Semua Bab THE REJECTED LUNA: Bab 11 - Bab 20

None of us touched it at first. The cabin door was still locked, both locks. The curtains were still drawn. The windows shut and frosted over from the cold outside. No one had come in. No one could have come in. Jax’s cabin had only two doors and we were staring at both. But the feather was there. It sat on his kitchen table, right in the middle, on top of the chipped mug my mother had left. Long, as long as my forearm. Pure white, but not chicken-feather white. Glowing white, like it had light inside it. Warm. I could feel the heat coming off it from two feet away, like a small heater. Under it was a folded piece of yellowed paper, old and thick, with one word written on the front in black ink that had bled a little. COME. My mother made a small sound and covered her mouth with both hands. Jax didn’t move, still holding me, my feet off the frosty floor, his bare chest heaving. His four scars glowed faintly white, like they were answering the feather. “Don’t touch it,” he said

The circle wasn’t supposed to let him in. Mara had said it. My mother said it outside, crying that she couldn’t enter, that mothers burn. The Northern Alphas were still trying, their shadows slamming into the invisible edge and jerking back like they’d touched a live wire, cursing, shouting. Even Jax, a Guardian, marked by a White himself, was stuck at the edge, fighting, unable to cross. But Kaden crossed. He just ran straight through, like the wall didn’t exist for him at all. He hit his knees in the dead leaves under the Old Oak, breathing hard, steam pouring from his mouth. Just a t-shirt and sweats in freezing woods. Bare feet, bleeding from the run. Hair wrecked. And his neck. On the right side, opposite where my rejection burn had been, sat a fresh mark. Not silver like Jax’s soothe. Red. Raw. Teeth marks, still bleeding, a bruise already blooming fast around it. Someone had bitten him. Hard. Recently. Within the hour, maybe less. He looked up at me, eyes red, and when he

Jax was breaking.I could see it. Half his body was through the wall that the Old Oak made and the wall was not supposed to let Guardians through ever. Mara said no Guardian had ever broken it in three hundred years. And he was breaking it with his bare hands and his scars.The four white lines on his neck were not glowing now. They were bleeding light. Real light, thick like the pool inside the tree, running down his throat onto his coat. His nose was bleeding too, red blood mixing with white light. His yellow eyes were locked on me and only me.“Amelia,” he gasped, and every word looked like it cost him a lung. “Do not drink. Please. Do not drink that.”Mara stood beside me inside the Oak, her white hair floating even though there was no wind in here. Her hand was still on my face, warm.“He should not be here,” she whispered, and for the first time she sounded scared, not wise, not old, just scared. “The Oak kills Guardians who enter the heart. It remembers what men did to us. It r

The tall woman did not let go of my wrist.Her hand was warm. Too warm for someone standing barefoot in snow up to her ankles in a white fur coat that looked like it was made from a wolf that had been her sister. She pulled me and I stumbled after her because my legs were still shaking from running and from the light that had poured over my head inside the Oak and turned my hair all white.Behind us on the frozen lake, the fight had started.I could hear it even though I could not see it clearly through falling snow and green pink lights moving across the sky. White wolves against gray wolves. The four women who had been fishing with the tall woman had shifted. They were huge. I had never seen white wolves before except in stories my mother told me when she thought Harlan was not listening. In those stories white wolves were big as horses and they glowed. These were big as horses and they glowed.The gray wolves were patrol. I did not know what patrol meant here but the tall woman sai

Harlan did not know how to drive on ice.His truck hit the frozen lake edge too fast, brakes screaming, headlights swinging wild green pink under northern lights, and the whole front end dropped a little as ice cracked under tires. He stopped, scared to go further, and honked again, long, angry, like that would make me come.In the back of his truck, under a tarp that blew off in wind, I could see her.My mother.Hands tied in front with rope, not silver, rope, because Harlan still thought rope could hold a lone wolf who had lived under his permission for twenty years. Mouth taped with silver tape that burned, I could see the burn marks at corners of her mouth even from middle of lake. She was in her same dress from Jax cabin, no coat, shaking so hard I could see it even far away.Next to her, Kaden sat, not tied, but head down, new bite on neck bleeding through bandage Lena had probably put on. Lena herself stood in truck bed too, arms crossed, watching me across ice with eyes that w