Moon Battle (The Wolf Wars #4)

by H. D. Gordon

  As they’d huddled under the raised roots of an ancient oak the previous night, waiting with bated breath for a patrol to pass, Ozias had told her telepathically that the Hounds’ orders were likely to kill or capture any slaves, and then they would crush the resistance in Dogshead with the force of four armies.

  But word had also come about the happenings in Dogshead, and it was so shocking that if Ozias and Nahari had not personally witnessed everything that had occurred in the past twenty-four hours, they might not have believed the absurdity of it.

  The new Midlands Pack Master had been killed, and Rukiya Moonborn had been the one to do it.

  She and the other rebels had helped the Dogs in Dogshead slay the Hounds, and word was that they were digging in to fight the other four Pack Masters, to secure freedom for all Wolves across the realm.

  Ozias, Nahari knew, wanted very much to join that fight. She wished she could say the same, but she had always been a coward, and the structures of the world falling to pieces around her had not changed that.

  “You are not a coward,” Ozias had told her, his baritone a welcome presence in her head. “I’ve already seen more courage from you than most exhibit in a lifetime, so don’t sell yourself short.”

  It was things like this, the kindness that seemed to be so much a part of the large male despite his brutal history, that made her want to ask him to instead join her and the pups in fleeing the violence. Despite her logical mind insisting not to get attached, she could feel it happening, and was helpless to stop it.

  There were still a couple days of travel to the border of the Midlands territory, and another half day to Dogshead after that. Ozias mentioned the possibility of delivering them to Sionn, a town that was nestled off a rarely traveled road to the south. But when they’d gotten there the previous afternoon, they’d found only charred structures and bodies covered in blood.

  They’d passed three more towns with the same.

  They’d avoided a dozen patrols by a hair’s breadth.

  Now, they were nestled in an alcove behind a waterfall, deep within a small forest between the Eastern Territory and the Southern. They’d shifted into their mortal forms to bathe away the gore of the past twenty-four hours, to let the rush of fresh water cleanse their skin.

  The pleasure was simple, but enormous. It felt so good to sit for a moment, the rushing of the water shielding them from the chaos of the world beyond.

  How was it that just yesterday she had been scrubbing toilets and fetching meals, and now here she was, running for her life with two highborn pups and a former Dog at her side?

  Nahari glanced down at the silver cuffs around her wrists, which had been there for as long as she could remember. They were too tight to just slip over her hands, which, of course, had been the intention.

  Nahni and Norman were curled up in the back of the alcove, droplets of water from the falls sticking to their thick fur as they rested their little heads atop one another. Nahari released a slow sigh and stole a glance at Ozias, who was methodically rinsing blood from his deep brown skin.

  She tried not to stare, but couldn’t help herself. Despite the scars marring his muscled body—a mangled concentration of which were positioned on his back, where he’d no doubt received countless lashings—he was breathtaking.

  When he turned and saw her staring, his brown eyes sparked with something that made heat swirl low in her belly and spread slowly up her spine. Though Wolves were not bashful creatures, nakedness not necessarily taboo in their culture, Nahari was suddenly aware of the proximity of their bare bodies. It was an effort not to glance down, to see if the same heat that had swept through her had stirred him.

  Instead, she turned her back to him, her long ebony hair falling in a cascade over her shoulders, reaching the curve of her waist.

  She could feel his gaze on her, and chastised herself for thinking what she was about a male she had hardly known for a day. They were on the run for their lives, with two small pups in their care. This was no place for animal instincts to rule.

  As if Ozias sensed her thoughts, he shifted into his Wolf form, having scrubbed the blood from his skin, and gave her a brief glance.

  “I’ll go find us something to eat,” he told her.

  “Just make sure you come back,” Nahari said.

  With a nod, Ozias slipped through the curtain of water offering a temporary reprieve from the world.

  Every moment he was gone felt like an eternity. Nahari took her Wolf form as well and curled up in front of the pups.

  She was just beginning to really worry when an enormous dark shape appeared on the other side of the waterfall. Nahari heaved a sigh of relief.

  But the Wolf who stepped through the rushing curtain of water was not Ozias.

  Instead, it was a Hound.

  In Wolf form, Hounds could not be identified by uniform, for obvious reasons.

  But Nahari had been a slave for the entirety of her twenty years of life, and she could recognize a Hound with or without their whips and sigils. There was something about the way they carried themselves, the look in their eyes.

  The look that the Hound gave her now, as if he had stumbled upon a treasure trove, rather than a cowering female and two sleeping pups.

  Nahari wondered if the sadism was beaten into them, or if it was something in their blood.

  Right now, though, she supposed it did not matter.

  His lips pulled back from his teeth, his bulk easily doubling hers.

  The same fury that had stolen over her before overtook her now, the change enough to make her head spin. She darted forward, pushing off her rear paws with all her strength, and tackled the Hound with the force of her weight, jaws snapping for some kind of purchase.

  The two Wolves went tumbling over the edge of the waterfall, splashing in the crystalline pool not far below.

  Suddenly, there was water in her lungs where there had been a rumbling growl only moments before. She paddled for the surface, and broke free for just long enough to draw in a deep gulp of air before something locked like a vice on her left hind leg and dragged her back under.

  Somehow, she managed not to yelp in pain, and to hold the air in her lungs as the water once again went over her head.

  But the Hound let go, because as much as he wanted to tear into her, he also had to breathe air. The water around Nahari tinged scarlet with her blood, and she paddled to the edge with the gasping Hound on her heels.

  Reaching the bank offered no reprieve. The bastard was on her in a moment. His fur was a gold that caught the sunlight, his eyes glowing with the fury of a thousand suns.

  “You little bitch,” he growled into her head.

  He lunged for her. Nahari tried to dart out of the way, but was only able to evade the larger male for so long. The seconds felt like hours as she prayed for Ozias’s return, but save for the snarling Hound in front of her and the pounding of her heart, the forest was silent.

  You have to save yourself, whispered a voice in her head. Fight, Gods damn it, what have you got to lose?

  It took her a moment, but Nahari recognized the voice as her Wolf, her inner beast. After all these years of being whipped and beaten into submission, that part of her had somehow survived.

  And it knew that it was her or the Hound.

  Nahari lowered her head and bared her teeth, a snarl tearing out of her. If the Hound wanted to take the children, he would have to go through her first.

  Her reaction genuinely seemed to surprise the male for the briefest of moments before a wicked gleam leaked into his glowing golden gaze.

  He wanted her to put up a fight. He liked it.

  Nahari had known plenty of males like him.

  And she had hated every single one of them. Barbarous bastards, lower than swine.

  He rushed forward, and there was a whizz, a puff of air as something brushed by her ear. The Hound in front of her, a Wolf twice her size, halted on his paws, his enormous body coming to a dead stop.

&n
bsp; One of his eyes went wide, while the other was impaled with an arrow, the barbed point having gone deep enough to poke out the other side of his skull.

  The Hound slumped to the forest floor a heartbeat later, and Nahari could only stare slack-jawed.

  Slowly, she turned, her eyes following the direction from which the arrow had come. There, standing on the outcrop of rock beside the waterfall, was little Nahni. She had shifted into her mortal form, the expensive magical ring on her little finger allowing her to summon clothing with the change. The bow Ozias had lifted from a dead Wolf along the way was still clutched in her tiny left hand. She did not look at Nahari, but instead, only stared at the dead Hound, at the arrow she had put through his eye.

  She was only a pup of six, but she had been in lessons of all kinds since she was old enough to stand on two feet and four paws. And she was strong, of course, as Wolf Shifters were always physically strong. Nahari had watched Nahni put an arrow through many a target.

  But never through another Wolf.

  Nahari was at her side in a moment, scooping up the wide-eyed child and spinning her so that she was no longer looking at the dead Hound.

  She was searching for words of comfort to offer the girl when her sensitive ears perked. More Hounds, moving this way.

  Nahari placed Nahni back in the alcove, rushed over to the golden Hound’s body, and shoved it behind some bushes. Then she rushed back to where the pups waited behind the waterfall.

  That was all there was time for.

  She had just disappeared behind its glassy curtain when ten Hounds came into the clearing, the body of their dead comrade only partially hidden depending on the angle.

  Nahari snatched up the dagger tucked into her pack. Her heart hurt when Nahni pushed Norman behind her and nocked another arrow into the bow, her pretty little face turned toward the waterfall.

  “You saved my life, Nahni,” Nahari told her, speaking into the child’s head as she had done a million times.

  Nahni’s only response was to raise the bow a little higher as three dark shadows passed in front of the wall of water. Nahari could hear the pups’ hearts racing in time with hers.

  Where are you, Ozias, she wondered.

  “What’s this?” said a deep, gruff voice. And then a curse.

  They’d found the Hound Nahni killed.

  The shadows moving by the waterfall paused, and her heart paused along with them.

  “Ozias!” Nahari called out with her mind.

  And was answered in silence.

  14

  Ozias

  He should not be thinking about her lips, about the way her hair had fallen in an ebony curtain down to her waist, or the way her dark lashes pressed against her light brown cheeks when she searched for sleep.

  She was afraid, but she was being brave, and she didn’t even know it. He suspected another thing she was not aware of was how fierce she could be when protecting those pups, and how beautiful she was when she did so.

  Ozias had always had an appreciation for the opposite sex, not as physical objects, but as great forces of nature. While the males of their world were busy pillaging and profiting from blood and war, the females created life and nourished it. While the males destroyed, the females built and cultivated.

  He’d been with more than a few in an intimate way, but never beyond that, for as a Dog, his life had been destined to be short and brutal.

  He crept through the brush now, having scented a boar and followed its trail. Ozias shook his head and marveled for what seemed the millionth time at the absence of the collar around his neck.

  The thing had been on so long, so tight, that his dark brown fur was thinned in a ring around his neck, the metal having left scars in the skin there.

  This was why he had to get to Dogshead, to fight alongside Rukiya Moonborn and her comrades, so that no Wolf was ever forced to step into The Ring again.

  And so that good, kind, and gentle Wolves like Nahari could have a life outside of servitude.

  As he pushed through some low brush, he spotted the boar sniffing around a small clearing filled with mushrooms and wildflower. His head lowered between his shoulders, the soft pads of his paws moving through the trees in predatory silence.

  The boar’s head lifted, and Ozias paused, watching the sunlight flickering off the ivory of the deadly tusks protruding from the beast’s mouth. The boar shot off into the trees in the next instant, and it took a heartbeat before Ozias spotted the wagons that had scared it off.

  They came trundling through the trees, great boxes made of iron and wood, their large wheels creaking as they snapped twigs and crushed leaves within their path. Ozias knew that he should just wait until they passed and then head back to Nahari and the pups, but there was nothing he could do to keep from staring at the faces within, at the utter hopelessness in their eyes.

  Ozias saw with no amount of shock that those inside the barred wagons were mostly elderly Wolves, females, and pups. The Pack Masters would need people to cook their food, clean their messes, and satisfy their baser urges. Rounding up these types of people would be highly profitable if the rebels failed in bringing a new order to things.

  People like the female and pups you have waiting back by the waterfall, he reminded himself.

  And, yet, he remained. Four wagons, two Hounds guarding each, and Hounds driving the horses pulling each load. Twelve in all. Inside the wagons, there were at least twenty people per load.

  Of course, most of them were not fighters, but if he could convince even a few…

  No, he’d made a promise to Nahari, and he needed to keep it.

  He was just about to turn and go when one of the pups within the last wagon caught his eye. He was a small male, a runt, perhaps, and from the way his shoulders were hunched and the outline of his ribs pronounced, it was clear he’d been someone’s slave before he was recaptured.

  The boy only blinked at him, no emotion on his young face, his scrawny arms wrapped tightly around his legs.

  Ozias cursed the Gods, his mind searching for a way to do the impossible.

  Nahari’s voice echoed in his head: Just make sure you come back.

  He resolved to leave the trapped Wolves to their fates in favor of ensuring the safety of those he’d already made a promise to. But before he was able to slip away, a familiar voice cut through the clearing, and the fur on the back of his neck stood on end.

  He hoped it wasn’t so even as his eyes confirmed it.

  There was Nahari, in her mortal form, her hair still wet from when they’d bathed side-by-side in the waterfall. A Hound was gripping her arm and shoving her toward the wagons. Another Hound followed behind with Nahni and Norman, also in mortal form, dragging them by chains around their little wrists.

  Shit.

  Ozias battled with what to do next, knowing there was not much time to make a decision. If he was lucky, he could take down six, maybe seven Hounds before they’d be able to put him down. But fourteen, with more on the way according to the bastard hauling Nahari… Those were not odds even a prize Dog fighter could beat.

  He watched helplessly as Nahari and the pups were tossed into the last wagon, along with the shock-faced boy and other prisoners. He cursed himself for having left them, cursed the hunger in his belly that even now pained him.

  The barred door of the wagon swung shut, and the heavy iron lock was snapped into place. The look on Nahari’s beautiful face made his heart hurt, his blood boil at the Hounds who were once again caging her.

  “I’m here,” he whispered into her mind. “I’m going to get you out. All of you.”

  Her sharp golden eyes scanned the trees and found his, her expression careful not to reveal too much relief.

  “Ozias,” she replied, “go to Dogshead.” She glanced around at the Hounds, and then caught his gaze one last time. “There are too many.”

  The Hounds driving the wagons snapped their whips, and the horses began their march anew.

  He let them get
a few paces ahead, and then Ozias slipped out of the bushes and followed after.

  They were heading further south, not west, as they should have been if they were taking the prisoners to Dogshead.

  Ozias had a terrible feeling in his gut that he would not like where they were going, and his instincts insisted that if he was going to make a move, it would need to be tonight.

  The sun had fallen below the horizon only a half hour ago, and the forested pass down which they were traveling was growing deeper shadows by the moment. Ozias had kept far enough back these last few hours so that he could develop some kind of plan.

  So far, his ideas had not been too impressive.

  Nahari was right; there were too many damn Hounds. He needed help, which was exactly what he didn’t have.

  As night took hold, a three-quarter moon gracing the stars with its presence, the urgency of the situation weighed down on him. Just as he was considering being reckless and simply jumping into a fight with the patrol of Hounds and seeing how many he could take out, her voice floated out to him across the distance.

  “Ozias?” Nahari said, her tone sweet and soft in his head. “Are you there?”

  “Of course I am,” he replied. “I won’t leave you. I promised, remember?”

  He kept pace alongside the wagons, creeping through the trees on the eastern side of the trail with the stealth of a predator. Peering through the branches and underbrush, he caught a glimpse of her black hair, her golden eyes.

  “Then let us help you,” Nahari said. “We’ll help you help us.”

  Ozias blinked, a little shocked at the simplicity of it. He needed help, and though they were mostly elders, pups, and young females locked in those wagons, they outnumbered the Hounds by at least six-to-one.

  “We are not helpless,” Nahari insisted. “We’re Wolves, and I’ve been speaking to the others in this wagon, as well as those ahead. They will help fight if you can get the locks off the doors.”