Bound to the Moon

by Kristy Centeno

  “Lame.” I smirk at him. Now isn’t the time to try to get the best of me. I’m on alert for anything. I have to be. Otherwise, my enemies will get the best of me.

  “The full moon is less than three weeks away,” Alexis comments, shattering what little inner peace I’d managed to achieve in the past five seconds.

  I look straight at him. “We have to be ready for anything. No matter what.”

  Alexis dips his head. I can see the look of concern on his face. It matches what I feel inside. We may not always agree on everything but we’re in this together. Our goals are the same. Protect Marjorie—keep her alive and safe.

  The future is currently uncertain, but Alexis and I have our objectives clear. No matter what happens one of us has to make sure Marjorie lives to see her next birthday.

  Chapter Three

  I leave Alexis alone in the kitchen and make my way to my isolated bedroom on the second floor. I need some space to think and can’t seem to do that with my twin around. We tend to argue when we’re both tense.

  Once inside I shut the door and stroll over to the bed where I sit facing the wall in front of me. I turn on the flat screen hanging from the wall but I’m not paying attention to the flashing images. I’m crowded with thoughts of Marjorie and the growing problem we all face.

  Marquis tactics have not worked to our advantage and we must find a solution before time runs out. My mind is busy, but I see no easy way around our predicament. It should be easy—at least, one would think so but a pack of rogue, man-eating werewolves are not to be taken lightly. Especially because this group is being led by a ruthless leader capable of the most heinous things in order to get what he wants.

  And what he craves is nothing I’m willing to give up without a fight. I’d rather die than hand Marjorie over to whatever horrible fate awaits her at the alpha’s hands.

  “Who are you?” I whisper, shaking my head. With the amount of werewolves in the area, it’s basically impossible to tell who’s the leader. We haven’t seen a definite alpha stand out and I find myself wondering why. Why’s the leader not showing his face? Why is he being so elusive? What is he trying to keep secret?

  I shift on the mattress but as I do my right foot bumps into something and I look down, finding the Rousseau bloodline history book right where I’d left it this morning.

  I pick it up and scan the pages. I’ve been going over what our old historian wrote for weeks. I read page over page over page, hoping to find a clue on the Rousseau bloodline that might help me understand my condition better. The book itself is over six hundred years old and the cover clearly testifies to its old age. As a young child, I’d heard that the brown leather encasing the book was made from the skin of one our most defiant, but revered ancestor.

  I had no clue whether the rumors had any merit but the scent emanating from the wrapper was oddly familiar. Recognizable. Even after all the years, the odor still lingered.

  I’d asked countless times about the claims, but my parents never denied nor admitted to anything. And the closest Marquis had ever come to admitting the rumors was by saying I was just like that particular ancestor. Defiant, rebel, hardheaded, and stubborn to no end. Since we had never met that distant relative—he’d died some three hundred years before Marquis was even born—I wondered where his base for comparison came from, but he never cleared things up for me and simply dismissed my curiosity with a wave of his hands.

  It was evident that our family had secrets they preferred not to share. Secrets, perhaps, they shared with everyone else but me. As the runt of the litter, I can pretty much guess why that is.

  Shaking my head to clear it of so many unpleasant thoughts, I try to keep my focus on the book in front of me instead. I still haven’t found anything significant about my curse nor much on the distant relative so like me, which leads me to question just how much of an influence he really was on the younger generation. If he was revered, why is there so little information on him? So far the only thing I know is that his name was, Aimar Rousseau, and that he challenged his brother. It doesn’t go into detail why the challenge happened or over what.

  I suspect the missing page next to the one I’m reading might have had the answers but it’s gone. Removed. By who? I don’t know. For what reason? I don’t know. But someone had something to hide.

  I decide to leave my musings about Aimar alone and continue scanning through more pages, finding a few interesting notes. They are specific about our family bloodline, every werewolf’s role from Aimar’s descendants all the way down to my parents, but that’s about it. I’m not exactly sure at what point our old historian disappeared or died but it explains why my siblings and I are not included in the book. The last detailed script stops at my parents’ mating.

  My family’s history is extensive. The book supplies names of ancestors living back in the 1200’s. Some are even still alive today. We have a few family members scattered throughout France and I believe another handful live in England and Spain. We haven’t maintained contact with them, but I recall having met them when I was younger.

  I continue reading, hoping to find the outline, which identifies every man-eater born to our bloodline, and I’m relieved to find a script which describes each one pointedly. I know that not many man-eaters have been born in my family. The last one was born a hundred years or so before me. According to the book, Raoul Rousseau, took his own life at age eighteen. The burden of his defect too difficult to bear.

  His death put an end to what many thought was the Rousseau’s part of the curse. That is, until my birth changed their belief. After all, Raoul hadn’t been alive long enough to pass down the defective gene. It was this long absence of the curse that intrigued me. Why had it been absent for so long? And why had it finally reappeared after so many years? Why me?

  I scan a few more pages, browsing through the back of the book before stumbling upon a script I hadn’t paid much attention to before. I’d seen it once, read briefly through it, but hadn’t tried to decipher what it meant. The original writing dated back to 1827 and had been handwritten by our old historian, Louis, himself. The script was in reference to the Lost Child.

  The Lost Child was the reason my family had moved to Wolf Creek Hollow in the first place. I never thought we would find her so quickly and without even trying.

  I was ten when I first heard about the Lost Child. Our uncle in France had told my brother and me the legend, but neither of us had taken it seriously simply because it made no sense. Or so we thought at the time. Over the years, and upon stumbling upon other packs who had also heard about the legend, we began to think that maybe there was some truth to the rumors.

  Until a few weeks ago, we had no idea just how much truth there was to the claims. Or how dangerous our quest would eventually get.

  The historian had heard about the Lost Child for the first time back in the 1800’s and, apparently, based on the handwritten script, had shown interest in the legend and what it could mean to the werewolf community. He didn’t explain what he meant exactly but we were closer to understanding his determination to discover the direct descendant bloodline of the Lost Child.

  Many, like ourselves, were interested in understanding what made the Lost Child’s bloodline so unique and so compatible with that of human’s. No one had ever been able to study this anomaly. The Lost Child moved from city to town to city so no one would find him or her.

  A thousand years of searching had yielded results in the most unusual of places—Wolf Creek Hollow—a town named for its elevated population of common gray wolves, our distant cousins. Though our family’s mission had brought us here after what we called a lucky break, we were no closer to solving the puzzle.

  Marjorie Emery might be the key my family, and many others, had been hoping to find.

  A knock interrupts the brainstorm going on in my head. I call for whomever to come in. Josephine opens the door and steps in, her expression locked in solemnity. She, too, has something on her mind. We all d
o, but Josephine usually keeps her concerns to herself. Unlike Alexis, she doesn’t share them with me every other minute.

  “I just got back from the hospital,” she says, keeping her gaze locked on me as she wearily takes several steps forward.

  I set the book aside and ask, “How is Marjorie doing?”

  She strolls over to the bed. “She’s recovering remarkably well considering the injuries she sustained.” Her fingers interlock in front of her. “Even the doctors’ remark on how well and how quickly she’s healing.”

  I cock my head to side as I observe her. “We all suspected that would happen.” Her quick recovery is a clue. A sign. An indication we are on the right path.

  “We knew. But the doctors are finding it odd. I can imagine they would. No one recovers that quickly from injuries as severe as those Marjorie sustained.”

  It’s starting. The suspicion. The questioning. It’s always there.

  “Have they ordered a round of blood work?” Human suspicion is inevitable. It’s common place actually. Humans always question what they cannot understand. While it isn’t out of place, their prodding causes a great deal of headaches for us.

  When humans go on a quest for answers, our lives are uprooted. We’d packed our bags and left after such incidents before and it could happen again at any time.

  “Not that I know of, but they probably did take blood samples the night she was admitted through the trauma unit,” she responds.

  Having blood samples is never good. “It has to disappear,” I muse. “All evidence has to vanish without a trace.”

  “Marquis is already working on bringing someone in to take care of that.” Josephine’s chin goes up. “But it won’t be easy.”

  “It never is,” I comment. Cleaning up is never easy. It’s far riskier than muddling things up. We run a bigger chance at being caught in a clean effort than by being careless.

  “Has the hospital been clear?” I keep my gaze on her.

  She nods. “I haven’t seen any other werewolf around but they have definitely been there at some point. I’ve picked up on their scent.”

  My heart sinks. “Betas?”

  “I believe so. No sign of the alpha anywhere,” she adds.

  Knowing that other werewolves have been frequenting the hospital does little to put my mind at ease, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I want to believe they won’t attack or try to take Marjorie while she’s there because it could mean exposure, but I know better. These wolves don’t operate like any other pack I’ve ever seen or heard of.

  They take risks. Too many risks.

  “Josephine.” I push myself off the bed and jump to my feet. “Do you think there’s a chance they have someone working on the inside?”

  She looks concerned. Her eyes narrow slightly and her nostrils flare. She’s thought about it too. I can read it in her reaction.

  “That’s a possibility.” Josephine takes two steps toward me. “Someone has been on the premises for sure. Gage was the first to notice. He’s managed to track them going from the hospital lot to the door of Marjorie’s hospital room but the scent is always lost in the lot.” She pauses to chew on her lower lip nervously. After a moment she adds, “We all take turns guarding the hospital but there are times when we need to take a breather. That’s when they move in. I think they’re watching us.”

  I feel the familiar rise of anger. Due to my condition, I can’t help out as much as I want. I have to stay at home, away from humans. Away from temptation. Away from Marjorie.

  “I’m pretty sure they’re watching us. They have to be in order to know our every move. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re using humans to keep tabs on us too.” Keeping human eyes on us would explain why it’s difficult to know when and how the rogue pack are able to stay one step ahead. Werewolves are easy to identify by scent so knowing when one is in the area is relatively easy, but we have no way of knowing when a human is involved.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if they keep human slaves. Some packs do.”

  I nod. Keeping human slaves is also an attribute of the old ways. Some packs prefer to stick with what they know. Change doesn’t always come easy for our kind. Humans evolved with the world they live in. We do not. We are creatures of habit.

  “Kyran.” Josephine looks at me with a mixture of concern and sadness. “Things could turn ugly and we might need to...” she stops, but she doesn’t have to continue. I know what she’s trying to get across.

  “You already spoke to Alexis? Or Marquis?” I accuse, already knowing where this conversation is heading. “They want us to be completely honest with Marjorie, but I don’t know how wise that can be.”

  “She needs to know.” Her right hand lands on my shoulder. “We have to prepare her for anything that can and probably will go wrong.” I can see the concern in my sister’s eyes. It touches something deep inside of me because there’s so much more there than she’s willing to share with me.

  My siblings have never openly accused me or blamed me of being responsible for my parents’ death, but lately they have begun to treat me differently and I know it’s because we’re now in a similar situation.

  I messed things up before and they probably think I’ll do it again.

  “Only Marjorie can make decisions regarding her life. We have no right to choose what happens to her,” I say because I don’t want to argue. My stubbornness can get in the way of me making the right decisions when it comes to my family. But this is completely different. Marjorie has a family of her own—a family she loves and whatever decision she makes will ultimately affect them as well.

  We have no say in what she must or must not do even if we are trying to keep her alive and safe. I know Marjorie will resent us if we push something on her she’s not ready to face.

  Josephine knows better than to argue with me so she changes the subject by saying, “She wants to see you.” Her fingers tighten around my shoulder. “She’s been asking for you all day.”

  While I’ve spent most of my days by her side since she was admitted to the hospital, I’ve been keeping my distance for the last twenty-four hours. With my symptoms acting up, I prefer to stay where I won’t be tempted to hurt her.

  “I’ll call her in a little bit,” I say.

  “She’ll feel better if you go see her. I know I would.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” I whisper, my voice barely audible to my own ears. I’m too close to breaking down. I don’t want to go rogue in Marjorie’s presence, or while there are humans around for that matter. Being in a place where the smell of blood is so strong doesn’t make the situation ideal for me.

  “Gage can come with us for support.”

  Gage, with his impressive size and strength, is fully able to dominate any wolf, even an alpha. He’s usually the one in charge of keeping me in check when the bloodlust takes over.

  “Still, what if I...” I stop, embarrassed. I can’t even voice my concerns aloud. I feel like a total freak. An aberration. It’s what I am and I’ve come to accept it, but when it comes to Marjorie’s safety, I feel like the king of freaks. I don’t want to risk it. I don’t want to risk her.

  “You seem to control it more than you give yourself credit for, Kyran.”

  “Are you willing to bet her life on that?” I mutter in irritation. I don’t feel very confident right now. I’m a mess inside. A ball of chaos just getting ready to explode.

  Josephine’s arm drops to her side as she takes a step back. “It will do you both good to see each other. When you’re in the middle of a bonding process separation for long periods of time can become intolerable.”

  I scoff, but immediately regret the insensitive action. Technically, Marjorie is human, which, under normal circumstances would have made it impossible for us to actually begin bonding. Humans and werewolves can’t bond. It’s impossible. There’s no connection between one and the other. But if the legend of the Lost Child turns out to be true then Marjorie could prove to be more than
an ordinary human girl.

  “It’s not like I don’t want to see her. I do. I’m just worried. Scared.” I cringe, realizing I’d just admitted to something I never have before. I’m scared. Truly terrified I’ll lose control in front of her and then Marjorie will see who I really am.

  “Kyran.” Josephine’s eyebrows rise as she observes what I’m sure is a look of complete shock that’s taken over my face. “You will never find out if you’ll ever be able to control it if you don’t push yourself out of your comfort zone.”

  “How can you even suggest such a thing?” Now I’m mad. Is she suggesting I risk Marjorie’s life? Is she insane? “That’s not a stupid suggestion. It’s a crazy one!”

  Josephine stands her ground. “You said she helped snap you out of one episode. Maybe Marjorie is your trigger. The one thing you need in order to pull back.”

  I shake my head. “Barely. She barely pulled me back. And that’s because she distracted me with...” I cut the end of the sentence short. I’m not about to provide details as to how exactly Marjorie distracted me. I don’t like revealing things that should be kept between certain parties.

  Josephine turns to leave, ambling toward the bedroom door as she tosses over her left shoulder, “We leave in ten minutes. Go get ready.”

  “Josephine.” She walks out of the room before I can protest further. I should know better than to argue with my big sister. She doesn’t take nonsense from any of us, especially me. My siblings often refer to me as being stubborn but I’m beginning to think it’s a family trait. We are all stubborn in our own way. Some more than others.

  I breathe in some air and let it out in one quick rush. I’ve been dying to see Marjorie all day, but I can’t help but feel as if I’m taking a huge risk by allowing my need to be near her overpower my common sense.

  I’m not feeling up to par right now. I thought I had a day or two at the most before my next episode, but I’m beginning to think I was off the mark. My hands are already shaking. Another early sign that the unnatural hunger expanding slowly inside of me and which makes me into a complete monster—sometimes for days—is quickly gaining strength. Already my tongue is drying out, my throat closing up from lack of fresh blood.