Fated Moon Mate (Rejected and Fated Mate #5)

Chapter 1

FEYRA

I knew that it would always be me to kill her.

I swiped at the energy ball racing towards me, and it bounced into the stone wall; an explosion of bricks and tattered paintings rained against my Lycan body.

Lady Skol screamed in anger and the full moon staring through the broken wall was alive in the sunset sky.

I was certain of it now.

I roared back, flexing my muscles. I pounded forward on my paws and leaped at her. Lady Skol brought her hands up too slowly to cast a spell. I slashed her belly, and blood bloomed in a waterfall of death.

I landed with a skid and turned. Her scream echoed into my soul, faltering my perception. My wolf whined.

I was heaving for oxygen. I had to kill her now.

But she was gone.

Laughter filled the room; the walls began shrinking and closing in. Lady Skol’s eyes danced in my mind, and I could already feel the wall at my hind legs. I ran to the wall that had been decimated with the energy ball, but it was fixed!

I shifted and ran to the door, but it was locked now. The door I’d splintered open as a wolf…

Lady Skol continued to laugh. The walls continued to close in. Shit shit shit. I ripped the pendant from around my neck and held it in my hand. I was going to be crushed–

I jerked awake.

I had fallen asleep in the Hall of Order, waiting for my turn to declare my blood status. I looked around, wiping the drool with my sleeve. Had anyone seen? Had I been talking in my sleep?

I couldn’t be a wolf in real life, but I could in my dreams. Dreams that felt so real I could swear–

They called a name. It was my name. I jumped from the bench, running to the designated monk that would take my details.

“Presumed dormant?” he asked a moment later. He rolled his eyes in disbelief. “You definitely can’t shift?”

I nodded.

The monk laughed, shaking his head at his papers, and continued filling them out. His bald head shone like a lamp.

I clutched my locket under my dress, the only thing I had from my parents—I had been clutching it in the dream…

I had just turned twenty-one, and still no change had come over me.

As a citizen of Lady Skol’s Lassig, I should’ve felt relieved.

It was illegal to be a shifter or werewolf now, and I’d no longer be watched or have to do regular blood tests. ..

But I was gutted. I couldn’t shift.

“Here you go,” the monk said. He handed me a new card and I sat there reading it as a thousand voices were severed away inside me. Shifter status - Non-existent. Lassig citizenship class - Poor. Occupation - Herbalist.

I tried to hold back the tears, but shame descended into my belly and I felt like I’d let my parents down. Again there were those voices. My parents' locket clutched in my hand even more tightly.

I should be happy. I should be–

“Take that to Citizenship Processing in thirty days, and you’ll no longer have to worry about the mark against your name. We’ll reassign you a role in Outer Lassig and you’ll be moved to–”

“What? But I have a job. I live with my Aunt–”

“Until then,” the monk said. “You’ll still have to submit blood tests.” His eyes flashed with happiness.

“But I shouldn’t have to do that anymore…” I looked down at my lap, throttling the locket in my hand.

The monk laughed. “Some of your lot shift later. Still got a full moon to come.” He tapped the calendar on his desk then folded his arms. He gestured with his head for me to go. Like I was some dog.

I wanted to growl my hatred at him, but it would only make things worse. If I was going to have to argue to keep my position working for Aunty then I couldn’t cause any trouble.

The line leading out the doors was full of people in the same position as me. All with the inability to shift. I would only breathe easy once outside the inner walls of Lassig anyway. Our lot were technically banned.

“Sorry ‘bout the status kid.”

The hairs on the back of my neck shot up and I stumbled to a stop. I gulped, and despite every fiber in my body telling me not to, I turned ever so slightly to see who had spoken.

A man stood near the door, leaning against the wall with his enormous arms folded. He was like a brick storehouse. He wore robes that weren’t of the city, I could only imagine where he was from—the fang hanging around his neck marked him as—A shifter within the walls!

I had only heard rumors that shifters wore fangs though. I should alert the guards. I should—but I didn’t want to. How had he gotten in? How had he heard about my status? I would’ve been almost fifteen feet away from him at the desk when it was read.

A shiver unfurled in my brain and zipped down my spine.

He smiled. “Time to get going, kid.”

Not a question, a command.

I faltered for a second, and his smile was a wolf’s grin. The voices that had felt cut away began trickling back.

Go.

It echoed in my head. I grabbed the handle and opened the door. I was moving without thinking. Then I heard the screams.

I turned and the man was gone. In his place was an enormous wolf stalking forward. Inspectors and guards ran forward, screaming for the shifter to change back. Sirens began blaring around me. My ears screamed in pain and I fell to my knees, gripping my head.

The first guard to meet the werewolf was swiped sideways and thrown meters into the air, blood flowing in spurts. The next was practically cut in half and fell away from the wolf. He stalked forward as guards flooded in at him.

Move kid.

The voice kicked me upside the head and I began crawling. What the hell was going on? More guards and inspectors met the werewolf stalking forward, all of them falling easily at his swipes with moaning screams.

Then I was on my feet, running away from the hall and fighting the throng of people trying to escape with me.

My blood was pumping and body heating up like a furnace.

Guards flooded down the narrow passageway at the back of the building.

They screamed for people to calm down, but were then drowned out by the roaring wolf inside.

I stopped when I could only hear the ringing in my ears from the sirens back in the hall. I felt sick like I was going to vomit. What had happened in there? The blood…The screaming…the wolf.

Then a voice screamed in my mind, rebounding off my skull. The wolves will rise again! Then I was off running again.

By the time I reached Aunt Teetee’s half an hour later I was soaking with sweat and out of breath.

I hadn’t stopped running since the Inner City.

Between the market stalls of Outer Lassig his voice followed me.

His screaming still echoing out from the hall and into my head.

Inside my head. I’d ripped the locket from around my neck and clutched it in my hand as I ran.

I collapsed onto Aunt Teetee’s bench that hung into the street, the smell of lavender intoxicating and strong. The voice kept repeating. The wolves will rise again! Of course he’d heard my status if he was a werewolf. But it was like he’d spoken to my soul.

I opened my fist and looked at the paw shaped pendant. It had been laid on my chest when I was left at Aunt Teetee’s step. It was the only thing left from my parents. They were, as far as Teetee had been able to tell me, dead.

I didn’t open the pendant though, I didn’t have to. The words inside were seared into my brain, Our little cub. If I was meant to be a shifter, if my parents had expected me to be one, then I certainly had shown any sign of it.

And today of all days had only cemented that.

I stood, straightening my linen dress, and shoved the locket into the pocket.

I should be happy. Aunty would want me to be happy.

This meant less stress for me and her. I looked at myself in her window and smiled.

My hair and eyes would just remain sandy brown and never tinge like those of the wolves.

I took the letters out of the mailbox and entered the house.

“Where you been?” Aunt Teetee called as I entered, the smells of the herb garden wafting through from the back pulled me in. “How’d it go?”

How did having your dreams crushed normally go? I shrugged, not saying anything. I leafed through the mail in the hallway. She began chatting about her day and I looked at the letters one by one. Most were correspondence for Aunty Teetee or orders for medicines.

But then there was one for me.

I entered the kitchen and sat down, turning the letter over in my hands. Feyra. There was a wax paw print in the corner.

My lungs practically burst from the shock of my breath catching. My hands began to shake like leaves in the wind. I knew that shape.

“Feyra?” Aunt Teetee turned. “Fey–”

She looked down at the letter in my hands. I looked up and saw the realization on her face. “Where’d you get that?” she asked.

“I–” but Aunt Teetee snatched for it and I slid away, standing from the seat. “What is this?” I said, keeping my distance.

“It doesn’t matter,” Aunt Teetee edged along. “It’s better you don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?” I demanded. I knew this shape in the wax…

Aunt Teetee was circling around, edging me away from the door. I noticed and darted off, not giving her the chance to lock the backdoor.

“Feyra!” she called. “Don’t run!”

But I did. I ran with the letter and its paw shaped wax in one hand, and my paw shaped pendant in the other. The pendant I knew that had been used to create the seal.

I ran through Aunt Teetee’s garden, jumped over the rear fence, and sprinted down the run behind the houses. I was sure of what the embossed edges were on the pendant now.

My parents’ locket was—my heart slammed into my chest and I stopped. My locket was my parents’ seal. I brought shaking hands together and fit the pendant into the wax seal.

It fit perfectly.

Aunt Teetee’s calling brought me back to reality. I snapped out of it and continued running.

The streets of Outer Lassig passed quickly as I headed for the outer wall, dodging the carts, men, and horses, the clanging of the blacksmiths tolling like bells of fate. The horses whinnied at me as I ran.

The cobbles ended and the dirt streets began, yet I didn’t stop. I ran with the spirit of something stronger in me. Something feeding me power. I pushed on until the view of the wall began climbing in front of me.

Then I cut into the rows of corn growing, slithered through a diagonal strip for watering and came out in the shadow of the giant wall itself.

I squeezed between the wooden rails and began climbing the stairs to the guards walk.

I moved sideways through the fissure in the wall and climbed up the hidden trail.

Within moments I was in my hiding place.

I was heaving with breaths that had nothing to do with the running. I looked back at the view of Lassig, with its waterfall falling out of the cliff shining in the sun. The great castle Lady Skol had stolen shone in the foreground of it all. Then I turned and looked out at the Warlands.

I pressed the paw into the wax seal one last time. I didn’t give myself time to hesitate, I ripped the letter open.

Feyra, my daughter…

I fell to my knees.