Page 68 of In the Light of the Moon

The full moon run was tomorrow, but several members requested an impromptu meeting to discuss a variety of pack matters. Some were petty squabbles, some logistical matters, and some were regarding pack membership. Monica requested an audience to hear about her desire to bring her mate into the pack. Some girl she met out of town who wasn’t Wolf but another shifter. An Ocelot or something, which I thought was kinda cool. Come to think of it, I had never seen a non-shifter ocelot, never mind an ocelot shifter.

Graham immediately shot her down, stating that our pack was for wolf shifters and their human mates, and that bringing in other shifters was dangerous and too complicated. Some nodded agreement, some barely contained their disagreement,but I caught Ana, Declan, and I cutting glances toward one another.

Were they thinking what I was? Were they worried for whatever mates they might want to bring into the pack? In Monica’s case, Graham agreed to the matehood but forbade Monica’s future mate running with us. She would be mated, but her mate wouldn’t bepack.

Had it always been like this? Mating between different shifter species was definitely rare, but not impossible. I had a Wolf buddy over in St. Paul who was mated to a true shape shifter. Nowthatwas dangerous. Those Shifters were crazier than bed bugs, as my nanna would say.

“Declan, Ana, Jasper, stay back,” Graham barked, and I was pulled out of my whirling thoughts. It’d been harder to focus these days. Lack of sleep was part of it, and Graham had me doubled up on my scouting. But the witch had stayed between campus, her new job at some witchy store downtown, her grandmother’s house, and Orion’s cabin. Over and over, day after day, I trailed behind her while keeping as far a distance as I could. It’d been nearly a month since she somehow reversed Graham’s shift and pulled a knife on us, and things hadn’t gotten any better.

I kicked at a thick fallen branch while we waited for Graham to finish talking to the two straggling members who asked for permission to run elsewhere or skip the run tomorrow altogether. That was a new thing, too. I remembered being a pup, when Chief was Leader, and a pack member skipping out on a full moon run at home was almost unheard of. If it happened, it raised a ton of alarms.

Not right not right not right, that familiar string of thoughts started running again, and my head throbbed with my trying to push it back. We were getting closer to the solstice, but none of us felt confident in trying to get her. After seeing what she didto Graham and feeling the waves of whatever the fuck she could do, who was to say we’d even be able to get our hands on her? We needed to take her alive and present her, but if we were all writhing messes on the ground, there wouldn’t be any point to it.

The thick branch I’d been kicking at rolled over, and for a second, it looked like a leg bone. It was about the same length and width.So fucking stupid. How in the hell we’d left behind a bone that she somehow happened to find was beyond me. But things got chaotic and messy each solstice. It was like a high, but different than the clear, energizing kind from running. It was frenzied, buzzy, and even now, my body was feeling dry and empty. Craving it.

“So, what’s up Leader?” Dec spoke first, stuffing his hands in his pockets and holding his chin high, as if he hadn’t been panicking and almost shitting his pants earlier.

“Man, this don’t sound fucked up to you? Mydad, Jas. What ifhedoesn’t want us to stop? What ifhegets a taste f-for pack mates or something?—”

“She’s not pack, and he isn’t either,” I tried to supply, but it felt lame.

“Yeah, but who’s to say that it won’t turn in to that, you know what I mean? Really, going after pack would be even easier, dude. We know how to cover our tracks, and the person would be easier to get. Oh, god,” he made an agonized noise and shuddered into his hands.

Even I winced, the thought of harming a member of the pack when it wasn’t a sanctioned challenge was unthinkable. We were family but deeper, and I wanted to say that would never happen, but the assurance got stuck on my tongue. Because when I thought of Leader, I wasn’t sure how far he was willing to go. He was supposed to answer to us, and us to him and each other, but it was feeling more and more like he only answered to himself.

“I need a report on how scouting is going.” Graham crossed his arms and stood tall. His Leader scent was like a thick, wet blanket. When had I grown to feel suffocated instead of loved?

“Same as before. Can’t get too close to the houses ‘cause of that barrier or the White One. But we know her routine.”

Graham ran a thumb along his jaw, scratching at the stubble that was patchy and in need of a shave, “What about the other witches?”

Ana spoke up next. Her mouth was set in a tense line, her eyes warier than usual. “The old one leaves the house even less. When she does, it’s shopping or lunch with the red-haired one.”

Then Declan, “The new witch works from home. Her apartment’s downtown. She’s a little more varied. Spends the nights with other people sometimes. Usually not the same person twice. Other than that, she’s at the witch house.” He shrugged, but I wondered how much of him was still freaking out. By the split-second glance he gave me, I would guess that he was.

Graham didn’t seem to notice, though. He was on edge and more paranoid about some things, but he hadn’t picked up on the fact of our doubts. He knew that we would still follow him, and maybe that was the sickest thing of all.

Because after the high of the hunt and the sacrifice, the comedown was brutal. Not when we were still around each other or the cleanup afterward, but when we slunk back home and were alone.

“Jas, I still see her face. Every night,”Ana confessed to me when we were setting out one day to scout the witches’ house. Yeah, the last one had been sloppier than the others, what with Kara slipping away and starting to run. That was probably how we’d left evidence behind, but having the Chief as a member of the pack made us untouchable.

Our own guilt, however, was something that was getting harder and harder to cover up. I saw it every time I looked in the mirror, and I saw it on their faces, too.

River had been my best buddy as a kid. We drifted apart once we became teenagers, but the way he begged at the end was?—

“Leader. Maybe…” Ana’s face was pinched, and my insides clenched with something acidic. The sensation only got worse when I saw the way Graham’s shoulders stiffened when he turned to face her.

“Speak,” he commanded.

To give her credit, Ana didn’t shy away from meeting his eyes. We were loyal, and she’d known Graham since before he moved to Antler Pointe. They’d been friends before he took over the pack, but I didn’t think she’d ever expected things to go this way. For Graham to pull us all into this and for us to grow addicted to it.

She seemed to decide on her course of action and squared her shoulders. “The witch is trouble. Her powers are unknown, and we could easily get someone else. He surely can’t be that picky, can he? The others were just fine enough to allow him to come back.” Though we’d been told more now that we were fucking in it, it was all so weird. After his first chance encounter last winter solstice, Graham agreed to provide for him each equinox, each solstice. So that he could stay longer and give us more each time.

I saw the corner of Graham’s jaw tick, but otherwise, his face didn’t change. I felt like I was going to break out in a sweat. “Ana, you are forgetting your place. He came tous. Recognized us as the rightful guardians of this?—”

She interrupted him, “Yeah, b-but, we can’t surely… we aren’t atwar.”

Graham’s fangs flashed in the firelight, his Leader scent overtaking us in thick, crashing waves. “Are you saying thatyou’re ungrateful, Ana? That you don’t feel more connected to the land? That your shifts aren’t easier to control?”

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