Her Noble Owl (Marked By The Moon Book 4)

by Kestra Pingree

  She didn’t have time to think about that.

  She pumped her legs even harder, making every one of her muscles and tendons scream as she locked her gaze on Russel. His golden-eyed gaze was pleading. He was losing too much blood. Her pup needed her, and she refused to let him down.

  Chapter 16

  THE POUNDING OF A helicopter rotor system cutting through the air was a lot like the headache pounding in Cedric’s foggy skull. There were sirens too. Their annoying blare was growing louder and louder with each passing second, yelling at him to wake up.

  He tried to say something, but hot liquid gurgled out from his beak. Beak. He should shift. His shift was masked by all the white feathers pluming around him, but his body still morphed like any other shifter’s, and it made the deep tears in his stomach burn. He choked back a scream of pain as he held his hands to his stomach. He was hot in the cold snow. His blood made the snow underneath him steam, and it made him gag in response. He didn’t look to make sure, but he felt like his intestines were leaking out of his body. God, this was painful. Berserker bites were no fucking joke.

  Now that he no longer had his feathers to further shield him from the cold, he was quickly cooling down. Goosebumps covered his body, and he shivered uncontrollably. Where were Stella and Russel?

  He rolled over onto his stomach, which made the pain ten times worse, and scanned the field. He saw tracks. He needed to fly. He should have just stayed in the skin of his snowy owl. God, he couldn’t think.

  “Please,” he begged to whoever might be listening, God, the universe, something. The Moon. He pressed his fingers to his Lunas Sigil. If the Moon felt like offering him any help, now was the time to do it. At least it could stop his guts from spilling out.

  “Please,” he repeated as blood bubbled in his mouth.

  Tires squealed as police cars slid to a stop at the front of the cabin. Doors opened and slammed closed. It was all followed by the voice of a woman who could only be a reporter. “Get in closer! Film that! See if he’s alive!”

  “Fuck,” Cedric muttered as he spat out the blood in his mouth. He tried to lift himself from the snow. He succeeded, but he almost fell back in. His equilibrium was off. “Don’t look down,” he told himself as more blood coated the hand holding his stomach.

  “Cedric!?” That hysteric voice belonged to his mother. What was she doing there? “Arthur, do something!”

  Apparently, his father was here too. What a time for a family reunion. More importantly, how did they know he was here?

  “God, Cedric. What have you been doing?” Nathan too. Literally, the whole Snow family.

  Reporters and cameras rushed at Cedric, talking excitedly about his wounds and how he was stark naked, but his family and the cops shooed them away.

  “I don’t have time for this!” Cedric shouted.

  Cedric’s mother grabbed his hip with one hand and used her other to hold his arm over her shoulder as she did her best to support him. His blood soiled her pristine white suit. “Oh, my God,” she kept repeating. It was nice to know she cared more about him than getting dirty, though.

  “Cedric, you are getting in a car this instant so we can drive you to a hospital, and then you will explain yourself,” his father demanded.

  “I can’t. I’ll explain later.” Cedric found the little bit of strength left in him to escape his mother’s hold. And then he shifted. With all the reporters and cops around, he shifted. As his feathers burst into the air in a blizzard of white, he broke so many rules. He was going to be faced with repercussions. But none of that mattered if he couldn’t save his family. Time was of the essence.

  “Cedric!” His mother was hysterically shrieking now.

  She tried to grab on to him, to conceal him or keep him from flying away—maybe both—but he slipped out of her grasp and took to the sky as he flapped his powerful wings. He felt like he lost a gallon of blood with each flap, but he kept going and managed to gain altitude. Everyone in front of the cabin was freaking out, and his family was attempting crowd control, but the fucking reporters got him on camera. The cat was out of the bag.

  Repercussions. But he didn’t care about that. All that mattered was Stella and Russel. Stella and Russel. God, he hoped they were okay. He promised to protect them and look at what good he did. He failed them.

  The Lunas Sigil on his right wing glowed blue and urged him faster. He could still save them. He sped through the air while keeping his eyes on the tracks below. They were leading into a thicket of trees. They were close by. His ears were picking up their growls. He would see them any second now, and he was going to tear out Tyler’s other eye.

  Tyler was either slowing down or Stella was getting faster. She was catching up to him. Good thing too, because they just hit a thicket of trees and visibility was down. Suddenly, Tyler jerked to a stop, spraying snow and making Russel yelp as he tore farther into the back of his neck. Then Tyler shook his head like the fucking maniac he was, tearing even farther into Russel’s flesh. Stella growled and lunged at him, but Tyler was done playing. He jerked his head one more time and let Russel go, sending him slipping and sliding into the snow where his head connected with a boulder. The cracking sound that impact produced made Stella’s stomach flip.

  She had one chance. She locked her jaws onto Tyler’s throat, getting in a hit before he could stop her, and tugged with all of her rage, with all of the strength she had in her. Tyler kicked her with his forelegs, knocking the wind out of her and forcing her to let go. She slid back in the snow, paws splayed to keep her standing upright. She gasped a few panting breaths to refill her lungs.

  Slowly, she began to circle Tyler because he hadn’t moved. He was frothing at the mouth and blood soaked the left side of his face, but for some reason, the look in his right eye wasn’t wild and Berserker. Was he reverting back like he did sometimes? Was his brain functioning for a moment?

  All of a sudden, Tyler began to shift. Bones cracked, his thinning fur receded into sick and patchy skin, his tail disappeared, and his snout flattened. Then he stood before her naked in his human skin.

  “Shift,” he ordered.

  Stella tried so hard to resist his order, but he was the male wolf who had claimed her over and over, an alpha wolf, once her Alpha, and she had no choice but to obey. The power he held over her was immense. It had been that way for years, even when he was locked in the skin of his wolf for days, even when he couldn’t string together a coherent sentence. He held all the power.

  The forced shift was brutal. It burned every part of Stella’s body like someone had taken her parts and then broke and reformed them with a hammer and nails. She cried out as the cold snow bit at her bare skin, and she was human again. She quickly rubbed out the pain in her arms and stared Tyler down. She couldn’t move.

  “You belong to me, Shining Star,” Tyler told her. His voice was dead and mechanical somehow. “And I find you with another man, a fucking Snow of all things.”

  Stella’s rage was briefly replaced with shock. Tyler hadn’t spoken this coherently in years. She wanted to talk back, to deny she was his, but her tongue wouldn’t work. It wasn’t fair that this crazed alpha wolf had control over an omega like herself. She would have given anything to be an alpha at that moment. She would have torn out Tyler’s throat and Russel would have been in her arms by now.

  The blood boiling in Stella’s veins grew hotter as Tyler stepped forward. He didn’t seem to care that one of his eyes was gone and blood was pouring down his face. The eye he still had, the eye that was lucid for a moment, went dark and hungry.

  “Need,” he muttered. “Need, need, need. Kill, kill, kill. Shining Star.”

  This was it. Tyler would kill her this time. She was sure of it. No matter how much she pleaded with the Moon or how hard she gripped her Lunas Sigil, no matter how much she focused on Russel and her feelings for him, she just couldn’t move. Stupid. Fucking. Alphas. They thought they ruled the world. And maybe they did.

  Tyler br
idged the distance between them, and then he was on her like he had been on her so many times before. She tried to fight him, to bite him, to kick him, to claw him. She tried so desperately, she was able to put up a sad and inconsequential fight, but it was a fight all the same. That was all that mattered now. Because it was over. It was really over. She and Russel had been so close to freedom, but Tyler won in the end.

  Pain burned through Stella’s neck as Tyler claimed her once again. He kicked her legs wide and thrust against her and then into her like he had so many times before. And it hurt like every time before. This time he was going to break her beyond repair because once he was through, he would take her life. There was no coming back from that. It was hard enough coming back from this.

  “Please stop,” she begged with useless tears pouring out of her eyes.

  She looked up to the sky and the sun overhead and thought about the unfairness of it all. Then a familiar silhouette flew above her, blocking out the sun. He flapped his magnificent white wings. His Moon Mark blazed blue. His belly was covered in blood. He screeched as he dive-bombed from the sky like a warrior angel. He went right for Tyler’s right eye, and his aim was true. His talons tore it out of his skull in one fell swoop.

  Tyler screamed, apparently conscious enough to feel pain at the moment. He stumbled backward as Stella kicked him off of her. He held his hands to his bleeding eye sockets as he continued howling in utter agony. This was it. No, Stella wasn’t going to die today. She and Russel were going to live. They were going to carve out a better future with Cedric. The only one who would die today was Tyler. His time was over. There was no light in his future because he had died a long time ago.

  Once again, Stella shifted. She watched as Cedric dove in for Tyler again, cutting him deep with each strike, and then she made her move. She jumped, aimed for Tyler’s throat, and hit her mark. She clamped her jaws down without hesitation. There was no fur to get in her way, but tearing through the thick muscles in his neck was no easy task. She managed all the same. His blood gushed into her mouth, and while the taste of iron wasn’t anything special or rewarding, his last gurgling breath certainly was. Because that meant it was over. Her Lunas Sigil buzzed with energy, reassuring her that this nightmare was finally—finally—over.

  When she let go of Tyler’s throat and gave his limp form to the silent snow, she heard Cedric let out a grunt of pain. She looked over her shoulder to see he had shifted. What was he thinking? He shouldn’t have shifted when he was hurt so badly. Then again, he couldn’t do much to treat his wounds as an owl. She followed suit and shifted as well. She wanted to run to Russel, but she needed to check on Cedric too.

  “Go to Russel,” Cedric said urgently. He held a bloodstained hand to his stomach as he stumbled toward Russel himself.

  Stella bit her lip, rushed to Cedric’s side to help support him, and they made their way to Russel together. Cedric leaned against a tree as Stella dropped to the snow and gathered her pup in her arms.

  “Russ,” she cooed. “Wake up, baby.”

  Her Lunas Sigil warmed the skin on her forearm. She didn’t know why, but she gently pressed her mark to Russel’s. A static shock jolted between them. Then he woke up. He let out a little whimper and shifted.

  “Mom?” he asked when he had tucked his wolf away. His golden-brown eyes were half closed. He looked so tired.

  “Hey, baby.” She gently touched the new lump on his forehead. Oh God, and he was bleeding so much from Tyler’s bite. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I got hit in the head.”

  She half laughed and half sobbed at the same time. “We need to get you both to a hospital.”

  “There are cops at the cabin,” Cedric said, but the way he said it was grim. Stella wondered what that was about.

  Stella’s nose tickled with an unfamiliar scent. It wasn’t human, wolf, or bird. It smelled like cat.

  “Did you bring a cat with you?” she asked Cedric quickly.

  Before he could reply, a man dressed all in black leaped out from the shadows of the trees. The way he landed was just like a cat landing effortlessly on its paws from a high fall. He took one look at Tyler’s body and frowned. Stella’s hackles rose and she bared her teeth. They couldn’t take another hit. What was this cat shifter doing here?

  “Rogue,” Cedric said weakly.

  Rogue. The shifter Cedric briefly told her about? She quieted her aggression. Cedric didn’t seem worried.

  “What the actual fuck, Snow?” the cat, Rogue, replied. “You sure know how to cause a scene. I know you’ve lived your entire life in the spotlight, but fuck.”

  “What are you doing here?” Cedric asked.

  Rogue walked closer to them, but Cedric still didn’t seem worried, so Stella stayed quiet. When Rogue was in front of Cedric, he grabbed the hand Cedric was using to staunch the bloody hole in his stomach and replaced it with his own hand.

  “Fuck!” Cedric exclaimed as he almost doubled over in pain when Rogue applied more pressure. “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure you don’t die,” the cat said coolly. “Give me permission to heal you.”

  “What?”

  “Just fucking say it, Snow. And mean it.”

  “I give you permission to heal me,” Cedric said, voice cracking in pain.

  Rogue’s hand started glowing with a blue light. A Lunas Sigil appeared on the back of his hand, and a new one appeared on Cedric’s at the same time. Stella and Russel watched in astonishment as Cedric’s wound closed right before their eyes. At the same time, Rogue visibly slumped. Was this healing coming straight from his body?

  “You’ll live,” Rogue announced as he pulled his now bloody hand away and proceeded to wipe it off in the snow. The new Moon Marks were gone. “God forbid the Moon actually do something itself,” Rogue said as he shook his hand at the sky, but there was a smirk on his face.

  “Thank you,” Stella managed to say through the astonishment. She meant those words with all of her heart.

  Rogue nodded and bent down to inspect Russel. He ran his thumb across the bump on his head and quickly inspected the bloody marks Tyler had left on him. “You too, kid.”

  Russel looked up at Stella. She nodded, assuring him everything was okay.

  “I give you permission to heal me,” Russel said, copying Cedric.

  “Perfect,” Rogue said under his breath.

  Another Lunas Sigil appeared on Rogue’s hand and Russel’s this time, glowing bright for an instant as Russel’s wounds healed to a point they were no longer bleeding. Russel would heal the rest of the way on his own like Cedric. Then the new marks disappeared once again.

  Rogue shook his head. His eyes seemed to have dimmed. They were already dark, but it seemed like they were no longer reflecting any light.

  “I’m okay,” Stella said when Rogue turned to her. She was worried the cat would pass out at this rate. And she was okay. She had a killer headache, but she was okay. She knew she’d heal. She was already healing.

  “You sure?” Rogue asked.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Rogue rolled his neck, taking a moment to sort through whatever using Lunas like this did to him. Stella had never seen anything like it. Rogue was powerful. She hated to think what he could do if he was their enemy.

  “Now I’m going to have to ask you guys to come with me because Cedric Snow did something reckless,” he informed.

  Stella looked at Cedric questioningly.

  “I shifted in front of a reporting crew,” he stated.

  “What?!”

  Rogue sighed. “A guy madly in love will do anything for that love, you know. For real though. I need to keep you guys under wraps so you’re safe until I can get this thing covered up.”

  “How could you do that?” Stella asked incredulously.

  “I work for Trinity.”

  “Trinity?”

  “Cedric, get your girl and boy and fucking come with me. I’ll explain everything.”

 
“Best to do what he says, Stella,” Cedric said, though he didn’t seem entirely convinced. Stella reluctantly went along with it.

  Rogue led the way through the thicket to a snow field out of view from the cabin where a black SUV awaited them. Rogue got them loaded up, threw some extra clothes and blankets at them, and handed Stella a first aid kit so she could clean the cut on her head and the bite on her neck. Cedric took the kit from her and did it for her. His touch was a gentle caress, and she almost missed the sting of antiseptic.

  She still couldn’t believe Rogue had healed Cedric like that. She didn’t have much time to think about it in the moment, but looking back, she wasn’t sure if Cedric would have survived if Rogue hadn’t healed him. His skin was still scarred and hurt, but nothing like it was. He wasn’t bleeding anymore and neither was Russel.

  Rogue sped away as soon as he could, and everyone was silent for a moment. And they breathed. Just breathed. They were alive. Tyler was dead. But now there were new problems to address.

  “Trinity is a shifter alliance,” Rogue informed. “A big one. It has a lot of say though you wouldn’t know it. Someday shifters will be out in the open, but not until the time is right. And the time isn’t right, so now I have to fix Cedric’s mess before humans freak out and set fire to the world.” He tapped the steering wheel. “And to answer your question, Cedric, I was there because I bugged your family with little tiny microphones. They got a call from some anonymous douche bag who was hella chintzy on details. Seemed like a prank when he said Cedric Snow was in danger, but then dear Nathan spilled the beans and here we are. Still not sure who called, but it turns out you three took care of my Berserker problem for me.”

  “Your Berserker problem?” Stella asked.

  “The guy you killed was causing a lot of trouble in Kansas City and anywhere else he went, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he turning humans into wolves?”

  Stella stared out the window. “Yes, he did that.”

  “I was hunting that Berserker. You killed him. Things should quiet down now I hope—once I fix this new problem.” Rogue glared at Cedric in the rear-view mirror. “Thanks for giving me more work.”