Page 59 of In the Light of the Moon

Confusion and discomfort were a swirl all around us, and Juno quickly said their goodbyes and left.

“I hope we didn’t intrude, baby,” Sylvie said.

I bent to kiss her forehead, smoothing the wrinkle that’d appeared. “You didn’t. How was lunch? And your appointment?”

“Oh, all good!” Sylvie proceeded to hold out her arm and direct me to feeling the implant she’d gotten inserted. It made my gut clench to think of it stuck there under her skin, but I tried my best to smile at her in return.

I would have to tell her soon that the potential of pups wasn’t my immediate concern.

Her friend’s wry snort cut through my anxious thoughts. “Yeah, and then you almost gutted someone at lunch, Sylv.”

Sylvie’s scent immediately shifted, not matching her friend’s faintly concerned joking at all. I looked down at my mate and lifted her chin so that I could see her face fully. Often, people were able to craft their expression to one different from what they truly felt. My Sylvie, though, seemed to struggle with this or reject the notion altogether. She ran her teeth over her plush lip, but beneath the nerves, I smelled wrath, saw it brewing in her eyes.

It was a living, breathing part of her that I’d caught glimpses of. It would swell and crash just as quickly, often followed by a roll of guilt and shame. But it was ever-present, always simmering. When I took her and her grandmother to the grocery store over the weekend, when someone brushed past her grandmother without so much as an ‘excuse me,’ I didn’t even have time to get angry before the scorching spice startled me still. In reality, her grandmother needed no extra defenses, as she went after the oblivious teenager who grumbled an embarrassed apology.

I kissed Sylvie now, caressed her cheek and waist. When she confessed one night that she’d had to get counseling for angerissues in the past, as if it were some great sin to want to protect herself and those she cared about, I’d drawn her into my arms.

Her tears had soaked my shirt after I told her what seemed to me like the simplest truth and shared my own experience being put in therapy. Being made to think there was something wrong with me by my mother and taking years to unravel and accept what justwas.

“He just keeps fucking with me. I know it’s on purpose,” Sylvie groused and shot her friend a look.

“Who?” my hackles raised, but I tried to keep myself in check.Until I had all of the details.

Josie was on her phone now, scrolling and digging her pinky finger in her ear, “Graham Thompson, the police chief’s son.”

I couldn’t contain my growl, my own rising wave of fury. I took Sylvie’s face in my hands again, eyes frantically searching for any injury, any sign that he’d harmed her. I sniffed, searching for his scent on hers, but it seemed he hadn’t touched her. Why hadn’t she told me that he’d come near her? Even after he had verbal and scent confirmation of my claim. My nose planted in Sylvie’s neck, rubbing and inhaling. It was that comfort that kept me from actually shifting, and I felt her body relax into mine.

“I’ll kill him. I’m so sorry, Sylvie.”

Instead of shrugging off my promise, she just curled further into me. Whether she knew I was serious or not, she accepted my vow to keep her safe, even though I’d already broken it. Leaving my mate to face the fraud of a Pack Leader’s accosting on her own.

Her friend was the one to pipe up, though. If she thought my reaction to Sylvie strange, she neither smelled of nor verbalized wariness.

Witch, my Wolf recognized not just by her scent but by the distant yet pinning look in her eyes. “Might not be such a bad idea.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Sylvie

“Ugh, I’m just hopeless at this,” Josie thew up her hands before collapsing and burying her face in her arms. I rubbed a reassuring hand on her back, and Granna snickered while she stirred our dinner that was simmering on the stove.

It’d been a few weeks since our conversation over lunch, and just as she’d promised, Josie had begun to hone her craft with me.

The first night, Samhain, Granna and I introduced her to one of our most sacred rituals. The meal and decorations and fire felt heavier and lighter at the same time. Before moving in with her, I at least made an effort to spend every Samhain in Antler Pointe. Dad never wanted to partake, but that was okay.

We would decorate the house with dried flowers and pinecones and set up my mother’s altar in the sunroom. We would set her place at the table, serve her food, and after dinner, we would walk into the forest and build a fire in the clearing near her favorite stream. Every year, it was a tradition where Grannatold me stories of my mother, and we honored the woman that I barely remembered but thought of every day. When we’d stand before the fire with the black sky above, I would feel my mother’s arms around my shoulders. The wood on those evenings buzzed with somethingelse, and while my friends trick-or-treated or attended parties, I was absorbed by the thinness of the veil.

This year, with Josie joining us, we made altars for her mother and Dad, too. We moved dinner to the formal dining table to make space for all the deceased that we were honoring, and the three of us held hands before the fire. The tears were joyful, and the love was palpable.

Unfortunately, studying was a little rockier.

While Granna had begun instructing Josie on how to handle her visions, and I continued my work in the gardens and in the forest, we carried on with learning from The Book. And while I knew I could get frustrated quite easily, Josie, I was finding, was even worse.

Simple rituals for protection and positivity were integral for any witch, Granna told us time and time again, but it was especially important for Josie given the nature of her seeing gift. She joined me in incorporating many into her daily routine. Even with her frustrated groans, the amulet I showed her how to make hung around her neck.

Skills like lighting a candle without a flame, though, were not something she was able to do yet.

She raised her purple-dyed head that matched the amethyst around her throat, “This is fucking hopeless, dude. You make it look so easy!”

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