Moon Bound (Glorious Darkness Book 1) (26 page)

(51) Peace Offering

|Scarlet's POV|

"ShadowFang, let us welcome our new members into our ranks." He flicks his hand at my friends in a gesture that can be only translated as 'rise'.

Standing to their feet, they retreat back to their places, leaving him to stay alone in the middle of the clearing.

"Let us celebrate this night with..." his voice falters. He tilts his head up, looking ahead.

The pack stirs up, a sudden nervousness filling in the hushed space. Some turn back to look in the same direction he is while others lift their eyes to the Moon watching overhead.

Praying in silence as the forest starts to shake with the rumble of feet crashing through it with the unmistakable sound of bodies piercing the quiet as they advance our way.

What is happening, Regan?
 Questioning into the mind-link we share, I come to stand next to him.

My hand finds and slips into his out of instinct to find his cold, the tingles his touch usually invoke missing. Why is it that I can't feel them? Are they gone now that he's claimed me? Is that all there is to this bond we share?

I don't know, Scarlet,
 he says, voice void of emotion, of that warmth it takes when he's speaking to me. Is he cutting himself off of me, blocking his feelings from the flowing in between us bond?

'Regan?' I want to voice my alarm but before I can hundreds of stars appear, shining in the surrounding darkness of the trees and breaking me out of my brooding thoughts. Not stars, I realize as they step out of the hurdle and into the clearing. Eyes. Glowing with an animalistic glint in the darkness as their bodies, covered in fur and stuck in between transformation, neither human nor beastly, glint under the moonshine.

"The wildlings," the words come out breathlessly as if he's been caught up in the terrifying sight just like I have.

What are they here? What brought them out of their hiding? What stirred them into action?

A bloodcurdling scream comes from the circle of wolves, starting me out of my daze. And then, as suddenly as it has come it's hushed down.

A woman's body hits the ground, a woman who's lost her child to them and now she's lost too, her blood saturating the grass from the gash on her neck. The last boon She granted us is lost in that tragedy unfolding with the life that's slowly pouring out of the mortal wound.

I recognize the man who steps over her dying shell and slowly makes his way to where my mate and I are standing. The wildling's Alpha. Cole's brother.

He stops in front of Regan, only a few inches now separating the two males as one Alpha measures up and down another.

I glance away from the wildlings' Alpha, my gaze skipping towards Cole and the rest of my family, expecting to see the same terror on their faces I can feel hammering against my chest.

It's not what I see. The others' faces are blank but Cole's... It's like I'm seeing that familiar face for the first time. The expression on it – corners of his lips slightly upturned, dark eyes squinted into slits of black, staring at us, it's more frightening than the wildlings' presence here. 

Trust spiralling down until it's gone, who is this man looking from within those midnight eyes? Is he my friend?

"What's the meaning of this?" Regan's voice rings through the place. A voice that should have been louder but is now just a whisper. Tension is splattering the night, vapours of fear rising from wary skin breaking in shivers.

Foreign, it's how Cole looks to me now, as foreign to me as a complete stranger would.

"I c-come in p-peace," the wildling says, his bestial, gurgling speech improved since the last time I've heard him talk. "And I've b-brought a peace o-offering."

Cole flashes his teeth in a grin that's nothing but an ugly grimace, clearly entertaining himself even if his brows stay furrowed in concentration. His eyes never leave our group, however, even with the fire inside them, they seem to be far away. Watching but not seeing. Devoid of warmth.

Just like my mate's hand wrapped around mine is. Cold.

Bitterness rises to my throat, my heartbeat intensifying its pace under my ribcage in a warning I don't understand as I reach out into the pack-bond, my mind flowing in all directions, trying to grasp the invisible threads connecting my friends to me and their Alpha now.

There's just one, blackened with darkness, weaving inside the bond thread, a mind, much more powerful and experienced in the mechanics of the mental connection than my own, guiding its apt tentacles from all of them and into the pack-link.

What is Cole doing? How is he doing it, whatever it might be?

I turn my attention back to the wildlings' Alpha in time to see him raise his clawed hand in a beckoning gesture. A few moments later, the crowd parts, letting in a group of his men leading a female towards us.

I opt for another try, my mind stretching into the bond once again, trying to pinpoint the source of the insidious presence inside that's staked a claim over something that should have been controlled by this pack's Alpha but is no longer. 

Why? How?

Like a ghost running through the same place, skirting between all the people who have gathered here to watch, I run through the crowd, my mind projecting an almost substantial form into the pack-bond. A solitary frame searching for something dark and scary. Someone hidden in a sea of people.

My eyes register the moment the group of males accompanying the female stop in front of us, the woman stepping forth, waiting for the wildlings' Alpha next command but my mind is too deep into the mental connection to think anything of it while it keeps exploring further and further into the darkness that's taken hold of it.

The bond is heaving, quaking under the intent of the person. Frozen like a cold desert, there's only an echo of a whisper I can hear. The same echo you hear before you feel whatever is out there sneak upon you, breathing at your neck.

Who is it? What does it want? 

The darkness runs thicker where my friends stand, each and every one of them like a lung wrapped over a beating heart that's bleeding out poison. Its beats are audible in the echo of commands, spoken so softly they are like the wheeze of the wind through the leaves crackling with exhaustion before they fall to their final rest.

Too deep into the insubstantial, I must look – I must find it.

"D-do you ac-cept this-s-s o-offering, Alpha?" I hear the voice hissing out the gurgle of vowels, understanding the words even if I can no longer see what's happening right in front of me.

The darkness is unfolding, a whiplash sound rippling inside the bond with its next command. What I see emerging from it...

The hand that's been holding mine slips away, the lack of contact like a trigger that's been pressed to send my mental body flying back to my physical one, leaving me colder than before when I've felt its icy touch on my skin.

The man who's been standing next to me has taken a step away, a step towards the female who seems to be waiting for him. 

Standing in nothing but a transparent white robe, her body is flush with the same desire I can see in her emerald eyes. Her raven hair falling to the middle of her chest, rose nipples perky underneath the silk, there's nothing left to the imagination down below, her generous curves showing under the fabric.

Glancing at my male I see the same hunger mirrored on his face as I see on hers. My male, my Alpha, he's no longer by my side but a step closer to her. Enthralled by her breathtaking beauty.

"Regan." My voice sounds so small, the word nothing but a plea for him to remember who he belongs to. It is not this female he should look at with desire.

He brings his hand up, fingers grasping the soft material, slowly exposing her shoulder to his eyes, the skin bare after the trail his hand leaves. Traveling lower, I watch it caress the tip of her breast, settling on her waist, bringing her to him in one swift motion.

He bends his head to her hair, his inhale of breath audible in the quiet as he lowers himself to hover over her exposed neck.

Even from where I stand I can see his jaw flexing, the bones adjusting, canines elongating inside his mouth seconds before he bites down to claim another.

There's only one thing I can think of to stop him... 

But before I can even move an inch, there are hands that are wrapping around me, a voice that's whispering in my ear, "He's not the mate, Scarlet. He's the shadow to your soul."

Words I've already heard tonight.

(52) The Dark Side Of The Moon

|Scarlet's POV|

Clutching my chest with my hands, there's so much pain in the world I can no longer keep the air inside my lungs. He's tearing it all apart.

The teeth piercing her skin, they are ripping my heart too. The pleasure of his bite - a dark, chillingly cold sentiment that flows through the bond, it's nothing like what I've felt from him. Slowly, it's becoming my torment.

How can he do this? Why is he doing this after completing the mating with me? Will this simple act break the bond between us?

Averting my gaze toward the Moon watching above, I can still hear the words ringing in my ears long after they were spoken.

What do they mean? Why is she telling me this now? What am I supposed to do?

With the corner of my eye, I see him raise his head and then, casting my gaze down, I can see the mark gracing her skin. Why is my chest hurting now? Have I finally fallen for him only to allow him to break me again?

Pieces. Shattered pieces of glass. That's what my heart feels like.

Like a tidal wave of hot, I can feel the rage inside my body rising. Muscles tense, burning for release into the motion, I cannot stop it. 

Breaking Sasha's grip on me, with a fractured vision, I see my hand flying up in the air, its flesh stinging from the impact when it connects with his cheek, the slap loud in the quiet that has descended like a blanket over the crowd.

"How could you do this, Regan? How could you?" My own screams ring across the place, lips that don't feel the words coming out, it's only my ears that are hearing them.

A person who has finally lost all that's sane inside of her, this is what I am now.

"Why the hell are you doing this to me? Why?" Fists that are hitting his chest, nails that are scratching the skin on his face, those spring eyes that are looking back at me... blank, empty. 

'Scratch them out until he sees your hurt, until he's hurting as much as you are,' that voice is saying from the pits of misery inside me.

"Why?" Shaking him. "Just tell me! Why?"

Not a word. Silence. Like I'm talking to a wall.

"He won't tell you, Scarlet." It's her - the girl who was my friend once, who turned into an enemy, she's the one who grabs my shoulders, trying to pull me away from him, trying to stop the insanity.

"Let go off of me!" Struggling against her, another set of hands joins hers, then another. They are holding me back from my mark. They won't let me close to him. They won't allow me to hurt him like I wish.

"He's not your mate, Scarlet!" she says. 

Whipping my head around to look at her, her face is sad, nothing alike that of the girl who has tormented me for those two years but much more similar to the one I remember from the time before him. A friend looking back at me, a friend reasoning with insanity when, in fact, she's the one who's crazy.

"What are you talking about?" I snap back at her, fighting against the two others that are helping her hold me. 

"Be reasonable and get your shit back together, Scarlet. This isn't how a Luna should act," a threat, that's what I get from him now.

"Were you ever my friend, Cole? Did you ever care about me or was it all lies?" I question, wanting, needing to hear that truth spoken from his mouth.

Looking from Cole to his brother, then back, I can see it. This person, this 'friend', he was never my friend. All along, he's been on the wildlings' side. All along, he's been lying to me. I just missed all the signs. 

"I do, Scarlet, and I always will. I just--"

"Shut up and get your dirty hands off of me! I don't want to hear your excuses," I say in a voice that sounds nothing like my own. Bleeding. Broken. Betrayed by every single person that matters.

My male, he's standing next to her now. Arm wrapped around her shoulders, he's hugging her close to him, every once and then glancing at the scene unraveling in front of his eyes while leaving me stand...

Alone.

Their hands fall off of me, my skin at last barren from touch. Is this how my life will be? Will I always be on my own, deprived of all that the Moon offers freely to others?

Tears welling up in my eyes, just by looking at them - so comfortable standing next to each other, bodies pressed together as they stay in comfortable silence, nothing in the world mattering to them but their own private happy bubble, I think I believe what those words.

He's not my mate. My mate will never do this but then... 

Turning towards the girl who has come to say those words to me, away from him - them, I look straight into her eyes. "What is he to me if he isn't my mate?"

"Do you remember that tale, Scarlet. About Her other gift to Her children. About the mate and the--"

"Shadow? But that's just a story. It's not true."

"Isn't it? Then why did this happen? From the moment he came, he's caused you pain and nothing but pain, Scarlet. He was supposed to make you happy and complete but he didn't do this. He didn't recognize the connection for two years and he--"

"That doesn't prove anything. There are many cases where mates don't know who the other is until they both shift and I wasn't a shifting wolf when he came here. The rest - him not making me happy - is just a coincidence. Besides," - I gesture towards Cole - "how do I know that you're not telling me this now because he made you do it?" 

"You don't believe me." Spoken so softly, it feels like there's just the two of us in the silence of the night when, in fact, others are listening to our conversation, taking pleasure in a Luna being brought down in the dust.

One night, it's how long my rule has lasted.

"Why should I believe you?" I ask her. "For two years you did nothing but hurt me. Again and again and again. After they took you away, you came back different. From being my closest friend you turned into my biggest enemy. You'd be the first to bully me, the first to say things to me. You hopped from bed to bed and then you found yourself in his. Even after you found out I was his mate, you'd still come after him and try to take him away. Why should I believe someone like you, Alexandra? Why will I believe you now?"

"But don't you see, Scarlet? That's exactly why I did what I did. Because I knew. Even then I knew and I tried my hardest to keep him away from you. I did everything to keep you two apart."

"You could have just told me, you know? Why are you telling me this now when you had so many chances to tell me before?"

"I didn't want to be the trigger. I couldn't tell you before I knew that my interference won't cause more problems than solve. You have to listen to me. You need to let him go or you will destroy my home and--"

"Your home? So I guess it all circles back to your selfish reasons." I cut off, my chest heaving with the burden that's now weighing on it. Heavy, like a ton of bricks that could crush you underneath any second now.

Am I believing that tale? Is it true that, like the two sides of a coin, you can have two of them? One person who is supposed to light up your life and bring peace to your soul, and one who will give you nothing but misery, who will destroy you from the inside... Break you to pieces?

Is he really the one who's going to do this to me? Didn't he already do this?

"I am selfish," she admits, her head hung low in shame, feet shifting in her own discomfort. Any other day I could have accepted her reasons, understood the fear behind her actions but, tonight, I can only hate her for everything she did and everything she didn't do.

"You go on then and be selfish on your own or better yet - with them, Sasha," I hiss out at her, then turn toward the watching pack wolves. 

"I'm out of here and if there's anyone who is as fed up with this as I am, you're welcome to join me," I announce before swinging on a heel.

Marching away from that place of heartbreak and betrayal, I can hear the shifting of bodies as people follow in my footsteps, distancing themselves from the wildlings, my former family, their own Alpha and that female who's now wearing a mark that should have been placed just once.

I don't turn back to look at them. He doesn't deserve a single glance from me after what he did. Mate or not, this is not how you break someone's heart.

"Now, Scarlet, do you actually believe I'm going to let you go like this and no less but take my wolves with you?" Not even several steps away, I hear Cole's shout and then his snicker.

So close, I can feel his breath on my back.

Hands like steel grasping my elbows, twisting my hands and holding them in his behind my back, I am fighting and kicking him, screaming, "Let go!"

"He didn't teach you right, Scarlet, but now I will. For your own good, I will," he whispers in my ear before dragging me back to his people to be swallowed in the throng of monsters.