Chapter 37
CHAPTER 37
S erafina
“We’ll leave in fifteen minutes,” Noah says as he leans against our bedroom’s door frame.
My shoulders slump while I stare into the mirror of the vanity. A stranger stares back at me. For all of the answers I’ve gotten lately, they leave me with more questions.
“What if ? —”
Noah’s growl cuts me off before I can finish asking.
“You’re coming,” he tells me through our mate bond.
“Is she trying to get out of it again?” That’s Montgomery.
You would think it’d be weird to have four different voices in my head, five if you include my wolf. But being able to communicate with all three of my mates, without the use of our mouths, makes me feel closer to them than ever before.
Yet, the questions that linger leave a gulf a mile wide.
“No,” I reply to Montgomery’s question out loud. “I was merely going to ask for a little snack before we left,” I lie.
“Snack? I just finished the strawberry cheesecake cookies,” he says. “I’m not much of a baker, but I figured after the ceremony they’d be appealing. I made extra, of course …” He’s off to the kitchen to grab some cookies for me even as he continues talking.
Tonight’s the Supermoon Ceremony. I’ve been to plenty of these over my lifetime. Yet, none of them felt like I was supposed to be there. This one feels even more like I shouldn’t attend.
“You knew that would get him off your case,” Noah says, chuckling, as he pushes off of the door, approaching me.
In spite of my mood, my lips twitch into a smirk.
Noah takes my hand for me to stand so he can wrap his arms around my waist. “Tonight belongs to you as much as it belongs to any one of us, or our pack.”
My doubts have lingered ever since we returned from New Mexico more than a week ago. I haven’t returned to school because I’m afraid the pack members don’t want me around their children but are just too frightened of their alphas to say anything.
“Are we ready?” Ronan asks, coming into the room. His expression doesn’t give him away, but the way his eyes glitter with intrigue, mischief, and yes, love as he looks me up and down, stirs the deepest parts of me.
My wolf—who lately always makes her presence known anytime my mates are around—animates even more. Ronan sniffs the air and then smiles, giving me a knowing look.
“We need to welcome our newest pups into the fold,” he says as if I need an explanation as to why the three of them can’t take me here and now.
But his reminder also serves to dampen my mood. Just as quickly as the heated passion lit up, his words douse the flames, reminding me why I just want to hide in this bedroom tonight.
I shake my head because hiding isn’t an option. I’ll be at my three mates’ sides as they welcome the newest wolves into the Blackclaw pack.
“I’m ready,” I say as I head toward the door at the same time Montgomery arrives with the cookies. The taste of the sweet, creamy cookies, most importantly prepared by my mate, settles my nerves just a little.
However, throughout the fifteen-minute walk to the open area where the rest of the pack has gathered, my wolf begins to stir with restlessness. I stare up at the huge, effervescent moon. I’ve always loved the sight of the moon on supermoon nights.
The Supermoon Ceremony is a sacred ceremony for just about every shifter pack. It occurs four times throughout the year and it’s a gathering for the packs to welcome the youngest members who are ready to have their first shift.
For the past few years, however, I’ve chosen to not attend Supermoon Ceremonies because they would just shine a mirror up to the fact that I didn’t have a wolf. Or, I believed I didn’t have a wolf.
Now that I know that isn’t the case, I don’t know what to expect.
“They’re here! They’re here!” a child’s voice calls out as we approach.
A smile touches my lips when little Brian, Raymond, and two other children from the grade three come running up to me, hugging me around my legs.
“We missed you, Alpha Queen. Why haven’t you been at school? Don’t you miss us?” Raymond asks, looking up at me with curiosity on his little face.
My eyes immediately tear up. I look over at Ronan, at a loss as to how to respond. He surprises me by leaning in and kissing my cheek before squatting down to Raymond’s level.
“We had some issues to take care of, but we are home now,” he tells the little boy and the rest of the children. “And she is not going anywhere anymore.”
“Yay!” Meghan, one of the little girls, yells, wrapping her tiny arms around my leg even tighter.
My heart nearly bursts.
Protect!
My wolf suddenly roars to life, standing to her feet. I feel her rippling just beneath the surface.
“What’s wrong?” Noah asks in my head.
I shake my head. “ I don’t know. My wolf is anxious.”
I try to tell her to calm down and that I don’t need protection from children, but she’s not listening to me.
“Protect! Protect! Get away!”
I tighten my hands into fists and do my best to suppress her, shutting down her odd behavior.
“Let’s get started,” Ronan tells everyone.
The pack of about sixty members forms a semicircle with the four of us—Ronan, Noah, Montgomery, and me standing in the middle. I attempt to move to the edge to stand with the rest of the pack, but Noah wraps an arm around my waist.
He doesn’t say anything, but the sideways glare he gives me tells me not to move. With my wolf still feeling restless, and I decided it’s not a good idea to get too close to the pack members with her so on edge.
The fear and doubt of whether or not I could be a danger to everyone here begins to overwhelm me.
The thoughts and fears drown out Ronan as he addresses the pack, speaking of the generations’-old tradition of gathering for the Supermoon Ceremony. The bits and pieces I do hear, he reminisces over how his family has reigned over the pack for nearly a century and will continue to do so.
My heartbeat starts to thunder because I know he’s about to confirm to the pack that we’ve cemented the mate bond.
“Serafina is officially the Alpha Queen of this pack, as the bond has been completed,” he tells everyone.
Surprisingly, more than a half of the pack members clap and applaud.
“Does this mean that your authority can’t be challenged?” one of the younger male members calls out.
“Why?” Noah steps up to ask. “Are you looking to challenge us?”
“No way, Alpha Noah.” He chuckles, holding his hands up. “I want to make sure the three wolves I respect the most will lead the pack I’m proud to call home,” he says with sincerity.
Ronan nods. “It is true that the basis that was given three months ago as a means to challenge our authority no longer exists.”
More than a few expressions in the crowd express relief.
“But as you all know, there is another method of challenging our authority,” Ronan adds, scanning the crowd. “If any of the newly shifted wolves wants to challenge us, we will obey such a challenge.” His voice turns slightly vicious.
Protect!
I squeeze my eyes shut to force my wolf back. Does she want to protect Ronan or Noah or Montgomery? Is there danger around that I’m not sensing? Or is she the danger?
My head swims with these questions.
“Now for the time you’ve all been waiting for. Will all of our adolescents step forward,” Noah calls them forward.
Five of the pack’s teens move inside of the circle. It’s almost hard to believe that these gangly looking teens will soon transform into wolves for the first time in their lives.
I try to focus on the pack members, but my wolf looks around for something. Is she looking to attack? I decide right then and there to head straight home after the new wolves shift.
Typically, the final part of the Supermoon Ceremony is a pack run to get the new wolves used to being in their bodies, but that’s a run that I won’t be partaking in. Not with my wolf behaving so strangely all of a sudden.
“We welcome the newest wolves into our fold and promise to bestow our protection onto thee,” Ronan says.
Noah steps forward, next to his brother. “It is your responsibility to uphold the laws and agreements of the Blackclaw pack. Whether in your human or your wolf form. Can you do that?” he asks the adolescents.
They nod in unison, looking eager.
“Then, this is your time,” Montgomery adds. “With the power of Mother Moon, we grant you our blessings in front of the entire pack to have your first shift.”
Everyone looks toward the moon, and a silence falls over all of us. My entire body begins trembling and tingling. All of the adolescents have collapsed to the ground, their faces grimacing in pain.
The first shift is always the most painful.
Within seconds, though, five new gray and white wolves stand before us. A howl slices through the air. It comes from Ronan. A breath later he’s shifted along with the rest of my mates.
My wolf leaps and throws herself against my ribcage to break free. It’s painful to hold her back.
One by one the rest of the pack members shift and howl at the moon, their way of welcoming the new pups into the fray.
Protect! Protect! Get away! Now!
I shake my head and try to pull her back but she’s too strong. Before I know what’s happening, a flash of heat whizzes through my body, burning me from the inside out.
It happens so fast, that the transformation from human to wolf occurs in the blink of an eye.
I’m at my wolf’s mercy now as she looks this way and that, searching for something. She won’t tell me what’s wrong. All I can sense is she feels threatened.
Ronan, Montgomery, and Noah howl all at once and my wolf immediately recognizes it as the call for a pack run. She starts to follow the rest of the Blackclaw pack. They get in formation behind Ronan while Montgomery and Noah move to my sides, looking over as if to encourage me.
I want to tell them something’s wrong, but my wolf and I are not only like separate beings, we’re strangers. I don’t know how to communicate through her to them, and when I try to shift back, she somehow stops me.
The pack run starts and she, along with everyone else, takes off. The more steps she takes the hotter our body becomes. Within less than fifty meters of the run I start to smell smoke.
Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.
I grow fearful that my wolf’s once again burning the ground we walk on. Before I start to slow my pace, however, a bloodcurdling howl pierces the air.
Everything and everyone stops.
It hadn’t come from one of my mates, but from one of our pack betas. More howls sound off as the scent of blood pierces my senses.
My wolf takes off running, although everyone else has come to a standstill. I don’t know where we’re going until in the distance, I spot a man, who is on the ground, pointing a bow and arrow toward our pack. My wolf sniffs the air.
Silver, she tells me.
The arrow must have a silver tip. No wonder the scream that came from Billy sounded so painful.
We take off running for the man pointing his arrow at us. Just as he raises the arrow again, my wolf picks up speed. By the time he sets up, it’s too late. I pounce on him, ripping the bow from him and taking a chunk out of his hand and wrist with it.
He screams, and I expect him to shift but he just falls to the ground in pain, screaming. That’s when I realize he’s human.
Though, despite his pain, from the army fatigues he’s wearing, he pulls out a knife. The silver of the blade glistens under the moonlight. Instead of scaring me off, it spurs my wolf forward.
She races toward the man, and at the last second, leaps into the air, grabbing the blade of the knife in between our teeth, ripping it out of his hand.
As soon as my legs hit the ground, I spit the knife out and go back for his throat. My wolf shows no mercy as she violently ends his attack.
His body falls to the ground, limply. As soon as it does, though, another piercing scream rents through the air. I turn back toward the area where my pack was just in time to see another arrow shooting toward another member.
I don’t see the arrow as it hits its target, but I hear the scream of pain. We’re on our feet racing toward the next attacker without another thought.
Protect pack! Save them!
I get it now.
She wasn’t pushing me to attack the Blackclaw pack. My wolf was urging me to save them. She sensed the danger before anyone else did.
“ Embrace her.”
Ms. Elsie’s words come flashing back to me.
“ Embrace her.”
My wolf saved me the first time she ever came out. She showed up again when surrounded by the love of our mates. She’s never been the enemy.
My fear of her the enemy.
Another arrow pierces the air followed by another scream.
My mates are among them. Oh, Mother Moon. My mates.
“ Save them ,” I tell my wolf. “ I trust you. Save them please.”
As I beg, she picks up speed, and a heat that I’ve never felt comes over me. The smell of ash and smoke fills my nose. But it’s not choking nor does it slow me down. The opposite, it spurs me on.
I see flashes of orange light in the corners of my eyes, but I don’t pay attention to it when I lock my gaze on the second attacker with the bow and arrow. By the time he sees me, it’s too late for him.
He screams and cries as I rip and tear at his throat, ending the terror he attempts to reign down on my pack.
“Fire. Mother Moon, fire!”
My wolf says the words, but I don’t know what she means until I feel it. The heat ratchets up even more and I notice that I’m actually on fire. My entire wolf is up in flames and it hasn’t slowed us down as we spot another attacker with a bow and arrow. The flames aid in quickening my pace.
I take a third attacker down, wondering why all three have been human so far. Just as that thought crosses my mind, a pair of gray and white wolves emerges from the woods. Though it’s my first time seeing them in their wolf form, my wolf immediately recognizes one of them as Peter.
The wolves growl and bare their incisors at me but don’t move closer. I can sniff their fear.
Peter howls at the sky. I glance behind me to see a group of men with bows and arrows, as well as a handful of wolves heading in the direction of my pack.
Peter and his ilk are meant to be a distraction while the rest of whoever is down there tries to have their way with my pack.
Protect! Save!
I sprint toward my pack, pushing, biting, and even clawing at the few men I come in contact with.
My wolf races around the border of the pack, my heels licking up flames as we run.
“Stay back!” I hear an unfamiliar voice call out. It’s not a member from my pack so it must be one of the attackers.
“It-It’s protecting them,” he sounds astounded.
But I know that’s exactly what my wolf is doing. We’re creating a fiery border around my pack, preventing the attackers with their silver from getting to the Blackclaw pack and my mates.
Their silver doesn’t penetrate or burn my flesh the way it does other wolf shifters. Even the sharpness of their blades gives more than a barely noticeable prick to my skin.
My wolf shouts at me to protect the pack, save our mates as we continue to race around, forming a circle of fire.
“Serafina!”
I recognize the voice. It’s Noah. He sounds strained.
“Noah!”
He doesn’t answer me.
Oh, Mother Moon! Was he hit by one of the arrows? He’s strong but silver is potentially lethal to even the strongest of alphas.
But not me, my wolf reminds me. The trait of mine that I often thought of as a weakness because it separated me from my pack—my immunity to silver—is now the thing that allows me to keep them safe.
That, and the flames I wrap them up in, to protect them.
I race to close the circle, to prevent anyone or anything from getting to the Blackclaw pack.
My wolf is heaving in and out, breathless but still raring to go. With our pack safe, tucked away by the controlled flames, I turn back toward Peter and the men he brought to attack us, his former pack. There are now five gray wolves.
Peter growls, and the rest do the same.
Though I’m alone and there are so many of them, I’m not afraid. I’ll burn them all up to keep my mates safe if necessary.
My wolf howls at the moon and takes off running toward the wolves.
None of them advance or retreat. They must be waiting for me.
Once I get within fifty feet of them, something pierces the side of my belly. My wolf yelps and within seconds a freezing cold starts to rush through my veins.
The flames once surrounding me flicker until they’re vanquished. All that’s left is the smell of smoke and ash. I collapse to the ground, unable to move.
The last thing I see is Peter and the wolves at his side hovering over me, before everything goes dark.