“No. Don’t hide from it,” he snarled at me, raising his voice at me for the first time. “Denying what you are is just a lie. A lie to me and a lie to yourself. Denying your fate is like avoiding what your name is. She could see the future, couldn’t she?”
I closed my eyes, twisting away to push open the door so that I could get out.
The cab was too small all of a sudden, too hot and too close. I breathed in diesel-soaked air, uncaring about the fumes as I staggered into the brush that lined the side of the road. I pushed ahead, not giving a damn about where I went, just heading forward, needing to run from him, needing to escape memories of my father making Jana watch the races, of him using her picks. Sometimes, she’d get it wrong, and he’d slap her for it. He started using her like she was a lucky rabbit’s foot, until it came as no surprise to me when escaping the vicious circle had become a priority to her.
Her death might have been classed as an accident, but I’d always thought it was suicide.
I gnawed on my lip as I thought of the time when she’d predicted our grandmother would die in a fire, and the time when she’d told our mother she’d be free of our father when he lost his wits.
Hadn’t Nanny died when her gas tank had exploded after she’d been T-boned? Hadn’t our father come down with Alzheimer’s?
My heart was in my throat as bushes scraped at me, the leaves and branches scratching my skin as I dove into the wilderness beyond the road. I could hear him crashing after me, but I needed to move, needed to roam. I needed to get away from him.
I wasn’t the Moon Child. Whatever the hell that was.
That couldn’t be me.
None of this was happening. None of it.
Like he heard me, he called out, “Seth is an embodiment of the Father. The child his mother carries, she’s an embodiment of the Mother. A Choi has been waiting on this information for centuries. It’s a catalyst,” he rasped, the words closer than I’d like…
It was then it hit me.
He was letting me run.
Giving me freedom.
Fuck.
I didn’t need him to ‘let’ me do anything. I was free. I lived that way by choice.
I twisted around to glare at him, jerking when I saw he was barely two feet away.
Around us, there was nothing but trees and brush for as far as the eye could see, and underfoot, my toes gripped onto root systems that spanned the forest floor.
“You’re the Moon Child,” he told me. “And I can prove it to you.”
“How?” I snapped at him, discarding his statement for the lie it had to be.
“You watched Nae Yeojachinguneun Gumiho,” he said, “I saw it too. In My Girlfriend is a Kumiho…you have to know about the yeowoo guseul.”
I gaped at him. “You have to be kidding me. The fox marble is a real thing?”
He nodded. “It is.”
Because I loved everything K-Drama, I’d researched the kumiho, just because I thought they were fascinating. The yeowoo guseul was a marble that consisted of knowledge. A ball of pure energy that was a gift to those who were given it. A curse to those who stole it. And in the dramas, it was almost always stolen.
“You don’t have to steal it,” he rasped, like he knew what I was thinking. “I freely offer it to you.”
My throat grew tight. “Because I’m your mate?”
“Because you’re my mate.”
“If I accept it, it’s your kind’s version of claiming me, isn’t it?” I rasped, suddenly understanding more than I wanted to.
“Yes, but I already told you. I won’t force you. And I didn’t force you in the truck. I just wanted to remain connected with you, to make you understand. The second you accused me—I backed off, didn’t I? You can trust me.”
“I can trust no one,” I screamed, my hands flying up to cover my face. “Only myself.” And I wasn’t one-hundred per cent trustworthy.
He surged forward, his own hands coming to my shoulders, and he hauled me into his arms. I thought he’d kiss me, thought he’d force the situation like he’d said he wouldn’t, but he didn’t. He hugged me. Tightly. Hugged me like I’d never been hugged before, making me feel so safe, so secure, that I burst into tears as everything in my life, all the unbalances, every single one of them, seemed to find its level.
His calm seeped into me, even though I knew he was more agitated than ever because of our conversation.
It bled into my pores, stole into my soul, making me feel, for the first time in my life, like I had an equilibrium.
I sobbed against his chest, dousing his shirt with tears, and he soothed me, muttering things in Korean that I had no way of understanding, hushing me, and stroking my hair. But as much as he calmed me down, the sound of a howl nearby had us both jerking in surprise.
We’d been so contained in our own drama, that we’d forgotten the outside world existed.
He did that for me, I realized. Made me forget. Made me see only him. It wasn’t right, but that didn’t make it untrue.
“Something’s wrong,” he rasped, his head twisting to the left and right like he was trying to pick up on something, like the antenna he was using was wonky and didn’t work.
“What is it?” I whispered, concerned because he was concerned.
“I think your sister’s pack is being attacked.” He frowned, then his nostrils did that flaring thing again. “Hyenas.”
When I pulled against his hold, terror filling me as I thought about my days trapped in my cabin with one of those lunatics after me, he grabbed a firmer hold of my shoulders, but this time, when he looked into my eyes, he rasped, “You need to make a decision, Lara. You need to understand, and the only way I can give you that is if you freely accept my gift.
“Once you do, once you know, you’ll understand more than you can say. This fight was destined. You’re the one who’ll end it.”
My mouth trembled, fear filling me at his surety. “I’m not the Moon Child.”
“You are,” he stated, his tone resolute, leaving me no room for doubt. “Now it’s time to ascend.”
Fifteen
Sabina
Letting me see through her eyes was the most helpful and least helpful thing Berry could have done.
Berry. Merinda. Whoever the fuck she was.
Like she heard me, she rumbled in my head, “Yours. To shield. To protect. Berry. Not Merinda. Not anymore.”
My throat grew tight at that, because I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe it so badly.
And maybe seeing through her eyes, having that connection reestablished confirmed that truth. Why would I be given this gift if we weren’t bound to one another?
Maybe Merinda was here for one reason only—to make up for being a shitty mom by protecting the one woman who could make her sons’ lives better?
Regardless, now wasn’t the time for those thoughts. Not when I was witnessing the carnage for myself, which was a nightmare I’d never forget.
It was like something from a nature program, a documentary that David Attenborough should be narrating, but these weren’t animals with the instincts of beasts. These were human.
And that made it infinitely more terrifying.
I was blind to the world around me as I stared out into the sea of blood and bones, torn flesh and viscera that had my she-wolf longing to leap into the action. Knight gurgled in my arms, grounding me in a sense, but I was still torn between the balcony and the totem circle.
When Berry whipped around, I saw Eli—larger than anyone else, even Austin and Ethan, who were massive but just a tad smaller—with several hyenas clinging onto him like ivy, with their teeth digging into his flesh to hook into him, while another tried to attack him from the front, and I screamed with fright at the sight, because he couldn’t sustain that…could he?
He moved, uncaring that he was carrying dead weight, but the way blood spurted from his wounds made me wish I had healing capabilities. But, Kali Sara, if I could wish for anything, it would be
for the means of stopping this.
A dream had saved Lara.
Somehow, my dream and her reality had entangled.
Was I dreaming now?
I wished I was.
But the scents toying with the air told me I wasn’t.
This was the real world, and no magical bow and arrow were going to stop this.
Eli roared his rage, jerking forward and then back, jolting some of the horrendous creatures into letting go, but as he twisted around, lashing out with his claws, slicing throats, making arcs of crimson rain down around him, Berry moved.
“No!” I screamed, just as she howled, a howl that felt as though it was keyed into my very being. Like when someone was trying to tune a piano. We made music together of the worst variety.
She darted through the crowds and focused on a woman.
I squinted at the sight of her, my fear and concern coalescing into stunned shock as I recognized her.
The same caramel skin, the same espresso hair. We were walking mugs of coffee, all of the Krasowski sisters had been, but her Klisowski—our mother’s side—was more prevalent in her, with her skin that was just a shade darker, her hair had some toffee notes to it, buttery highlights that augmented her high cheekbones. She had our mother’s eyes and our father’s nose, but what I couldn’t understand was her presence.
Why was she there?
Surrounded by hyenas too.
I thought she was dead. To see she wasn’t, but kidnapped by hyenas?
Only…Jana wasn’t terrified.
She was excited.
Her eyes darting over the mayhem with a zealousness that was repugnant.
If she hadn’t been kidnapped and was here to watch the fucking show, I seriously had no idea what was happening here.
Berry launched herself at Jana, snarling as the hyenas guarding her snapped at her, attacking in a wave that she easily overcame. I knew blood had to drench her, because there was a mist of it between her and Jana that painted everything a bright scarlet.
Jana had always been self-assured, and there’d been no difference when I’d first seen her at the clearing. But now, with Berry so close to her, that confidence was gone. She backed up, but collided straight with a tree. Her hands grabbed the bark with a franticness I could discern, gripping it as Berry’s snarls, vibrating in my own chest, turned her cockiness into outright terror.
I couldn’t control Berry, could only see what she was doing, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she was going to attack my sister.
And, Kali Sara help me, I had no desire to stop her. No desire to figure out whether or not she should be attacked.
I reached up to rub my eyes where an ache had gathered from the prolonged exposure to Berry’s vision, but when I looked back, I knew I’d lost the link.
Was that for my own good?
Jana was next on Berry’s shit list, so she could…
The light of the moon caught my attention all of a sudden.
It was strong tonight—a full moon. The rays were enough to bask in, to glory in, and I could only hope it charged my men with strength—well, Ethan and Eli. Austin was…
I gulped.
He wasn’t dead.
I just couldn’t talk to him.
Checking in with him gave me no more information as to how he was faring, because I had to assume he’d reply if he was conscious, and if he wasn’t replying because he didn’t want to, then I’d slap him later.
I wanted, so badly, to speak with Eli and Ethan, but I didn’t want to distract them. I had nothing to impart, no news or information to share, so I knew staying out of it would keep them focused, and after what I’d seen, they needed all the focus they could get.
But it was hard.
With every pack brother or sister who lost their life, I felt their death like a gaping maw in my soul, and even feeling my mates’ light wasn’t enough to stabilize me.
Tonight could be the last night we walked on this earth.
It was terrifying and affirming—all at the same time.
I sucked in a breath when my eyes opened, and this time, the moon looked bigger. Stronger. My mouth worked at the sight, because I knew, a second before, it hadn’t been that way. It had been smaller. Full, sure, but this size?
It seemed to pulse as well, and light throbbed around it like solar flares of a lunar variety. It throbbed as if there was a wind around the outline, and the rays of light, for a handful of seconds, lit up the night sky like it was a lightning storm.
I gaped at the sight of it, unsurprised when Knight burst into tears. As I hugged him to me, wondering if this was what Eli had meant when he told me I needed to head into the safe room—and seeing as this felt pretty cataclysmic—I decided to make my way there, only a flash of something caught my eye from the forest line.
When I saw Choi and Lara, I called out to him because I doubted she’d be able to hear, “Choi! Don’t go into the forest! It’s dangerous!”
She twisted around, though, and I knew I’d surprised her. “Sabina? You’re moving!”
Startled by that answer, not only that she’d heard me, but that she was shocked I was moving, I called back, “Of course I am! What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
“More than you can ever understand,” Lara replied, and the cryptic answer wasn’t the best way she could have answered. Not with the clusterfuck my life was devolving into.
“Lara Krasowski! My mates are in that forest. They’re fighting hyenas for you. Don’t you dare come back at me with that kind of BS!”
“They’re not fighting over me,” Lara retorted. “They’re fighting for Jana’s sake.”
My mouth trembled at that. “I’ve seen her. I thought she was dead.”
“Me too,” Lara called back. “She must have faked her death.”
“Why?” I rasped.
“To escape a fate worse than death.”
The new voice snagged my attention, and though it still stunned me that I could see a mile into the distance, hear my sister shouting at me from that length, and feel as though they were just in the yard, I saw Jana and wasn’t even sure whether to laugh or cry.
Laugh, because she was alive and this should have been a reunion.
Or cry, because there she stood, half her body torn to shreds by Berry’s claws and teeth, but she had a gun trained on Lara. A gun with the safety off, and her fingers, most definitely, on the trigger.
Had Berry died? Was that why she was still alive?
The prospect of losing Berry, I realized, was far more painful than Jana’s potential loss.
Grief hit me, square in the gut. “What’s going on?” I screamed, grateful for Knight’s sling as I punched the air at my sides, fury tossing me around like I was a boat on top of a tidal wave.
“I’m taking charge of my future,” Jana screamed back, but her hands were shaking, and I knew she had to not only be in extreme pain, but she was evidently messed up to be holding a gun on our baby sister.
Our family had done a really good job of fucking us up, but this really took the goddamn cake.
“You lower that gun right this second,” I snarled, wishing I was there so I could smack her upside the head. “I can’t believe we’re having a family reunion and it’s at gunpoint.”
Jana shrieked, “Fuck you! Fuck you, Sabina. Fuck everything about you. You think you can tell me what to do? Fuck. You. You think I don’t know you want me dead? You think I don’t know that’s where this is heading?”
“Of course I don’t want you dead!” I roared at her, uncaring that my scream of rage entwined with Knight’s howl.
The kid had a set of pipes on him, but at this moment in time, it was the opposite of useful. Jana jerked, and because she was both in excruciating pain as well as nuts, the last thing I needed was the trigger-happy bitch to twitch that index finger of hers.
Humming under my breath, I muttered, “Knight, baby, please. I get that you’re stressed and Mommy is too, but now isn’t the time.”<
br />
Like he’d understood every single word, he stopped squawking. Just like that.
I’d have been amazed and told him he was a clever boy, if Jana hadn’t screamed, “I’ve been waiting for this moment since I was fourteen years old!”
There were just under four years age difference between us, so I knew whatever she’d been waiting for, whatever she’d seen, because her thing was catching glimpses of the future, it had first come to her before Kian and I had run away from home to be together.
The timing felt like my life was coming full circle, and I hollered at her, “You knew I was seeing Kian, didn’t you?”
“Of course, I did,” she snarled. “I warned father about your boyfriend.”
“You always were a snitch,” Lara spat.
I growled under my breath, because Lara was in range of the damn gun. I wasn’t. She could be shot, I couldn’t.
Quickly grabbing the attention away from Lara, I screamed, “Why did you do that? Why did you encourage him to hurt us?”
“So that this day wouldn’t come,” she snapped back. “But I knew it hadn’t worked. I knew it. I still kept seeing the same goddamn vision, and I knew even though Cyrilo believed you were dead, he’d fucked up. That was when I ran away. I had no choice.”
“Where did you run? And why did you let us think you were dead?” Lara grated out. “That was mean. And it killed Mama something fierce.”
“Boo hoo,” was all Jana had to say to that. “I had no alternative, you stupid bitch. I had to make sure that, when the time came, I had people to back me up.”
“People? What people? All I saw back there were hyena shifters who were tearing into innocents while you watched on,” I shrieked, my hands were back to being balled fists again, only punching the air wasn’t satisfying enough. I wanted to be there, wanted to beat the ever-loving crap out of her.
Growling under my breath at the distance between us, I happened to glance at Choi, and saw that he’d edged away from Lara. I knew Jana’s attention was split between us, and her focus had to be minimal, considering she looked like an extra from the Rocky Horror Show with all those slices and tears in her skin, but I had to pray Choi had a plan. Something that’d keep Lara safe while stopping Jana from pulling stupid moves on her.
Moon Child: A PNR Shifter Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 2) Page 23
