Brie
I open my eyes as I’m falling through thin air. I don’t even have time to scream before my body drops into water. Deep, rough water that drags me under the second I suck in a salty breath. I flail against the waves, trying to find the surface, but the undercurrent drags me down again, pulling me by my dress and tossing me upside down.
My head hits something hard, and I screech, but the sound is empty. I suck in water, choking, and realize quite suddenly that I’m drowning.
I go as still as possible, using the last of my energy to start moving with the current instead of against it, which turns out to be the best idea I’ve ever had, especially under duress. I open my eyes underwater, staring down at the shallows. It’s sunny. Daytime. And below, seaweed waves between large, gray rocks. Pockets of sunshine dance through the water, illuminating seashells in shades I’ve never seen before.
Another wave crashes over the top of me, sending me rolling into even shallower water, and finally, I’m able to breach the surface.
I suck in a desperate breath as waves continue crashing into my back, over the top of my head, but I fight against the current and stand. I’m pushed down, my knees biting into the rocks and coarse sand, but I keep moving. Each step takes an enormous amount of my energy. I blink into the sunlight, into the sky blotted with dark, gray clouds moving against a stiff breeze, and force myself to keep going.
After several minutes fighting through the shallows, I reach the beach.
I fall to my knees in pure exhaustion, ignoring the waves pressing into me and trying to pull me back out again. I crawl on my hands and knees, sputtering water, sniffling as blood drips down my forehead and neck from a cut to my hairline.
I can’t hear much of anything. The sound of waves crashing along the shore is blurred and warped, but a single touch to my ear informs me that they are both bleeding. I stare at the crimson streaks on my fingertips, and my chest convulses.
I wobble to my feet, soaking wet and covered in sand. Swaying, I blink at the unfamiliar shoreline. It’s rocky, barren, and nothing more than a blackened cliff like whatever was atop it was scorched long ago, and nature never took it back.
I brace my hands on my knees and pant, trying to catch my breath. I glance down the beach, sniffling and reaching up to wipe blood from my cheeks and lips.
I’m alone.
I look along the shoreline, whirling as the sudden realization strikes me like a dagger to the chest. “Logan?” I croak, whirling back around. “Maeve? LOGAN?!”
My voice echoes against the cliff, bouncing down the barren beach.
“MAEVE!” I scream, turning to the water. “LOGAN!!!”
A large, funneling storm rages in the distance. Water spouts dance along waves. I can hear the thunder, see the lightning from where I stand but… there’s no one else in the water.
“LOGAN!” I scream again, but his name cracks into pieces as I fall to my knees in the sand and weep.
“No,” I mumble, shaking my head. “No, no, no–”
A sharp shout breaks across the shoreline, followed by several others. I look in their direction, trembling uncontrollably as dark shadows move across the beach in my direction. Five wolves, their leader at the front of the charge. They’re all a dark brownish black.
I should… I’m not sure. Prepare to fight? Defend myself? Plead for help?
My body and brain are still hazy from the herbs. My jaw goes slack, whatever words I had for the wolves now padding in my direction, their ears flat along their heads, don’t materialize.
I just stare at them, my heart slowing, and my ears pounding with my heartbeat.
Their leader is an elder, that’s clear. His body is terribly scarred. His face, especially. Jagged, wide silver scars stretch across his snout. One of his nostrils is completely split open. He reaches my side and sniffs the top of my head.
I just allow it to happen because what can I really do at this point other than accept my fate?
“Where did she come from?”
“She doesn’t smell familiar. She’s obviously not from the villages.”
“She’s soaking wet. And look, that’s blood. Did she–was she trying to swim, or something?”
I jerk away from their leader as unfamiliar voices skitter through my head, tickling the inside of my busted ears.
“She’s cold. We’ll take her back with us, warm her up. Have someone treat those injuries,” a deep, rumbling male voice says. I peer up at the leader, watching his hazel eyes as he scans the wolves. “She’s probably just lost. That storm was something else. She was likely out in it, got swept off the cliff by the wind–”
“Who are you?” I ask through the mind-link.
The leader nearly jumps out of his skin. He leaps back, turning to face me and lowers his head in confusion, and maybe fear.
“Why can I hear you through the mind-link?” I ask.
The group stares at me in shock. I stare back, unsure what to do or say.
“Where are you from, girl? What village? You’re not part of our pack.”
“What pack are you?”
The leader eyes me wearily, his hazel eyes… are shockingly familiar. He doesn’t answer my question. So, I ask another, but my heart contracts as the words whisper through my mind, and into his. “Am I in Emberfyll?”
He looks back at his companions before meeting my gaze again. “Can you shift?”
It’s confirmation, I guess, that I made it.
But where the hell are Maeve and Logan?
“I can.”
“Shift then. We have several miles to cover.”
“I’m–my mate and my sister. They were supposed to be with me, but I’m here alone, and I–” Tears roll down my cheeks as the elder wolf looks down at me. “My mate–his name is Logan. He’s from here. We came here because–”
“Logan?” The elder’s eyes narrow.
“Yes, Logan. My mate. He had to leave Emberfyll as a boy. He was–his parents died during the journey–”
The wolves behind him look wildly around then begin to sprint up and down the beach, howling and yipping like they’re calling out for someone.
“What is his last name?”
“Atrayis,” I whisper into his mind. “Logan Atrayis. He’s–he has eyes like yours. Hazel-green.”
“And you are his mate?”
I reach along my collarbone, absently feeling for his mark on my chest. “I am.”
The elder takes several steps away from me as his companions return, the mind-link filling with their voices as they say they didn’t see anyone else on the beach, or in the water, but they stop when they see their elder kneeling with effort, his front legs tucked under his scarred body as he… bows.
To me.
The other wolves follow suit. The breeze coming off the water rustles through their fur as I wait, breathless, for someone to say something.
The elder rises, and the word he says next is a whisper through my brain that feels… odd. Misplaced. A dream, honestly. Maybe I am dreaming. Maybe I’m dead because the elder wolf looks me in the eyes and says, “Luna. We’ve waited an incredibly long time for your arrival.”
* * *
I wanted to stay on the beach, but even as–as Luna–I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Cold, bruised from being thrown through the surf like a rag doll, and hazy from the herbs in my system, I shifted, following the group of wolves ten miles across the rocky shoreline and up above the cliff where a barren, scorched landscape greeted us.
I find it hard to wrap my mind around what happened here as I pick at a plate of fire-roasted venison, root vegetables, and a foraged salad. I’m served hot, spiced tea that has an odd, bitter aftertaste I’m not familiar with… but it’s all these people have to offer.
The elder wolf is named Seamus. He’s tall and built almost exactly like Logan. They’re cousins in some way. Distantly related by great-grandfathers or something. And this fortress? This castle of toppling stone and overgrown vines? This was where… where my mate was born, where he grew up.
It was beautiful once. A beacon of white and silver against the sea. I look out the window–nothing more than a ring of old stone, the glass long shattered, and watch the water–watch for any sign of Logan and Maeve.
A fire burns nearby in a hearth of the same light gray stone now stained so thickly with soot I can’t make out the detailing carved into each brick.
Furs line the floor like rugs. I’m wearing a borrowed dress–something homespun but soft and comfortable, even if it’s a bit big on me.
Seamus walks back into the cozy room I’ve been given for the night and turns to the kettle hanging over the crackling embers.
“I have men out on the beach looking for him and your sister,” he says under his breath as he wraps a length of fabric around his hand and plucks the kettle from its hanger. “If he’s found, you’ll be the first to know.”
“They’re in the sea,” I whisper to myself, closing my eyes. “Or they’re not here at all.”
Seamus pours hot water into my tea cup but says nothing until he puts the kettle back and crouches near the dwindling flames. It’s hot enough in the room now to be mildly uncomfortable, but the sun is setting, and I was told it grows cold at night, even in the dead of summer.
To his credit, he didn’t pepper me with questions. He didn’t ask if Logan was actually my mate, but he didn’t have to. The fact I can mind-link with him, and everyone else that lives in little hovels around the remains of what was once a great palace, is enough.
I am their queen. The mate of their Alpha. An Alpha they didn’t think would ever return.
Seamus simply showed me around, introduced me to the thirty or so people who live in the castle, and brought me out onto a balcony where three villages were visibly spread out along the top of the cliff, separated by sparse, spindly trees–a new growth forest.
That’s it. That’s all that’s left of Emberfyll. Three villages. One castle. One pack without a name. Without an Alpha.
I don’t ask Seamus what happened for it to have come to this. I’m barely functioning as I pull a fur over my shoulders and slouch in my chair, suddenly chilled to the bone as the herbs start to wear off.
Seamus works in silence after glancing at me and sees that I’m trembling. He stokes the fire until it shines bright, casting amber light throughout the room as the last of the sunset fades over the water.
“My father,” I say in a near whisper, “and my grandfather are–are sending ships here with warriors and supplies to build a colony. Logan was supposed to be with them. They had the ability to cross the veil and… we were impatient. My sister offered to help.”
“And your sister has powers?”
I nod. I told him about Maeve in the event she was found and accidentally hurt someone with her gifts, but he doesn’t seem affected whatsoever.
“Did you know you’re locked in here? That there’s a veil around Emberfyll cutting you off from the rest of the world?”
“It’s always been like that,” he says, rising and then sitting on a stool by the fire. He’s in his fifties, I imagine. His hair is just starting to gray, and he keeps it cut short, nearly shaven down to the scalp.
“Why?”
He shakes his head. “The truth has been lost to time. We have our stories, our myths, as your people probably do. We follow the Moon Goddess but not everyone in Emberfyll did. That only changed after the last war, the war that… killed everyone.” He shifts his weight, resting his elbows on his knees as he looks at me. “You look tired, Luna. You should rest.”
“He’s not dead,” I tell him absently. I’m not sure if I’ve even spoken the words out loud, but my throat tightens regardless. “The bond is still there. I can feel him.”
“He’ll return for you. And, like you said, your father is sending boats.”
“It will be months before they get here.”
“Maybe,” he says with a shrug. “I’ve never been out on the water before. We fish along the shore, but that’s it. Any boat that left never came back.”
“Why didn’t you go with his parents and their pack?”
His eyes meet mine and hold. “Some of us stayed behind as bait so the prince could escape. I’ve spent the last two decades wondering if we were successful. And, we were, weren’t we?” His smile is soft as he rises. “Sleep now, Luna. If we find them, I’ll wake you.”
His footsteps echo as he turns out of the room, leaving the door open just a crack.
I stare into the fire as the herb’s hold on my senses finally wane, and I… feel everything again, like I’m still battling waves, being tossed in all directions and unable to come up for air.
I crumble into myself, sniffling, too tired to even lift my arms to wipe my tears.