by Nia Night
I rolled my eyes, loosing a heavy sigh. “Oh well if they do,” I mumbled. “Hot-headed idiots.”
Devon grinned, his handsome face lighting up, though the stress caused to him by our family still lined the crease between his brows. “We can’t all be as cold as you, Dita,” he joked.
I snorted. “No,” I agreed, “because that would be too damn convenient.”
He jerked his chin. “You coming?” he asked. “You know you’re the only one who can break them up.”
Cursing, I pushed off the wall on which I’d been leaning. We both knew I would go. The crazy people in my family were forever summoning me, a fate I both cherished and resented depending on the weather.
“I still have the scar on my back from the last time they did this,” I grumbled.
Devon slung his arm around my shoulder, a rare show of affection that I allowed for only a handful of seconds before shrugging it off. We were on The Row on a fight night; any number of people could be watching.
“We’ve all got our fair share of scars as a result of being born a Silvers,” he replied.
“Ain’t that the truth?” I mumbled, and resigned to the fact that there would be no early sleep for me tonight, not until I stopped my insane father from killing my crazy brother.
Or until I killed the bastards my damn self.
I opened the door, and a dish crashed into the wall beside my head, making me flinch and duck.
The sound of the polished clay shattering against the wood was fantastic, but it was swallowed by the bellow of my father. The timber of his tone told me that he’d been using again, and I felt my rage rise and had to force it back down again with some effort.
If not for my father’s habit, our family might be able to move out of the shithole we called home, and it was safe to say that I hated him for this. In fact, I was pretty sure that I hated my father just about as much as I loved him.
On some days, I hated him more.
The place was in absolute chaos. Devon and I had time to exchange a single exasperated glance before we sprang into action.
My father and youngest brother had torn the already pitiful shack to shreds, their eyes glowing Wolf-gold as they squared off in the middle of the room. They were both in their Wolf forms, and though my father dwarfed even the largest Wolves in size, Demarco was as scrappy a fighter as they came.
My twelve-year-old little sister, Delia, was the one who’d thrown the dish in a futile effort to break up the males. Tears streaked her pretty face, and her voice cracked as she screamed at them to stop, too afraid to shift into her Wolf form and get between them.
I did not blame her.
Demarco was bleeding on his head, right below his left ear, and a little scarlet also spotted my father’s muzzle as well, his large teeth bared in anger. Snarls and low, rippling growls rumbled in their chests as the two of them snapped at each other’s throats. Chunks of fur floated in the air along with the scent of iron from the spattering of blood already spilled.
My stepmother, Jodi, sat in the corner, holding a cigarette and a glass of moonshine in one hand and watching with glassy, disinterested eyes.
My twin little sisters, Ada and Analise, were curled up in the corner, watching the scene with wide, innocent eyes. It was this that made me most angry. I’d accepted the fact that this was my life, but no amount of hammering would ever make me accept it for them.
Come hell or high water, one day, I would take the twins and Delia out of here. I wasn’t sure how, exactly, but I would find a way. I would see to it that they didn’t have to sell Wolfsbane to survive, that violence would not be a part of their everyday existence.
And I didn’t care whom I had to kill to do it.
Starting with the idiots in this room.
“Great. You’re home,” Jodi said, taking a long swig of the liquid in her glass. “They’re gonna kill each other.”
“Thanks for the help,” I snapped, sliding past my father and brother to reach the twins in the corner. I nodded at Devon to take Delia outside, and he scooped her up. Devon and Delia had a special relationship, and I knew he would be able to calm the girl. It was important to remove the children from the situation, and then I would deal with the knuckleheads.
So I allowed the duel to continue while I picked up Ada and Ana and carried them into the back bedroom.
The first time I’d had to do this, they had only been two years old, and I could still remember the way their little bodies had shaken like leaves in my arms. Now, three years later, after only five years of life in this family, they were as numb to the violence and chaos as I was to that of The Ring.
The back bedroom was cold, as it was a space that held heat in the summer and cold in the winter, but I could have heated it myself with the rage that was steadily rising within me. I was tired after hustling to grabby Wolves all evening, and worse, I was hungry. I can be an unpleasant Wolf on the best of days. When I was hungry, I was a danger to anyone near me.
Well, almost anyone.
“You should be asleep,” I told the twins as I laid them on one of the three mattresses on the floor and placed gentle kisses on their foreheads.
“We were,” Ada replied in her sweet little voice.
“Daddy and Demarco woke us up,” added Ana.
I released a slow breath, pulled up the blanket around their shoulders, and gave them one more kiss each on the head. “I’ll go make sure they keep it down, then,” I said. “You have lessons in the morning, so you need to sleep.”
Beyond the bedroom door, there was a yelp and a thud, followed by a howl of laughter from Jodi the Bitch. The calm that always follows intense rage settled over me as the twins stared up at me from the mattress.
“Why do we have to go to lessons?” Ada asked. “Most of the other kids from The Mound don’t go.”
I smiled, though my heart had long since broken behind it. “That’s because they have ignorant parents and guardians,” I said. “People who don’t understand that knowledge is power. People who have no desire or ability to move beyond where they stand… You need to know how to read and write, girls. How to do mathematics and interact with others. It’s important. I promise.”
Identical resigned expressions came over their pretty little faces, and I felt my lips pull up again in another rare smile. When they yawned at the same time, I couldn’t help placing one last kiss on their foreheads.
Another hard thud and crash from beyond the bedroom door drew me to my feet.
“Sleep tight, little ones,” I said, and went to go wrangle the Wolves.
Click the image below to continue reading Moon of Fire in the Kindle Store
