Page 82 of Rejected Exile

The man dragging me stops, grabs the back of my collar, and hefts me up. In a bored voice he says, "Watch your head."

Then hethrowsme down.

A scream tears out of me as I fall ten, twenty, thirty feet—then hit the ground with athumpthat pushes all the air from my lungs. Above me, faces in the distant crowd peer down into the dark pit I'm in. A small ledge was all that was separating me from this pit—the vampire who threw me down smirks at me and waves from his spot in it.

"Asshole," I mutter, sitting up and forcing my limbs to move. I reach around to probe the back of my head, and give a sigh of relief when I don't hit anything tender or bleeding. "I could've died like that."

There's a low, deep growl from behind me.

Instinctively, I freeze.

Then slowly, carefully, I get my feet under me, rise into a crouch, and turn around to face the thing behind me in the darkness.

Red eyes greet me at exactly my level. The light down here hits the middle of the pit, but the edges are dark. There's a soft glowing light coming from the wall to the left, but my eyes are on whatever I'm down here with.

After a moment, my pupils adjust to the semi-darkness. Blinking a few times, I take in a sharp breath in horror, and my nose confirms what I see.

There's a werewolf in this pit with me.

A large brown-and-tan wolf crouches in the pit opposite me. A long chain is anchored in the wall and coils to connect with the manacle around a thick, muscular front leg.

It—no, he, my nose tells me with a second breath—is leggy, with short, dense fur and a sleek shape, but no less muscular for it. I can see every bunched up muscle in its legs, all the tenseness around its shoulders. He peels his lips back to bare his teeth at me, and I wince at the sight of the wear and tear on his long, curving fangs.

Between that and the scars along his side, I can guess that the wolf before me has been through a lot.

My hands brace on the ground beneath me, and the gouges in the stone take on new meaning. It isn't age that's done this to whatever gauche arena we're in. The wolf, fighting to get out, has dug his claws into the stone until it parted.

"Who did this to you?" I pitch my voice low, leaning towards him. "You can tell me. Maybe if I help you, we can get out together—whatever they want, I'm sure between the two of us, we can find out a way to fool them long enough to escape."

The only answer I get in response is a snarl. My heart sinks. Whatever has been done to this werewolf, and why, it won't be easily reversed.

My eyes are drawn to the glowing light to the left of me. Blinking a few times, I take it in, trying to figure out what it is. There's an oval shape in the middle of the light, and it's set in a ledge in the wall. It gives off a faint blue-white light that blankets the pit wherever it touches darkness.

Moving towards the light—and careful to keep my back up against the wall, so I'm out of reach of the chains—I reach out to graze my fingers against it. Warmth and smoothness greets me, but nothing menacing.

From above a bored voice shouts out, "Get on with it already!"

Others join in.

"What's the hold up?"

"Turn, you weakling!"

"I can't believe we lost limbs for this bitch."

"Fight! Fight! Fight!"

I tune them out, my entire being focused on the oval shape beneath my fingers. It seems so familiar. So comforting, soothing, and almost hypnotizing.

Closing my eyes, I move my face instinctively towards it, and sudden realization hits me. This is like being hit with a beam of moonlight. The cool light against my skin, the pull of it.

It's a moonstone.

A little piece of the moon's magic trapped in a large, perfectly polished stone by using witchcraft.

Pulling away from it, I glance back at the wolf. He snarls louder and stalks towards me, stopped only by the rattling length of his chain. My heart breaks for him.

While we werewolves can generally shift whenever we want, the moon does have sway over us. Its fullness sparks our first shifts, and every full moon thereafter is a siren call hard to resist. Most don't bother. My childhood was full of long nights listening to the howls and yips of happy wolves playing and hunting in the forest about once a month.

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