*Isla*
The Temple of the Moon Goddess rises above the city like a silver fortress, glinting in the soft spring sunlight. It’s a gorgeous day, not a single cloud in the sky. A warm breeze rustles the wildflowers that are just starting to bloom on the sloping green hills surrounding the temple.
I stand with Madeline on the marble steps, looking out over the kingdom. Our kingdom, me, and my soon to be daughter-in-law, the future Luna.
The heir to my title.
Standing beside me with her hair pulled back away from her face and wearing a sleeveless shirt, I notice little scars along her shoulder and arms, and feel a sudden urge to reach out and touch her. Guilt washes over me as I take her in, the slightness of her body, the way her eyes always seem lined with grief–and suspicion. I don’t know all of what she’s been through, but I feel like it’s partly my fault.
“She’s ready for you.” A temple attendant in a white and silver robe appears behind us.
I turn to the woman, who is not even sixteen, as she nods and motions for us to follow her into the temple. Madeline walks beside me, keeping in step, but her eyes wander back and forth until she tilts her head toward the ceiling, where a glass dome gives us a view of the crystal blue sky.
“Impressive, isn’t it? It’s one of the oldest buildings here.” I smile in her direction.
She drops her gaze to the temple attendant, the young woman’s fabric slippers totally silent on the marble floor. “How many people work here?”
“Oh, I have no idea,” I breathe, still smiling. “A lot, I believe. The attendants, like her, come here very young for training. The temple has a school, one of the best in our kingdom, in fact, and just for women. Some attendants decide to stay as priestesses; others follow different paths.” The attendant leads us around a corner where marble columns reach up to the domed ceiling several stories above our heads.
“This is where Isaac and I are getting married?” She looks a little apprehensive.
“I know it’s a lot. I would have liked to use the castle for the wedding, but Maddox and Isaac agreed that the temple would be a better place. There will be Alphas here, many of them, to witness the ceremony.”
She nods, her face flushed of color. I take a deep breath, my fingers curling into my palms. Maybe I should have let Isaac and Madeline marry in secret like they’d planned. Now, it’s become a spectacle, especially with the armies starting to funnel into the city in preparation to travel to Moorn.
I’ve never felt electricity in the air like I do now. The arrival of the warriors from the farthest reaching packs of our kingdom has created a sense of mingled unease and excitement in our people, and it’s impossible to ignore.
But here, in the temple, it’s silent.
A set of massive silver painted doors open for us, and we’re led into a circular room.
A very tall, very lean woman roughly twenty years older than myself stands in the center of the room, leaning over a large bowl of water resting on a stone platform. She straightens up as we approach and nods to me in greeting. “Luna Isla, it’s been such a long time.”
“Olympia,” I say gracefully, bobbing my head in greeting. Rushed footsteps behind us alert us all to my daughter's presence, late as it may be. Ella skids to a stop next to me, panting, her cheeks and jaw speckled with paint. “My daughters, Madeline and Ella.”
Madeline goes rigid beside me in surprise at the way I introduced her.
“Ella, my darling. Look how you’ve grown!” Olympia crosses toward us like she’s floating on air and plants a kiss on each of Ella’s cheeks. Then she turns to Madeline, inspecting her face, Olympia’s violet eyes glowing in the silvery light spilling from circular windows that split the ceiling. “You must be the new Luna.” She tilts her head, her eyes still focused on Maddy with interest. “I can sense it on you.”
“Sense what?” Ella asks, her voice still a bit shaky and choked from screaming herself ragged last night.
Olympia pulls away from Maddy with a soft, good-natured smile. “A queen,” she says, her smile widening. “Come, I want to show you something.” Taking Maddy by the shoulder, she leads her to the bowl of water illuminated by the sunlight spilling down on us.
Ella and I hang back and watch, just out of earshot.
“How are you feeling?” I ask Ella quietly, having to look up at her. She’s taller than I am, having inherited her father’s height, but she only has a few inches on me.
“Rough,” she says in a low, slightly irritated voice. She reaches down and plucks a rogue flower petal from her shirt. Maddy and I had left her behind during our climb to the temple. Ella had simply walked off the steps and onto the grassy hill to examine the spring flowers. I knew her pockets were likely stuffed with petals she meant to color match. She’d done so since she was a child. “I’m exhausted.”
“You could have gone back to bed.” I shrug.
“I needed to paint before the dream faded away.”
“What did you see?” I never ask her right away, not when she’s in the throws of that extreme focus after her nightmares. Maddox calls it tunnel vision. I call it mania. But whatever it is, it’s the only moment she has to unravel whatever secrets are hidden in those dreams, those visions.
“I’m not really sure. I saw… pain. Hatred, fear, and pain. Like… Like someone was being tortured. I couldn’t make sense of it. My studio is more a mess now than it usually is.”
We stand in silence for a moment, watching the High Priestess bless Maddy with Moon Water. Maddy stands stock still, her eyes wide open as Olympia traces the moon cycle over her forehead.
Ella fidgets with the necklace she always wears, the one given to her by Mystica before she was ever born. Her fingers graze over the strange symbols that cover it, and her eyes are fixed on the glassy bowl of water as she says, “I feel like something is going to happen. Something… bad.”
“The war is at our doorstep, honey,” I whisper, my stomach twisting into a knot.”
“No, not about that. I feel like something is going to happen to me.”
I turn and look at my daughter. Headstrong and brave, if she had been born first, she would have been the Alpha. And an Alpha she would have been. Eastonia would have been crawling on hands and feet for her forgiveness by now.
But now she looks like a child–innocent, and scared. It breaks my heart.
“We’re going to figure this out,” I whisper as Olympia turns back to us, her hands resting on Maddy’s rigid shoulders.
“She’s had the blessing. She’ll be ready for the ceremony tomorrow as she ascends as the Luna. Now, what was the other topic you mentioned?”
“Her wolf.” I step forward, knitting my fingers behind my back. “Maddy, will you explain?”
Maddy swallows hard, her throat bobbing. “I was able to shift once, and never again. I don’t feel it anymore, not even an urge when I’m… needing to defend myself, or in pain.”
Again, I’m rocked with sudden guilt and a pinch of anger.
If she is who I think she might be, she was never safe, and I could have done more to give her a better life.
I plan on finding out the truth very soon.
“I've been severely underweight and–abused.” She swallows the words, not looking any of us in the eyes. “I’ve been weak, but even now that I have food and shelter and–and love, I can’t shift. I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything.” She pauses, something flickering in her eyes for the briefest of moments before she shakes her head and purses her lips.
Olympia frowns in concentration. “I’ve never heard of that happening. Isla, what do you think?”
“My initial belief is her trauma may be overwhelming her Goddess given powers.”
Olympia nods, turning a circle around Maddy. “True, but it would have taken something incredibly dire for her to lose her wolf entirely. I don’t even pick up a scent.”
I’d noticed that as well.
“There’s one myth I can recall,” Olympia says after a moment. “A mortal wolf who fell in love with one of the early Gods. They were fated mates, her soul destined to bind with his since the moment of her conception. But once in his presence, his powers overwhelmed her own, and she no longer had her wolf.”
I narrow my eyes. Ella shifts her weight beside me, crossing her arms under her chest. She glances over at me with a smug look on her face. “Isaac isn’t a God, even if he thinks he is.”
I choke back a laugh and try desperately to keep my face neutral.
Maddy, however, perks up. “Overwhelm my powers?”
“Well, if that’s the case. But this is only a myth, you see. We don’t know very much about the old time when the Moon Goddess still walked among our kind, but there’s something to be said about the mate bond and its ability to cause changes within a person's ability to shift. Most people are equals in their powers.” Olympia turned to me. “Are they mates, by chance?”
Maddy blushes crimson, and Ella’s brows shoot up.
“Olympia,” I say as kindly as possible. “You were the one who told my son he wouldn’t find his mate.”
“That’s what I saw, yes. But, could his mate have found him, instead?”
I sigh deeply, looking from Olympia to Maddy, who must be reeling right now. I like the High Priestess. I’d been the Luna when she rose to power only a decade ago, shortly before Isaac came into his wolf early. But she is a very blunt, somewhat aloof woman. Her powers of the divine, and ability to interpret the ancient scripts and teachings of the Goddess, are legendary, however.
“Are you saying you may have been wrong?”
“I’m saying, and you will know this well, that visions are sometimes only half truths.”
“We’re not mates,” Maddy says suddenly, sheepishly, her eyes downcast. “We would–we would know by now.”
Olympia purses her lips and nods, understanding clearly what she means.
I think I understand as well, and my cheeks go pink. It’s none of my business, although I am pleased the two of them are happy together.
“I advise giving her more time, but having her train with a warrior. Someone skilled in feeling those first flickers of transformation may help. Oh, what about mindlink? Are you able to communicate–”
“No,” Maddy cuts in, shaking her head.
“I think that’s enough for now, High Priestess,” I say quickly, noticing Maddy starting to withdraw. “We will see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, I’m looking forward to it.” Olympia gives us all a nod in farewell and motions toward the door.
I take Ella and Maddy by the shoulders and lead them out of the room and back into the main area of the temple.
Ella whirls on me and Maddy, her face alight with excitement. “That’s it, isn’t it? They’re mates. Isaac’s weird powers are the reason she doesn’t have a wolf anymore.”
“First of all, his powers aren’t weird, Ella,” I scold, giving her a motherly look of disapproval. “Secondly, if neither of them can feel a mate bond–”
“But you had a dream about his mate,” Ella says rapidly.
Maddy looks at us, her eyes shining in the sunlight. But then I realize she’s not looking at us. No, she’s looking past us, her eyes transfixed on the far side of the room where the sunlight is broken by jagged shadows.
I nearly faint as the elderly woman smiles at us, nodding her head, before she turns and walks into the shadow.
“Mystica,” I mouth, confused, then turn to Maddy, who is pale in the face and staring right where I’m sure I just saw a ghost. “Did you see her too?”
“Who?” Ella asks, looking around suspiciously.
Maddy looks at me. “Who is she?”
“I–”
“Queen Isla.” One of our guards comes into the hall. “Your visitors have arrived at the castle. Early.”
“Oh, good Goddess.” I run my hand over my face and turn to the girls. Maddy is still pale, but I lay a hand on her arm and tell her we’ll talk later. Right now, we need to return home.
Home, where the answers I seek about Maddy, and Isaac, and whether or not a vision I had long ago has just come to fruition.