong magical bloodlines. Animals meant to have gone extinct millennia ago.

"That's impossible," I gasped. "They no longer exist."

"I sincerely hope they were," Kael replied.

                   Branches broke like twigs in the near distance. Something big was ripping through the thick undergrowth with great speed.

"Why is it here?" I wondered, my pulse pounding wildly against my rib cage.

                   Kael turned to me, his sparkling eyes reflecting the answer so obviously that he hardly even had to speak it.

"You."

                  That one word broke whatever tenuous hold on reality I still had. The beast was not following the Lycan King. It was intentionally entering Silver Moon territory. It was after 'me'

                    The timeline matched perfectly all of a sudden. The strange assault on my mother, the secrets my father retained, the manner the pack treated me like a ticking time bomb. Someone had been attempting to wipe my family line for generations, and tonight, with my awakening, the tracker had eventually picked up the scent.

                   Another terrifying growl came from the dense darkness right behind the tree line.

                    Kael's aura burst out totally. Like a actual shockwave, raw, choking energy hit the clearing and pushed the grass to flatten and the air to thin. His sheer weight practically snatched the breath from my lungs. For the first time, I really grasped why the whole paranormal universe bent to him. The Lycan King was a force of nature, not only an Alpha. 

"Aria, you have to run. Right now," he said, his eyes burning like two suns.

"What?" I blinked, fear starting. "I'm not leaving you to battle that thing by yourself!"

                 For a second, something unexpected flashed in his eyes: approval, maybe even a little pride. Then, it was wiped clean by absolute command. 

"This isn't a request, Aria. Run. I can manage the monster."

                   As a big shadow broke over the tree line, the forest floor shook fiercely. It was massive, maybe twice the size of an Alpha wolf, its whole body apparently made of twisting, writhing shadows. Two crimson eyes shot holes through the black, and its jaw dripped with thick spit.

                   Fear paralyzed my wolf completely.

                 The creature slowed down, its red eyes passing right over Kael and then locking dead onto me. It had no regard for the king. It had found its target. A terrible, sharp sneer pulled back its lips to expose rows of obsidian teeth. Then it charged at us, kicking up dirt and rock as it barreled directly toward our direction.

                  Kael stayed still. He walked right into it's path, his strength exploding around him like a local storm. For the first time in my life, I saw what a real king looked like as he prepared to rip the earth apart to preserve what was his.

                  The battle was about to begin.