Moonlit Feathers
After faced with crippling loss, a heartbroken raven must find her wings again...
Treasure hunters are trained to find things, but all Morgana has known is loss. When someone she loves dies because she can’t protect them, she shies away from the world, too afraid to let anyone else get close. That won’t last long because ravens aren’t ones to pass up on shiny things.
Cody has never really felt accepted. He’s a coyote shifter of Native American heritage, but he gets his looks from his Scandinavian mother, unlike his siblings and the rest of his people. That makes him all the more dedicated when what seemed like a freak tornado becomes something much scarier.
When Cody realizes that his family’s powerful talisman has slips into the wrong hands, he desperately needs help. But he never imagined he’d be fall head over heels for the beautiful, if not, mysterious treasure hunter. Morgana will need to let go of being hurt again if they have any hope of saving not only each other, but also the small town that they both love from disaster.
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Table of Contents
Excerpt for The Witch Who Cried Wolf
Moonlit Feathers © 2015 Sarah Mäkelä
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments, or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without expressed written permission from the author.
Editor: Word Vagabond
Cover Artist: J.M. Rising Horse Creations
ISBN-10: 1942873808
ISBN-13: 978-1-942873-80-8
Chapter One
Morgana
Wind caressed my midnight black feathers as I sailed through the early evening sky. Flying had always been a welcome reprieve, an escape from the everyday life of walking on two legs. Most people in the world only dreamed of this gift I'd been granted, but it didn't give me that much freedom from life’s sorrows. Perhaps that was just as well.
My line of work demanded more from me than the average human’s physique could handle. That was why my peers regarded me as the best of the best.
As a treasure hunter, people expected me to explore mystical ruins and dodge huge boulders, but my main task was to always be on the lookout for stunning riches that might interest my wealthy clients. What set me apart from the rest was being a Raven shifter. That gave me the ability to get in and out of ancient, mythical locales more quickly and safely than most.
Clients came to me with all sorts of requests. Due to my popularity, I could choose the jobs I wanted and who I wanted to work for, something the few fellow treasure hunters I'd met could only dream of. When we got together, they always asked for my secrets—either to my face or behind my back—but I wasn't willing to share the knowledge of my abilities with them.
Only one person, aside from my parents, had ever gotten close enough to see the true me, and he'd died because I couldn't save him when he needed me the most.
How could I truly be happy with a life spent forever alone, regardless of the mystery and adventure my career afforded me?
Loneliness ached like a gaping hole in my chest. Whatever life I’d known before had dimmed the light, and I merely trudged through the shades of grey with my bruised heart.
Ezra Phillips had been the last person I'd allowed to get close to me. He'd crept past the walls I'd erected around my heart after my parents died and left me all alone in the world. I regretted his death every single day. Life with him had been an exciting journey. We were hunting a rare gem with supposed magical properties together, and I'd tried to convince him that I should go alone since he was only human. The job was dangerous, even for me. He had a way with words and convinced me to let him come along. I mistakenly believed we were indestructible together. Neither of us had been to South America before, and now I never wanted to go back.
I was all alone again. Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost had obviously never felt this kind of gut-wrenching pain.
If anything had come from my relationship with Ezra, it was a determination to harden my heart that much more. Never again would I let someone in. More pain and loss would be too much to bear. Besides, I had a career in shambles that needed to be rebuilt.
Shaking away my destructive thoughts, I swept my gaze over my surroundings, dragging myself back to the here and now. Breathtaking oranges, reds, and yellows spread out beneath me, helping me remember why I'd chosen Woodland Creek, Indiana as my new home. I'd never been a small-town girl, but that didn't matter much. After Ezra's death, I drew more into myself, and the solitude suited me now.
Above the treetops, the air carried the clean scent of ozone mixed with pine. The strong pull from the ley-lines had called me here like a mystical artery pumping with magic, very much alive with raw, untapped energy churning below the ground. For wizards, it made spellcasting easier, but for the shifters I knew of, it acted like a beacon, calling us together.
Through the thick canopy, I caught sight of something shiny on the forest floor below. I'd flown this path many times on my way home, and rarely had I seen any hikers in this area. Could this object be something valuable? The raven in me wanted to investigate—she liked shiny things—but my human side prepared for disappointment.
Maybe I'd become more jaded than I'd realized, if not downright pessimistic.
Swooping toward the ground, we splayed our wings wide and slowed our descent to get a better look. Just an average section of Running Deer National Forest. It’s only distinguishing feature was a large ring of boulders. No one was around, and the area was clear of camping gear and human supplies.
I perched on a sturdy tree limb, and it groaned a little under our weight. While most ravens were about three pounds, I was closer to thirty, approximately the size of a cinereous vulture. Not conspicuous at all, right? But most people didn’t look too hard at me. They keep their eyes at ground level, not paying much attention to what goes on above their heads.
The shiny object below beckoned my raven closer, but I couldn't be sure this wasn't some kind of trap. Call me paranoid, but that was the sort of thinking that kept me alive. I didn't see anyone else nearby, though: people, animals, or those in-between. The longer I sat there, the more I felt a heaviness in the air, as if someone had recently thrown a lot of magic around. The sensation nearly made me decide to fly away, but my raven
krawed
at me. She thought I was acting like a coward, and that was definitely
not
me. The thought of the
glimmer
had entered into her mind, and once she was set on something, there was only one way to satisfy her curiosity.
With one final glance around to make certain I was alone, I jumped off my branch, shifting into human form as I fell to the ground. I rolled to take the impact off my legs and stood up straight. My raven flapped her wings beneath my chest, preening at the crazy move. Maybe I wasn't completely alone in the world. I did have my raven. But given the trouble she got me into sometimes, it was hard to decide if that was a blessing or a curse.
The cool October wind caressed my bare skin, drawing out a shiver. Wrapping my arms around me for warmth, I hurried over to the baseball-sized piece of...gold? I dropped to my knees beside it, frowning at the rounded lump. With so many people venturing into Running Deer each year, I highly doubted no one would've seen this before now and not have taken it. It was freaking hard to miss. Something else that struck me was how polished the metal appeared. If it had been buried underground for years, it wouldn't look like someone had professionally cleaned it.
Maybe it was cursed. I didn't need any help in that department. My business had taken a turn for the worse after Ezra's death. For the first time in years, I struggled with money, because hunting for other people's gain felt wrong after I'd lost so much. Despite my best efforts to get over it, my head was still stuck in the past. I'd attempted a few jobs in town, but I hadn't stayed long at any of them. My fear of getting too close to anyone made me keep everyone at arm’s length.
Before I knew what I was doing, my hand closed around the smooth, round chunk of gold. It was heavy and solid, but it didn't weigh as much as I'd expected for gold this size. I blinked at it in surprise. It wasn't pyrite—fool's gold. It had the softer edges of true gold, and shone from every angle rather than just a few. But something about it wasn’t right. This wasn't like any gold I'd ever come across. As well as being too light, it wasn't malleable enough. More like stone than gold.
My raven
krawed
her disappointment.
If anyone could get to the bottom of this mystery, it would be Kevin. Kevin was a wizard, and he used to be a mutual friend of Ezra and me. He'd helped us a few times when we had questions about anything magical—amulets, gems, or artifacts. He was a solid source of information.
Sighing, I dropped the strange golden ball back to the ground with a thud. "Looks like we'll be in for a long flight."
With a sharp push of energy, the raven stretched out of my skin. Her feathers sprouted from my body like a dark wave, and talons grew from where my fingers had been. We shook our wings, letting out a loud
kraa
. When the shift was over, we stared at the piece of gold, cocking our head to the side, until the raven decided we would be able to hold the ball in our claws.
After a couple tries, we lifted off without dropping it and made our way toward Kevin's house in Old Town.
Chapter Two
Cody
After a long day of classes at Hastings-Albrecht University, the last place I wanted to be was sitting in the library, studying. My coyote paced beneath the surface of my skin, anxious to be unleashed and prowl around Running Deer, but the universe had a way of giving my plans the middle finger. My professors seemed to have conspired against me by planning quizzes in the majority of my classes tomorrow. That meant I had to sit here and soothe my coyote, even if keeping him in one place was like making a kid with ADHD focus on sorting pins.
So hard.