Chapter 10 Under the Light of the Full Moon
Chapter ten
Under the Light of the Full Moon
Morning light danced dark pink behind my eyelids.
I groaned and rolled onto my front.
My head pounded.
Hangover.
It was as bad as wolfsbane.
I groaned loudly, holding my pillow against my face.
It was the full moon. I felt the pull like a tugging on my bones, like I might be turned inside out. My head ached with the pulsing of my heart.
What time was it?
Early? No, late? Late morning, I decided, trusting my internal clock.
I rolled onto my back and opened my eyes. I was on top of the covers, wearing the same clothes I had been wearing the night before.
I brushed my bottom lip with my finger, remembering the kiss.
What was I thinking last night? Why did I drink so much?
But the kiss.
My mind brought me back, over and over against my will, to the memory of the feel of her hand in my hair, the taste of her—
No.
I had to stop thinking about it. It was a drunken mistake, and Cole had cut it off, storming out of the room. She was playing with me, drugging me with pheromones, and using me.
I got up and made my way to the bathroom to wash off the previous night, to forget it like the bad dream it was.
I didn’t have any housekeeping duties at the Pack House because of the full moon.
The full moon. I growled.
I dressed in grey cotton joggers and a long-sleeved white top, pulling my hair back in a high ponytail. I wasn’t concerned with my appearance, not when I felt so horrible, not when I could be dead and torn apart by the end of the night.
Shifting meant less control, more emotion and action. I wasn’t safe being in my wolf form with others. It was tempting fate, begging for punishment. Cole had to know that.
The kiss.
I stopped adjusting my hair to feel better positioned when the thought struck me: she wanted the excuse of the full moon to do with me whatever she wanted.
I wasn’t just going to allow myself to be handed back to Ashford in five weeks like a used toy.
Downstairs, I found Cole in the kitchen, making coffee. It was the first time I had seen Cole in the kitchen. She avoided this room like it was dangerous.
“You’re awake,” she said, with her hands around a mug of coffee, where she sat at the round little table placed in the corner between two tall windows, natural light framing her like a halo.
“Wolfsbane. I need it,” I said.
Cole sipped her coffee and looked me over.
“You need to stop this game now, Cole,” I told her.
She set the mug down.
“This isn’t a game. At sunset, you will shift as you are meant to,” she said.
I marched to the table.
“Wolfsbane prevents the shift and is perfectly safe. It’s been used since records began,” I countered.
“It’s meant to be used sparingly,” Cole said.
“I spoke with the Pack physician, and it is not perfectly safe to use continuously for years without any breaks. The risks are well documented. Chronic suppression affects your mood, anxiety, depression, emotional blunting, and insomnia. It impacts your fertility significantly; do you want children one day? It puts you at risk of hypertension, stroke, and arrhythmias. It affects your instincts, reflexes, memory, and your sense of smell! It makes you physically weaker; your muscles, joints, bones, and immune function are all impaired,” she listed off, one after another like a reprimanding schoolteacher, her coffee forgotten about.
“I don’t care!” I shouted.
“I do,” she said.
“No, you don’t!” I continued angrily. “You don’t even know me. All you want from me is my body. Just another alpha wanting to get your claws in me.”
Cole stood, her chair hitting the wall behind her.
“You’re mine,” she said, like a warning. “If I wanted to have you, I would,” she told me.
“Like last night?” I challenged.
“Last night was a mistake. It won’t happen again,” she answered.
The words made my headache pulse painfully. I was offended and shocked by my own reaction.
“Harriet,” she said softly, and it made me feel sick, like I might actually throw up, the way I knew she saw me. “I understand you’re scared to shift tonight—”
“You don’t know anything,” I said and swallowed past the lump forming in my throat, trying to ignore the tightness in my chest.
I couldn’t do it again. The event itself wasn’t the worst of it; it was the realisation that everything was ending.
The fear of the void; the darkness that creeps in with the cold, and if that fear subsides and the coldness recedes in its place, is scorching pain.
The kind that rips the air from you in screams that char your throat on the way out.
“The scars, they’re from your first shift?” she asked.
“Don’t,” I warned.
Cole nodded.
“You will shift tonight, and I promise I will not allow any harm to come to you. We will shift together, away from the rest of the pack. I’ve already picked out a location and given instructions to the wardens not to allow anyone to wander too close to us,” she told me.
“You want me alone,” I accused.
“Yes, but not like you’re insinuating. I won’t tolerate any more arguments about it. Sit down. I’ve ordered breakfast.”
***
Cole didn’t let me out of her sight for the rest of the day. I used the bathroom, and she was waiting in the hallway for me. It was like she thought I was going to run away.
What would be the point? I was going to shift whether I wanted to or not without access to wolfsbane. I couldn’t run from the full moon.
As morning became late afternoon, we left the house and took Cole’s car on the short drive to the car park of the privately managed forest of Lucian Hill.
There were only a couple of other cars already parked.
I got out as Cole opened the boot and shouldered a rucksack of supplies.
“Let’s go. We’ve only got a few hours before the moon rises,” she instructed, and I followed her dutifully into the forest.
We walked silently for a while. My hangover had subsided a lot and was quickly being replaced by the full moon pull. Something I had only experienced once before.
It was gradual at first, like the light seeming to last longer than it should, like the colours of the forest being slightly sharper, the smells more defined.
The wind changed direction, and the scent of Cole drifted to me. It wasn’t as intense as the previous night.
I involuntarily remembered the kiss. But her scent was warmer, sharper, a little wild.
“How are you feeling?” Cole asked ahead of me.
“Fine,” I answered.
She looked over her shoulder, her dark eyes meeting mine, and I tripped over a root, stumbling forward.
Cole turned to catch me.
She was warm, wearing only a basic T-shirt. I gripped hold of her bare arms.
“You’re hot,” she said to me, and I was momentarily taken aback until she continued. “Full moon pull increases internal body temperature. Are you experiencing other side effects?” she asked.
I pushed myself away from her.
“Are you?” I asked, unable to help how childish I sounded. I didn’t want to be out there, closer and closer to shifting, and I didn’t want to speak, to talk about or acknowledge what was happening.
“Yes,” she answered. “Scent is the worst distraction for me. It’s our wolf’s sense coming to the front,” she said and stepped forward. “I know it’s only natural that my sense wouldn’t be focused on you, to keep you safe, but puppy, you need to learn to control your pheromones,” she told me.
“I didn’t realise—” I began, feeling my cheeks heat with embarrassment.
“That excuse is no longer valid,” she interrupted me.
I stepped back. She followed me.
“It’s never been a problem before now,” I complained. It wasn’t my fault. “It’s your fault.”
She smiled, a knowing, obnoxious grin.
“You can’t control yourself around me, is that your excuse?” she asked.
“It means you’re doing something,” I defended myself.
I backed against a tree.
Cole leaned her elbow against the tree above my head.
“How could I possibly be turning you on? I haven’t said a word, haven’t even looked at you,” she challenged, and I squirmed under her steady gaze, hating her stupid, perfect smile.
I was breathing her in again.
I ducked under her arm and out of her trap.
“It’s your scent. It sets mine off or something. You’re doing this. Not me,” I told her.
Cole growled.
I stepped back; her eyes locked on me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.
The question was like the starting buzzer to a sprinter.
I turned and ran.
Cole followed.
She was fast, but she carried the backpack, and I was smaller and able to zig-zag between the trees faster.
Until I fell, struck down with a force like a chisel cracking open my spine.
The shift. I recognised after the first wave of white-hot pain had rippled down my spine.
Quickly, I tore my top from my body and managed to kick off my sneakers before the next strike of pain tore through me. My left shoulder dislocated with an audible pop. I screamed until the wave passed. I managed with my one good arm to push my joggers down my thighs.
My spine contorted, my hip cracked, my jaw ached, and I tasted blood.
Bone and muscle contorted, my jaw widened, elongated. I opened my closed fists, pulling claws from the palms of my hands, creating streams of red.
Each wave crashed upon me, no space between one ending and another starting, until they ran into each other, and I didn’t know where one ended and the other began, and I thought I might stay suspended in the pain forever, until, as unexpectedly as it had started, it ended.
I pushed myself up on shaking legs and stared at paws and fur.
It had been so long since I had last been in my wolf that I had forgotten what it felt like.
The crunching of forest litter distracted me from my own paws, and I turned.
Cole stepped out from behind a large fir.
My breath caught in my chest.
Oh.
I had never seen a more magnificent sight.
She was easily twice my size and radiated power. Her coat was grey and white, her eyes were unchanged, the deepest of browns, with flecks of gold that reflected every shade the forest offered.
Cole was perfect, now that I could see, now that I was actually looking.
Strong, powerful, mine.
Mine.
The outrageous thought flooded my mind. It was all-consuming. It was undeniably true.
If there really was a Goddess, she had a cruel sense of humour.
Cole broke our silent stare first, lowering her head and producing an angered growl.
Of course. Cole would be enraged.
I saw everything clearly in a split second. Remembered the previous night with frightening clarity.
How Darren’s status had forced her into the position of Alpha Heir, that she ended a long-term relationship and engagement for.
And here I was, causing another problem. Only this was a problem that could be fixed… by getting rid of me.
I was running again.
This time faster. So much faster.
Faster than even the night of my first shift.
At first, I could hear the thud of paws against the earth as Cole gave chase, could smell her angry scent, carried by the howling wind at my rear, until I realised I could no longer hear or smell her.
I didn’t slow down to check. I wouldn’t risk it. Couldn’t.
I ran blindly. I didn’t know the land or where I was. All I knew was that so long as I was a moving target, I had a better chance of survival.
As I careened through bushes, I was greeted by Cole waiting, shoulders hunched and head down, eyes focused expectantly, a growl rumbling low. Like she had known exactly where I would end up and was waiting for me.
Trying to stop my run, I began to skid uncontrollably towards Cole. My limbs twisted, and I was no longer skidding but tumbling, disoriented, before I collided with what I thought had been a tree trunk, given how still it was despite the force with which we collided.
I shook my head, trying to regain my senses. I looked up. Cole.
She had not wavered on impact; strong and solid.
She prodded at me, roughly with her snout, and I realised she was encouraging me to untangle myself.
I was prone, with Cole’s front paws at my sides, pinning me in place.
I made a sound similar to a groan when I lifted a paw to try to scramble away, but a loud warning growl stilled my movements.
No.
This was it. I was going to die. Torn apart by my true mate.
I waited for the searing pain of teeth ripping into my flesh.
I hoped it would be over quickly.
But nothing.
Cole did not attack me, but when I tried to move, to get up, she shoved me back down, keeping me pinned beneath her for the whole night until the moon set and I felt the familiar chisel strike between my shoulder blades.
Shifting back to my human form was as painful as shifting into my wolf form.
I lay on the cold, hard ground and hugged myself, small.
I hated the silent tears that ran warm paths across and over my cheeks, dampening the ground.
This wasn’t fair.
True mates were rare; they had almost a fairy-tale status.
It wasn’t meant to be like this.
I curled further into myself. I didn’t care that Cole had to be next to me, seeing me, naked and crying on the forest floor.
I didn’t want to care about anything anymore.
A cry that sounded like a howl tore through me when I was lifted from the ground.
Cole was warmth to my coldness. I didn’t care that she was as naked as me. I pressed myself tighter to her, skin to skin, chest to chest, greedily stealing her heat, needing it.
She placed me down gently beside the backpack, then turned away without looking at me and opened it, pulling out its contents.
I hugged my knees to my chest and watched as she dressed in the spare clothes she had packed. She turned to me once she was dressed, looking at me.
I didn’t look away. Only held myself tighter.
She had a large wool jumper in her hands, with the side rolled up, crouched down in front of me, and pulled it over my head.
“Arms,” she instructed, and I followed the command, allowing her to dress me.
She helped me to stand and assisted with a new pair of sweatpants and sneakers.
After I was dressed, she shouldered the backpack and walked wordlessly to me.
I stepped back, my legs shaking with exhaustion.
Cole didn’t hesitate; she lifted me easily and began carrying me back to the car park.
The silence was heavy, but I had nothing to say.
Nothing that could be said could change what had happened. Under the light of the full moon, a true mate bond was revealed.