Moon Child (The Year of the Wolf #2) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,98
light, my skin was tenderized from the burst of heat, and my ears were deafened by the blast.
I couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him or scent him, but blindly, and on my hands and knees, I crawled toward him, unerringly finding his warmth. When I knew he was well, if unconscious, I curled up at his side, needing nothing more than to be with him.
Forever.
Sixteen
Austin
I jerked when a hand slapped my cheek, and groggily, I peered up at my brothers, well aware they were filthy, doused in blood and gore that had my nose crinkling at the sight of them.
“Why are you so gross?”
Eli muttered under his breath, “Why are you so gross?”
Groaning, I reached up and rubbed my forehead. The last thing I remembered was being leapt upon by a hyena, but I was pretty sure that was a dream. It had to have been a wolf, but shitty luck and bad timing had me falling back, and colliding with the ground.
No wonder my head ached like a son of a bitch.
Moaning some more, and feeling like I was a thousand years old, I sat up, and as I rubbed the back of my head, where my fingers came back sticky from blood, I peered around and muttered, “Huh. Guess that wasn’t a dream.”
Their features were grimy after the battle, and they scowled at me as they both sank onto their knees, and then toppled back onto their asses, as we all looked around the outer rim of the totem circle.
I was lucky I hadn’t died. Fuck, it was more than luck.
“They must have thought you were dead,” Eli told me, reading my thoughts with an ease that I still wasn’t used to. Especially when I hadn’t been projecting a stream of conscious thought onto him.
“Get over it,” Ethan groused. “We all know way more about each other than any of us would like. At least you’re alive.”
“Yeah. Thank fuck hyenas are dumbasses,” Eli agreed, reaching up and rubbing his face with the back of his hand. It smeared more crap over him, but I wasn’t about to point that out.
“I’m sorry,” I told them both. “I should have been fighting with you.”
“You should have, yeah,” Ethan grumbled, elbowing me in the side. I couldn’t hiss at him, though, even if that simple jolt to my system made my head bang like I was at a Metallica concert. “What the hell happened?”
“Is Daniel okay?” I asked, taking my priorities as they came to me.
“Yeah, he’s fine,” Eli rasped. “Sent him home with one of the others. Still unconscious, but he appears to be well.”
“Good.” I sucked in a breath. “We were just walking toward the clearing when—” I winced. “The scents were all over the place. Nothing centered, so I just thought they were trying to piss us off by messing with our markers. I never expected there to be so many of them. When we approached, I was listening to something Daniel was saying, and they just leaped at us.” Shame hit me as I admitted, “I didn’t even have a chance to shift before I was down.”
“Some fucking enforcer you are,” Ethan snapped at me.
Because I deserved it, I took it. But I wouldn’t take any more. I’d made a mistake, and he made plenty of them, but he’d just fought in a bloody battle and I had to cut him some slack.
Hell, maybe Sabina had done the impossible—she’d made me grow up. Either that or I was just getting sentimental in my old age.
We were all alive.
All in one piece.
We got to live to see another day, unlike the dead around us, who I saw when I peered at the clearing, and found myself unable to deny that he spoke the truth.
There were natural wolves that lay forever frozen in time, and then there were our fallen pack members. Brothers and sisters who I’d been raised with, who’d shunned me at every turn, who’d made our lives miserable from the offset. But I hadn’t wanted them to die. I hadn’t wanted their worlds to forever be torn in two.
My throat felt thick with emotion I couldn’t shed as I took in the bloodbath, handled the loss.
“How you slept through that I don’t know.”
“I didn’t sleep through anything, Ethan,” I snapped. “I passed out.” And I was damn lucky I hadn’t had my throat torn out.
When I looked at the wolves littering the space around me, I knew why though. The naturals had protected me and Daniel.