Moon Cursed (Corvin Academy #2)

Prologue

Something struck my face, fluttering my eyes open.

Squinting, my watery eyes landed on something pink and wiggling. It came closer to me, as if sensing the blinding pain behind my eyes and wanting to comfort me.

My vision cleared and I came face to face with the writhing pile of worms.

“Ahh!” Shooting up, I flew back and screamed—clutching my aching head.

I felt awful. Between blowing up the bond and taking another blow to the head, everything from my chin up was soaked in agony. Dizziness made my world spin. The pounding in my skull echoed in my ears. Pitching forward, I vomited.

“Wha... What’s going on?”

“—had no choice.” A voice reached my sensitive ears. “Everyone’s gone mad. They’re under her spell. I had to stop her. I had to save Wolf Nation. This is the only way. The only way.”

Something struck me again. Blinking, I saw it was dirt.

Everything dirt. Everywhere dirt! Tipping my head back, back, back, I swept up the hard, earthen walls and locked eyes with Badr... and his shovel.

“My gods, Badr,” I breathed, horror leadening my voice. “What are you doing?”

“I’m stopping you!” His eyes were crazy. “You gave me no choice.”

“No choice?” I whipped around, taking in the eight-foot hole I was dropped in. High above me and Badr was nothing but a roof of trees and sky, and I meant nothing. I couldn’t hear the academy anymore. I couldn’t hear the bustle, whisper, and romp of hundreds of students partying in a ballroom.

Which meant they’d never hear me.

“Of course you have a choice! You can choose not to bury me alive!”

“I have to stop you,” he hissed, mostly to himself. “For Castor, for Wolf Nation, for everyone. You’re too dangerous. You won’t stop until you’ve taken us all down.”

There was no talking to him. Rising to my feet, I tried to shift and a sharp spike went through my brain, dropping me screaming on my ass.

“What’s going on? Why can’t... I shift?”

“Don’t you fucking dare!” Badr shouted at me, but I was barely listening.

I probed my wolf, begging her to come out. But nothing. There were consequences for making promises in Luame’s name. There were even more for denying the fated mate she chose for you.

And now I knew what they were.

Blowing up the bond had done something horrible to me and my wolf. She was weak, broken... dying.

I needed to get us both help. I needed to get out of this hole!

“B-Badr,” I moaned, clutching my head. “You have to stop. You’re not thinking clearly. If you kill me, the shifter race—”

“—will be just fucking fine! You mated with Edric. That’s more than enough to ensure the shifter race doesn’t die.”

“No, this isn’t about that!” My voice rose as he dumped another shovelful of dirt on me. “This is bigger than that. It’s more important than you can possibly understand. Please, you have to stop, get me out of here, and get me some help.”

“Get you help?” Badr threw his head back laughing. I can honestly say I didn’t know what a maniacal laugh was before that frightening, unhinged sound ripped from his throat. “You must be joking! You’re done, Volana.” He tossed dirt at my feet. “You’re dead.”

Real and pure panic burst in my chest. There was a reason that everyone kept threatening me by saying they’d put me in a hole. There was nothing more dangerous to a moon wolf than a hole. Why?

For the same damn reason a big, deep hole was dangerous for a mundane. We couldn’t get out. I couldn’t use my phasing power because I’d end up lost in the cold and dark for a millennium, or until I died of thirst and starvation. I couldn’t shift unless I had room to shift, and Badr hadn’t done me the favor of giving me room. If he covered me and walked away, I was exactly what he said—dead.

“Okay, listen,” I rasped, desperation bleeding into my voice. “I know you’re scared and feeling trapped, but this isn’t the way. You don’t want to do this. I know you don’t, or you wouldn’t be trying so hard to justify yourself to your wolf right now.”

His brow twitched, hand tightening on the shovel. I struck dead-on. “My wolf will get over it,” he gritted. “You have to be stopped.”

“Badr, please, Castor wouldn’t want this—”

“Don’t you dare!” He swung the shovel at me, making me hit the ground screaming. The shovel caught on my dress and ripped it. “Don’t speak his name! You have no idea what my brother would want. You didn’t know him—”

“No one knew Castor better than me!”

Badr scoffed. “You never quit, do you? Even now you’re trying to spin more of your fairy tales about how my brother beat you and controlled you—”

“I never said that.”

“—and he made your life a living hell, but I knew him,” he roared, pounding his chest. “My father cheated on his mother with the cook and had me. That fucking hypocrite bastard hated me from the moment I was born. I was the constant proof of what a lying, honorless shit Cygnus Tahan is, and he couldn’t stand it.

“He threw me and my mother out, left us with nothing, but then one day Castor heard his parents arguing about me. Can you believe that Castor’s mother was cursing Cygnus out for ignoring and abandoning his own child? Even she thought he was a monster.” Badr kicked more dirt on me. “But Castor... When he heard he had a brother out there, he searched high and low for me.

“He brought me back into the family. He rang up the lawyers and demanded his trust fund be split half-and-half between us, and he told our father to fuck off! He said we both had a claim to the Sun clan, and we would both run it as co-alphas. Castor was a good man—”

“I know.”

“A great man! He was good and kind to everyone—”

“I know!”

“—and he never hurt you or anyone else, so—”

“I know,” I shrieked. “That’s why I loved him!”

“—don’t you—” Badr halted, nearly choking on his tongue. “What? What did you say?”

“You don’t have to tell me how wonderful Castor was, you fucking asshole!” I grabbed a fistful of dirt and threw it right back at him. “I know how amazing he was! I loved him from the first day I met him. From the first second! He was everything to me, and now he’s gone and I have nothing!”

“What are you—?” His eyes darted around, head shaking. “What are you talking—?”

“You walk around here like you’ve got the monopoly on grief, but you’ve got no fucking idea,” I snarled, fangs trying and failing to sprout. “There is no grief like having to kill the man you love.”

“What are you talking about? Why are you saying that! You didn’t love Castor. You didn’t know him.”

“I’ve known him since I was twelve.”

“That’s a lie!” Spittle dotted the dirt. “You’re trying to confuse me again. You—”

“You don’t have to tell me Cygnus is a monster. I’ve been taking his confession for years, I know exactly what he’s like. But the day he came into the temple with Castor,” I whispered. “Everything changed.

“After Cygnus finished pouring his vileness into my ears, Castor came in and did something no one’s ever done. He spoke to me and just me.”

Badr quieted, his brows furrowing.

“He asked me if I was bored sitting around in a cold temple all day, and if I wanted half of his empanada. I didn’t answer,” I admitted. “I was just so confused that he was talking to me. So, bold as ever, Castor threw aside the curtain, climbed up next to me, and put half his food on my lap.” Amidst my pain and fear... a smile found its way on my lips. “From that moment on I was hooked.

“But you know the rules placed on the mother wolf. I wasn’t allowed to date, and I damn sure wasn’t allowed to have sex with anyone other than my fates. We had no choice but to keep our relationship secret,” I said. “The only times my guards left me in peace was when I was taking confessions in the temple, so that’s where we’d meet.

“I was supposed to be saving myself for that fateful night, but we couldn’t stop. It wasn’t long before I gave him all of me. I was completely addicted to Castor Tahan. If he asked me to set myself on fire to keep him warm, I’d have done it,” I croaked, eyes fluttering shut. “Long before Luame made him my mate, I knew he was my fate. We knew that we belonged together. Forever.”

“That... That’s not possible.” I heard the thud of the shovel falling. “If you were so in love with him, why did you kill him? If he loved you, why didn’t he tell me about you?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” I snapped. “Our relationship was forbidden. Castor could’ve hooked up with a vampire and he wouldn’t have gotten into as much trouble as he would if anyone knew he was sleeping with the mother wolf. He wasn’t going to risk bringing you down too if we were discovered.”

“But he—!”

“Don’t be a hypocrite, Badr.” My eyes snapped open to glare at him. “I doubt you told your brother every single detail of your sex life. There are some things a person is allowed to keep private. And the things that will get you and your loved ones killed are at the top of the list.”

Badr clenched his teeth, jaw ticcing, but he didn’t argue that point. “You still haven’t told me why the fuck you would kill a man you were madly in love with?”

I stared at him, gaze steady. “Do you really want to know, Badr? Because I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything right here, right now, and rip away everything you thought you knew about the world and the people you love.

“This moment will mark the end for you,” I said. “The end of blissful ignorance. When it’s gone, you’ll never get it back, but you’ll always wish you could.”

“What the fuck are you blathering about!” He kicked more dirt in the hole. “Tell me why you killed my brother!”

“Because he asked me to!”

“What?” Badr rocked back. Feet slipping on the loose dirt, he dropped flat on his ass. “What did you say?”

“You heard me. I killed Castor because he asked me to. He begged me to,” I shouted, wetness leaking from my eyes. “Even though he knew it would tear me apart. That I would break into a million pieces and never be the same again—he made me promise to do the worst thing I’ve ever done, and for that, I will hate him... and myself... for the rest of my life.”

“No. No, no, no,” he cried, tearing at his hair. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Castor make you do that?”

“Badr, you think you want to know the whole truth, but believe me, you’re better off—”

“TELL ME!”

The bellow resounded in my chest, blowing my ears back. You don’t have a choice anymore. He needs to know. They all need to know. You can’t protect them from this anymore.

“Okay, Badr. Okay.” I dropped my aching head back on the dirt wall, breathing deep. “Castor asked me to kill him because he was already dying. Because he’d already been... murdered.”

“What? What does that—?”

I held up a hand, and shockingly Badr went quiet. This would be hard enough to get out without him interrupting me.

Lips parting, I began, “Two years ago, Luame sent me a vision. She’d never done that before. She hadn’t done it in centuries, but what’s coming was so bad, she needed me to see.”

“See what?” he rasped when I lapsed into silence.

I smiled mirthlessly. “She needed me to see the Golden Age of Wolves. Because it happens, Badr. Everything that was prophesied and dreamed of when I was born with her mark on my stomach. When I make history and mate with two sun wolves, an earth wolf, a water wolf, a fire wolf, and a wind wolf. The new generations and the powers they’ll have will be... astounding.

“The wolves born from moon and wind—me and Edric—will have the power of invisibility. Not on one night of the month like me, but every day and anytime. The moon and water wolves will have the power of drought. They’ll be able to suck the water out of anything—oceans, plants, people—and leave them nothing but a dried-up, desiccated husk.”

Badr’s eyes widened with every word.

“The moon and fire wolves will move through fire.”

“Move through fire?”

“Like teleporting,” I explained, “but through flames. It’s an amazing power, Badr, because there’s always a flame burning somewhere. With a thought, they’ll travel across an ocean and appear in the glow of an enemy’s candlelight.

“Although, the moon and earth wolves will have amazing power too,” I cried. “Transmutation. The power to turn one element into another. Stone into water. Water into fire. Lead into gold.”

“Gold?” He shook his head roughly. “No. No! What you’re saying is impossible—”

“And I’m not even finished,” I broke in. “Because I haven’t gotten to the moon and sun wolves. The one who’ll have the power of solar energy absorption. As long as the sun shines on them, they’re unstoppable. Stronger, faster—fucking hell, probably taller too. The sun is their fuel.”

“Okay,” he drew out. “But even if all of that is true, how does that lead to my brother murdered?”

“Because the vision wasn’t done yet. Want to know what’s even better than wolves having those powers?”

He frowned. “What? I don’t know. Nothing.”

“Something,” I whispered. “What’s better than having one of those powers... is having all of them.”

“All right, sure, that would be better but that’s impossible—”

“Impossible,” I said at the same time as him. “Badr, it’s really going to help you out if for the rest of this conversation, you let go of your idea of what’s possible and what’s impossible.”

His frown deepened, but slowly, he nodded. “So you’re saying we create a clan that has the power of all six of us.”

“Sure, we create them. We give birth to them.”

Badr’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.

“It won’t matter who the biological father is. The bonds between us will be so strong, so powerful, that in every way that matters, our children will be born from all of us. And they’ll have all of our power.”

“My gods,” he breathed. If he wasn’t already sitting, he’d have fallen over. “How? There’s a reason we all—wolves and demigods—only have one. So much power in one person, they couldn’t survive.”

“And our children wouldn’t have survived either, except for one more gift given to them by Luame—immortality.”

“Immortality?” he cried.

“Yes.”

“Immortals?!”

“Yes.”

“No!” He shot up. “Now I know you’re lying! Immortality is a curse on those dead leeches,” he said, speaking of the vampires. “It’s not a gift from a god.”

“Badr, we haven’t gotten to the part where you’re going to want to jump around shouting and cursing, so save this reaction for when it counts!”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that all of these amazing powers will be great for our kids—for every wolf’s future child—but you know who benefits shit-all? All of us who’ve already been born.”

“Yeah?” he cried, throwing up his hands. “So?”

“Think about it, Badr. Think! ”

“Think about what? If you’ve got something to say, just say it.”

I blew out a hard breath, clenching my fists. It wasn’t him I was frustrated with. I just didn’t want to speak this vision. I never wanted to talk about it again, because the last time I did, I lost everything.

“But you have to know,” I whispered. “You have to know that in the vision there was a shadow. A person—dark and dangerous—who’ll lurk on the edges of this war, pulling the strings of our destruction. A person that I can’t see. That I don’t think even Luame can see. And that person is the one who’ll do it.

“They’re the ones who’ll steal our babies’ powers and give them to the highest bidders.”

Thud!