Chapter 1
Bound by the Savage Moon
Chapter One
Elara
The first thing they teach you at the military academy: how to slaughter a shifter.
The second thing they teach you: there’s no room for weakness.
Weakness leads to vulnerabilities, and that leads to mistakes. And mistakes aren’t tolerated at the academy. Even for a soldier like me. A soldier with twenty stars on her belt – one for every shifter I’ve killed.
But it looks like I’ve just made my first mistake.
I stare down at my hands.
Drenched in blood. Warm. Sticky. Metallic. Dripping to the floor.
It’s not my blood. It’s the blood of my best friend, Immy.
She lies on her back in the dirt, her fair hair fanned around her head, her sky-blue eyes staring vacantly at the starless sky, her throat a mass of gore and blood.
Immy is my weakness. Was my weakness.
Although it should have been the other way around.
I was the orphan. Plucked from obscurity to attend the academy with no connections, no formal training, and no real hope of succeeding.
Immy was the one who came from high-mage stock. The one with strong magic flowing in her blood. The one with scores of military heroes crowded in her family tree.
There was no need for her to adopt me. To take me under her wing. To make me her friend. To protect me from all the bullies, the bitches and the snobs.
But she had.
And I’d never forgotten it.
Not when my star had started to rise and hers had fallen. Not when they learned just how good a fighter I truly was, how strong, how ruthless, how determined. Not when those same bullies, bitches, and snobs came for her instead.
Immy was never a fighter. She’d much rather curl up in her bunk with a book than be out here in the forest fighting the shifter clans that invade our lands, that massacre our people, that threaten our very existence.
Immy was my best friend. My sister in everything but blood.
And now her blood runs down my palms and over my fingers, streaming to the ground.
I try not to think of the other time … my hands drowning in their blood.
Not again. Lady Goddess, no, please, not again.
I throw my head back and roar with anguish. The need to kill, to avenge, to destroy everything overwhelms me, burning through me and singeing the very flesh on my bones.
Forcing my gaze from the face of my friend, I wipe her blood on the jacket of my uniform and snatch my battle staff from the ground. Then, with my fingers tightening so violently around the staff I swear I hear it groan, I swing my gaze through the trees.
The battle rages around me. Mages fighting shifters, shifters fighting mages. The forest booms with the sounds of howling, screaming, magic and explosions. Bright sparks crash through the trees, which erupt into splinters and bark, and the ground shakes with the thuds of many heavy paws.
I scan the battle, searching for the man who stole my friend from me, his jowls smeared with her blood. He’s gone, vanished into thin air like smoke on the breeze.
I grit my teeth together. My heart races with the need for revenge. The rage inside me is white-hot and deadly.
And then I see him.
A wolf.
He’s huge, bigger than the other shifter wolves, towering over them, built of bulk and muscle and mass. His fur is darker than the night sky. A jet, impenetrable black.
And when he turns his head, I see his eyes are the bright silver of Lady Aelyndra’s moon.
The anger, the fury, the rage snaps as his gaze locks with mine, and I dig my heels into the dirt and race toward the son of a bitch, firing magic at him as I do.
Somewhere behind me, I hear Commander Coldmere yelling my name.
“Elara! Stay with the unit! Elara!”
The mage’s strength comes when we fight together in unison. The shifters can’t beat us then and we can pick them off easily. But they are more powerful than us one-on-one. Taking one on alone is suicide.
Not for me, though.
I will kill him. I will have his blood for hers, for theirs. I don’t give a shit if he wasn’t the one who ripped out her throat. I will take a life for a life.
I ignore the commander and keep running.
For a moment, the wolf simply stands and looks at me as if I am nothing but an annoyance, a buzzing fly to be easily swatted away.
I’m not surprised. Everyone I’ve ever met has underestimated me, everyone except Immy. They see my small stature, they see my raw fighting style, they see the wildness in my eyes, and they think I’m weak.
But I’m not.
I’m the strongest cadet at the Ironspire military academy and I’ve proven it again and again and again, with every trial overcome, with every tournament won, with every battle I’ve faced, with every shifter I’ve killed – far more than any of the others.
My magic slams over the wolf’s head and collides with a tree, the trunk blasting in half and the canopy crashing to the ground.
The shifter realizes my power, gathers himself, and runs.
I don’t care if I’m throwing all I’ve learned, all my training, all my discipline to the wind. I don’t give a shit. I will kill him. I will kill every single one of these evil bastards. I will wipe their kind from this Earth.
Not again. No, not again.
I chase him through the trees.
He’s fast, four-legged after all, but he’s heavy and muscular, and I am light and nimble. And I’ve trained for this over and over again, every day for the last twelve months, pushing myself to my limits, proving to everyone just how good I can be.
I dodge through the trees, swerving this way and that, my eyes never leaving his dark form.
I can hear our panted breaths intermingling in the air, the sound of my boots and his paws pounding against the hard earth.
Sweat slides down my face and into my eyes and I blink it away, trying my best not to think of the image of my friend lying on the cold ground, the blood and the life drained from her body, her spirit with the Goddess Lady Aelyndra now.
Ahead of me, the shifter growls as he leaps over a fallen tree, ducks under branches, and swerves this way and that. I do the same, following him, closing the distance, firing my magic at him as I do.
Soon he’ll have to stop.
He can’t outrun me. He won’t outrun me.
He’ll have to stand and fight me.
I don’t understand why he hasn’t already. I’ve let my weakness draw me from my unit. I’ve let my weakness drive me to madness. He has me alone now, deep in the forest. As far as he is concerned, he could destroy me with one snap of his jaws, with one swipe of his giant paw.
“Stand and fight me, you coward!” I yell at his back, firing more of my magic, a cacophony of colors spiraling through the darkness, as hot and angry as the blood in my veins. “Fight me!” My voice echoes off the tall pine trees, taunting me as well as him.
His head snaps around and he peers over his shoulder at me, those silver eyes shining in the darkness like the two bright moons of Kaeos that will rise into the sky as the night deepens.
He looks at me for only a moment before his head whips forward again and he plunges onward through the forest.
The trees become denser, crowding in on one another; the undergrowth thicker; the branches sharper. The stench of rancid leaves and rotting earth is more powerful in my nose.
I’m straying deeper into shifter territory now, far from the front lines that mark the meeting point of our two lands.
My magic bounces off the trees, illuminating the forest in fleeting flashes like lightning zigzagging through the air, and I see him more clearly.
He is huge. A hulk of a wolf. The muscles rippling in his back as he races onward; his paws bigger than my head.
I don’t understand why he won’t stop and fight me. I scream with fury and run harder.
And then, all of a sudden, we break free of the trees, and the earth falls away beneath our feet, disappearing into the depths of a chasm.
The shifter, several paces in front of me, screeches to a halt, digging all four paws into the ground, skidding across the dirt.
I attempt to do the same, trying to pull away from the precipice.
But I’m running too hard. Too fast.
I’m propelled straight over the edge of the abyss.
My staff slips from my grasp, tumbling down into the darkness, knocking against the sides of the cliff as it falls.
I had a weakness.
It led to this. To my demise. To my death.
Because this fall will kill me.
I close my eyes and wait for it to happen, for the impact, for death to claim me finally after all this time, after all my lucky escapes from her grasp.
But she never comes. It doesn’t happen.
Instead, I feel a set of powerful jaws clamp around my arm.
For a moment, it’s like time has frozen. Like a powerful mage has cast a spell upon us, caught us in their net, and holds us there, suspended, unmoving.
I stare back at the shifter in horror.
His teeth are sunk deep into the flesh of my forearm. His face caught in a snarl. His silver eyes hard and unbending.
And it’s as if he is the one who has cast a spell, who has caught me not only in his jaws but in his unblinking gaze.
Then my feet slip, scraping against the edge of the cliff. Rocks tumble down into the chasm, crashing as they fall, echoing in the silent night.
My heart pounds so violently I think it will burst through my ribs.
And then the wolf growls and hauls me, with all his might and all his power, back over the edge, back onto solid ground.
I fall to my hands and knees as he snaps open his jaws, and when I lift my gaze toward the black wolf, it’s no longer there.
A man stands in its place.
A powerful shifter. As powerful as the wolf.
Long, dark locks of hair cascade over his shoulders, strands braided back from his face. His bare chest is compacted with tight muscle, smeared with dirt and mud, and marked with the ink of his shifter pack.
Woven leather bands wrap around his wrists and his pants are made from the hide of some animal. There are no boots on his feet. His toes are black with mud.
When I stare at his face, I find his jaw hard and set, his brow deep, and his eyes silver like the wolf’s.
I don’t know what he intends to do now. If he’s dragged me from my death simply to kill me. To toy with me. To torture me.
That’s what shifters do. They don’t believe in a swift death for their enemies. They find joy in making them suffer, in torture and cruelty.
Well, let the sick bastard try.
I don’t need my battle staff to kill him. I’ll gouge his pretty silver eyes out with my bare hands if I have to.
But once again, death turns her back on me. The shifter doesn’t move. He just stands there, his hands forming tight fists, and watches as I spit onto the ground and stumble to my feet.
My spotless uniform is ripped and torn and covered in blood and mud. There are holes in the knees of my pants and the laces of one boot have snapped. Strands of my auburn hair have come loose from my braid, falling into my face, damp with sweat and tears.
I raise my head anyway and scowl at him.
“What the hell did you do that for?” I snap, the anger still alive and fuming inside me. “What the hell did you do?”
I lift my arm, curl my hand into a fist, and punch my magic toward him. It spirals through the air and strikes the ground by his feet.
Did I mean to miss him?
Despite the singed grass by his toes, he doesn’t move. He keeps staring at me.
That sends the rage soaring more fiercely in my blood, and I fire more magic right at him. No more warning shots this time.
He stands there for a moment longer, then he spins, and, in the blink of an eye, the man is gone. The wolf has returned, racing back through the trees.
This time, I let him go, let him sink into the darkness of the forest.
And then it’s just me, the sound of my own panting breath loud in the oppressive silence, the beat of my heart drumming furiously against my ribs, the pain in my arm making me wince, tears pooling in my eyes.
I swallow hard and force myself to look.
The shifter has bitten me.
His teeth sank through the sleeve of my uniform, punctured my skin, and marked my blood.
The wound is clear as day, even in this moonless, starless night.
I’m marked.
Bitten.
I’m well and truly fucked.