Daughter of the Moon (The Moon People, Book Two)

by Claudia King

  "You can come here when you need to wash or relieve yourself," Nekare said. "The seers will make sure you are fed. I would not try to share meals with the warriors. It would be better for you if you did not speak to them at all."

  Netya nodded her head in silence once again, and after she had taken a moment to see to her body's needs Nekare led her back to the centre of the camp and around the ring of tents until he came to one positioned directly above the sound of the river below. It was not an especially large or grand abode, but Netya could sense what lay inside. She closed her eyes, wishing that she could be anywhere else.

  "Go in. He knows we are here," Nekare said.

  "Please," Netya replied in a whisper, suddenly wishing she had tried harder to ingratiate herself to the man. "Will you not come in too?"

  He shook his head. "The alpha wants you alone. I have other things to attend to." He gestured at a group of people clustered near the camp's eastern entrance. "Tamnin is back, and the fool will not speak to anyone. The seers think him afflicted with another of your curses." His words were earnest enough, but Netya could tell they were more for his benefit than hers. He did not want to linger and make himself complicit in whatever the alpha had planned for her.

  "In here, Sun Wolf," Miral's muffled voice grated from within the tent. "Before I come out and get you."

  Netya's blood felt as though it was turning to ice, stiffening her movements as Nekare nudged her forward and lifted the tent flap for her to enter. Wishing only that it would be over swiftly, she tried her best to steel herself for what was to come. But the source of her strength—that golden shell of hope—was thin and broken.

  When she stepped into the alpha's abode, she felt only fear.

  —42—

  The Alpha's Will

  Skulls and antlers, fangs and pelts, even the weapons of the Sun People decorated the totem stakes driven into the earth around the circumference of Miral's tent. Much like Khelt, he chose to adorn his dwelling with trophies of past conquests. He even sat upon a crudely cut segment of tree trunk similar to the log seats Netya remembered from the alpha's den on the outcrop.

  Miral's dark hair was loose, hanging in two long parts against his chest as he reclined back against one of the stakes behind him. The fire crackling at his feet painted him in an unsettling orange light, casting his skin into contrast with the dark leather clothing he wore.

  "Your witches did this to me," he said, flicking his eyes in the direction of his wounded leg, which was bound to a pair of straight sticks once again. "With that beast they summoned. Nekare tells me it was a bear, but I have never seen a bear that large." The alpha narrowed his eyes at her. "Tell me, what was it?"

  Netya's response curled up and caught in her throat, and all that emerged was a faint murmur.

  "You fear to speak the demon's name?" Miral continued with a shake of his head. "My seers believe I should burn you upon a pyre while you still live. They fear the kind of evils you keep as lovers. They tell me," he clasped his hands and rested his chin atop them, "that only when your body is charred to ash will your taint be gone from our home."

  Netya tried to focus on her breathing, pushing away the thoughts of fire licking at her bare flesh and embers filling her lungs. It was all she could do to remain standing straight.

  "No words for me, Sun Wolf? Or have you finally learned the lesson your mentor could not?"

  She forced herself to shake her head slightly, keeping her eyes rooted on the same spot of ground in front of the fire.

  "I have asked myself many times why I spared you," Miral said. "Your kind are filth, make no mistake of it. The blood of the Sun People still flows in your veins, even if you hide it beneath the fur of a false wolf. I have never tolerated your kind in my pack, nor do I wish to now. But I tell you this because I did choose to spare you. I am no fool, Sun Wolf. I know the power you and the rest of Adel's children wield." He gripped the pole behind his seat suddenly and hauled himself to his feet, limping toward her. "You will share that magic with my clan."

  Beneath the wilting intensity of Miral's gaze, Netya felt compelled to speak, willing to do anything to keep the alpha from coming any closer.

  "I cannot. It is Adel's magic, not mine."

  Miral smiled. "Then I was wrong to let you live. What value do you have without your magic?"

  Netya backed away until one of the wooden stakes pressed up against her leg, and her fingers unconsciously found themselves gripping the pole of the flint-tipped spear that had been bound upright against it.

  Miral's grin spread. "Take it." He jerked his chin in the direction of the spear. "Kill me, Sun Wolf. I know you must want to. Your man's blood was the finest I tasted in many moons."

  Netya screwed her eyes shut as she noticed the pendant Miral had taken from her at the gathering still dangling from his waist wrap. Another trophy. She willed herself to jerk the spear loose from its bindings. Her grip grew tighter, but her hand would not move. She could not. Not even for the sake of a beast like Miral.

  "I would not stop you, you know," he said. "All you need do is take that spear. Drive it into my heart. Your man is gone. You will never see your pack again. What do you have left to live for but your vengeance?" He tilted his head, waiting expectantly for the blow that they both knew would not come.

  She tried to listen to his words. She wanted to summon up the anger to do as he said, but the thought of taking another person's life so deliberately was even more repellent than the alpha himself. Besides which, she feared what he might do if she tried. Any desire for revenge was second to the need she felt to protect her daughter. Just as Adel had fallen to her knees and begged for her apprentice's life, so too would Netya give anything she could to safeguard her child.

  "I pity you, Sun Wolf," Miral said. "Not for what you are, but for the lies Adel has made you believe. You think you have the strength to stand against men like me, but look at you now. Any one of my warriors would gladly die for the chance to take a rival alpha's life if it was offered so freely." He gripped Netya's chin and forced her to look at him. "It is not wrong to accept that you lack that courage. To accept that, as a woman, you will never stand equal to the men of our kind. I would have you remember that, Sun Wolf. We all have our place in this world, and when your den mother defied me she spat upon the status of all men." The alpha's lip curled, baring a flash of white teeth. "Now, tell me that she was wrong, and that you understand your place."

  "She was wrong," Netya forced out. What other choice did she have? "I understand my place."

  Miral snorted, letting go of her chin with a rough flick of his hand. "You say it, but you do not believe it. Do not fear, Sun Wolf, those words will come easier the next time you speak them." He turned his back on her and limped over to his seat again, lowering himself down with a grunt of pain.

  Had it not been for the spear she was clutching, Netya might have given in to the weakness in her trembling legs. She could not bear being in the alpha's presence. Every moment she remained, every word that he spoke, she felt another fragment of her willpower crumbling away. It was not enough that he had ended the life of the person she loved most—he had to reduce what little was left of her to nothing as well. A few days prior she might have risen to the challenge, tapped into her deepest reserves of strength and fought back until her last breath. But the things that had been the source of that strength were gone, and without them she felt as brittle as a withered sapling.

  "Your pack," Miral said after a time. "Will they come for you again?"

  "I do not know."

  "You know very little, it seems. My warriors will not return to Adel's valley, but she cannot stay hidden there forever. She would not have risked sending you to hunt in my territory again otherwise."

  "We came to hunt of our own accord," Netya replied, perhaps a little too hastily. "Adel did not allow it."

  "Really?" Miral eyed her for a moment. "So she fears me, and yet you came anyway. There is a reason I make no claim to the valleys b
eyond the river. There is little in the way of prey but birds and bears there. Your people fear a hungry winter. That is why you began trespassing in my lands."

  "We are growing our own food."

  "And will you have it before the first frost comes?" Miral said. "Your people are starving. Answer me true, woman."

  The menacing look in the alpha's eyes made Netya flinch. He had done nothing to harm her yet, but she sensed there was only a hair standing between her and his retribution.

  "Yes," she said. "But we will make do."

  "You will stop speaking of them as if they are still your pack." He tapped his chest. "You are mine now. This is your clan. And you will never set foot in that valley again."

  Something about the alpha's words unnerved Netya even more than their base implication. He had first threatened her with being burned alive, but his previous demand about teaching his seers her magic seemed all but forgotten. Now he was treating her not as a captive, but as someone he had already taken into his fold. The confusion of his true intentions was almost as frightening as the threat of the pyre.

  "What is to become of me?" she forced herself to ask, dreading the answer.

  Miral made her wait. He stoked the coals of his fire with a stick, tossing a small log upon the embers and rolling it around until it caught.

  "A wise question to ask," he said eventually. "I could give you to one of my warriors. We already have too many men and not enough females. But they would rather take you for pleasure than as a mate, and none would wish to pollute our pack with your offspring. It would make them far happier if I killed you. A sacrifice of a dark witch to appease the spirits." The alpha nodded to himself. "It would help them overcome their fear of Adel's ilk. I should do it. Most alphas would."

  "Then why wait?!" Netya all but sobbed, unable to endure the way he was tormenting her.

  "Ahh," Miral sighed. "Because perhaps I have been mistaken. Perhaps there is hope for a sun wolf among us yet. If you show remorse, that is. If you seek to undo the evil your den mother has sown within your heart. Is such a thing possible, I wonder?"

  "Why must you do this?" Netya said, her eyes brimming with fresh tears. "Have you not done enough to me already?"

  "It is no longer your place to ask such questions of your alpha," Miral growled, though his expression gleamed with predatory amusement. "Do you value your life, Sun Wolf?"

  Netya's chin fell, then she made the slightest of nods.

  "Then you will do your best to appease me, and perhaps I will let you keep it for a few days longer. Tomorrow, I may kill you." He glanced upward, working his lower lip back and forth in contemplation. "But perhaps you will give me a reason not to. Who can say. You are the seer, not I."

  The crushing truth of the alpha's intentions stole up on Netya like a drop of cold water trickling down her spine. He had no real use for her. He cared not for her magic, or that she might be used to bait Adel into confronting him again. She was there only to sate his curiosity, or his amusement, and her life held value only for so long as it kept the alpha's attention. She was a plaything to him, worth no more than the trophies displayed around his tent. And it was only a matter of time before she was cast aside to display another, more interesting spoil of the alpha's conquest.

  How long could her willpower hold?

  Until my daughter is born, she thought. It seemed a thin hope, but she needed to have faith that her visions still meant something. Somehow, if she could stay within the alpha's good graces until she gave birth, then perhaps her child might be spared. Miral had said his pack needed females. Perhaps that would be enough for him to overlook her daughter's half-blood heritage. Then, at least, her child would have the chance to grow into the woman she had glimpsed within her visions, even if it was under the watch of a monster like Miral.

  Netya needed to hope. She needed something to keep her from falling to her knees and begging the alpha to take her life rather than subjecting her to any more of his cruel whims.

  "Tell me again," Miral said, "how your den mother was wrong, and that you understand your place now. Then you may leave."

  She felt the words fall from her numb lips, but she did not truly hear them.

  "Once more." The alpha fixed his hungry gaze upon her. "And then again. Until I believe you."

  —43—

  Clouded Skies

  The heavens closed above Miral's camp, bringing the wet season upon them in earnest as the sun and moon became rare visitors, replaced with shades of white and grey upon the skies.

  Netya remained mostly unmolested by Miral's followers, but they kept her at arm's length and made little effort to hide their distaste at having a sun wolf in their midst. The small group of women who shared Netya's tent sat apart from her, treating their new companion to little more than vile looks as they came and went. She was happy for them to leave her alone. It made it easier to escape into the blank void of her thoughts, where she could focus only on the crackle of the fire or the draft of wind blowing in through the walls of the patchy tent. She tried to spend her days focusing on thoughts of her daughter, reliving her visions over and over and attempting to recapture the sense of wonder they used to evoke in her. The white wolf that had once guided her through the world of dreams appeared less and less often, and she knew it was only a matter of time before he was gone completely. Her connection to her spirit guardian had been severed, and knowing that his presence was slowly slipping away only made the loneliness of her dreams worse.

  The day after Miral had summoned her to his tent, the warriors arrived back from their hunt, carrying with them the carcasses of several deer bound by the hooves to sturdy carrying poles. Netya watched from just inside her tent as one of the men stepped forward, slit the throat of the largest deer, and drank of its cooling blood as Miral raised the man's hand high and bellowed out a roar of congratulation that was soon picked up by the rest.

  The hunter's prize. Seeing the elation on the faces of the men made them seem no different from the hunters who had celebrated the same ritual in Khelt's pack. Netya recalled seeing it performed several times at the great gathering, but it was a tradition that had not carried over to Adel's group after they set out on their own. Hunting had been a necessity of survival, not a sport to waste time glorifying. She wondered whether her surviving pack members would have enough food to go around that winter, now that they had fewer mouths to feed. Surely Adel would ensure they stayed safe. She had to.

  Thinking of the warm fire outside the central cave, the happy laughter of Fern and Wren, the boasts of Kin and his brothers as they tried to work their way into the furs of whichever female they sought to bed down with that evening, she regretted not savouring her time in that happy place more. One day she had hoped to have Caspian show her more of his wood burnings, so that she could make pretty ornaments like the pendant he had crafted for her. She had wanted to hear more of his tales about him and Khelt in their youth. Few could recount the words of a story like Caspian.

  She tried not to weep when she thought of him, for she doubted it did her any good in the eyes of her captors, but it was often a futile effort. It was best to save her tears for when she was alone in her furs, when she could pretend he was still there with her, adding his warmth to their shared embrace. It was something she had enjoyed for only a few brief seasons of her young life, but now that she was without it the world seemed even more lonely than it had been in the days before she had ever known a lover's touch.

  Even when she was up and about, there was little she could do to make herself feel useful or distract her thoughts from the dark places they now inhabited. The seers would not allow her near their cave, despite what Miral had said, and the craftspeople did not trust her with tools. Some of the warriors made a sport of mocking her one morning, forcing her to take the shape of her wolf as they penned her within a circle of their snarling jaws, barking and snapping at her as those on two legs laughed at the weakness of her sun-born wolf.

  She had caught sight of
the alpha watching from a distance with a smile on his face, and to her relief he did not summon her to his tent that day, seemingly content with having gotten enough sport out of his captive already. The cruel game eventually ended when Nekare broke it up, goading the warriors into seeking challenges from each other rather than a timid sun wolf. He offered her no words of consolation after the men lost interest, but she sent him a look of silent thanks regardless before creeping quietly back to her tent.

  Though Miral chose not to call upon her that particular day, he made a routine of it every other afternoon. The alpha's leg was still healing, much to his apparent annoyance, and he was forced to find ways to occupy himself within the confines of his tent when the seers insisted he rest. If there was any vindication Netya could take from Miral's condition, it was that his healers only seemed to be making it worse with their methods. They drew blood from his broken leg every day, cutting the flesh just below the knee to siphon away the power of the wound that they believed kept it from mending. Netya did not know whether there was any wisdom in their methods, but Adel had always taught her that drawing blood only made people weaker, not stronger.

  She was often summoned to the alpha's tent after the seers had finished, and twice he had her dress the cuts they had made, seeming to savour that one of his enemies was now on her knees tending the very wound she had been partially responsible for inflicting.

  The taste of the air inside Miral's tent began to nauseate her every time she entered, only adding to the sense of dread she felt at returning. On the occasions when his mood seemed most vile, she was almost convinced that he would kill her if she said so much as a word to displease him, and her panic built with every passing moment as he made her repeat the same words he had put into her mouth the first time he called on her.

  Adel was wrong. I understand my place now.