The Bride of the Moon

Chapter 5

My first thought was to run back home, to the attic and hide away, but I remember the look my mother had, the look of utter disgust written all over her face. The last words she said to me before I left for the party rang through my head, repeating over and over.

She will kill me. I can't go back. Running home wouldn’t be an escape, but my death.

I was sure of it after that, after publicly being humiliated and the whole pack being reminded that I was a curse. The Beta’s daughter, the one with the supposed best genes, is a freak and she has just been rejected and is next seen violently beating a member of the Alpha’s family.

My parents will never be able to live with that and I will die from their wrath. There was no home for me anymore— if I even had one in the first place.

There was nowhere to go... I had nowhere to go. I knew nothing but the Beta’s house and the short walk to the library. Other family members are out of the question. I don’t know any of them and they surely don’t want me around them either. The entire werewolf world knows me and knows what my birth means.

Out of options, I blindly run in a direction that I don’t know what leads to. I only know that I am running away from the bright lit town and the only place I have called home… it wasn’t much but it was for a time what I thought home was and to run away from the only home I know is frightening but freeing.

The dark woods quickly cast me in shadow, the darkness bringing me peace despite the sharp pain that stabbed at my chest. I felt protected, watched over and guided here. The darkness was my friend, my only companion now, and I embraced it.

I ran, and I ran, and I ran some more. No one stopped me, not even when I passed the invisible barrier that marked our pack border. No wolves came, no death wielding mother screamed or chased.

My lungs were burning and my tears were not stopping in its waterfall. At some point, my beautiful white dress gets ripped and torn by tree branches and sharp rocks. I was missing both shoes and I don’t remember losing them. My hair is undone, the pins gone and the curls wild in all directions.

I ran further and harder, pulled and running directionless into a darkness that had no end, hidden from the moon and the stars. It’s cold but I can’t seem to care for it. I want it. I want to be far away.

No one will find me now. No one will keep me locked in a small attic that I can’t even properly stand in. No one. No one will stop me anymore.

I don’t look back. Not once.

My feet run through the dark woods until they bleed, leaving a horrific trail of blood in my wake. Leaves crunch under me, branches of trees scraping my face and arms. I was moving quickly, covering a lot more ground than I thought I would, but I still didn’t know where I was going.

Was I going to another pack? Was I going to a human settlement? Where do runaway wolves go?

Too busy in my thoughts, my foot catches against something and before I know it, I’m falling on the ground. I try to hold on to something but my hands grip nothing but air. I feel myself begin to tip forward, realizing too late that I’m suddenly rolling down a steep hill.

I smack against rocks at the very bottom, knocking the air out of my lungs. I lay there for a few minutes, blinking away tears as I stared up at the moon that decided to show itself. It was full tonight and looking larger than life beside the constellation of stars.

“Please, help me.” I whispered brokenly.

The thing that burns me up the most is how I tried to do the right thing. I did everything I was told to do by my mother, followed all her instructions and rules until the very end. All I wanted was to be someone that wasn’t the freak, the plague, the death prophecy girl. I wanted my mother not to scowl or look disgusted when she sees me, I wanted my father to acknowledge me without needing a prompting from the Alpha’s family, I wanted the pack to see that it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t want to be born on that day or that time. I have been good. I have been positive. I have been understanding.

So why?

Why is it that even if I did everything right I was still punished?

James… he… he didn’t even give me a chance to prove myself to him. I was his mate but he rejected me so cruelly, so quickly. Tears welled up in my eyes again, falling thick and heavy that I can’t even see the moon in the sky anymore.

It was hard to breathe just thinking about James, my heart felt weak and utterly battered. Hugging myself, I crawled away from the rocks and sat myself down in a small open field. I looked up at the sky while the wind blew cold and harsh.

“Goddess, please, what do I do?” I helplessly asked the moon. “I can’t go back. They will kill me. My mother will make it look like an accident or the Alpha will do it himself. I hit… I hit an Alpha’s son. I shouldn't have, but he really deserved it this time.”

More tears come.

“I tried to be better. I really did. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to do. I’m so sorry.”

No answer came. No answer ever came.

“Moon Goddess, if you’re listening…” I looked up and almost screamed at the sight of the big bright moon in the sky disappearing behind the monstrous size of the man before me.

“I’m listening.” He says in a voice so low and so deep that it seemed to echo all around me. The sudden swoop of my stomach was instantaneous from the sound of his voice and I all but passed out from surprise.

It takes a while for my eyes to adjust in the darkness. Thankfully, the light coming from the moon gave me enough brightness to see his face and when I did, I gaped at the cold shock of his hauntingly handsome features. He was like a beautiful nightmare with eyes so dark it looked fathomless, hair like the night sky without the moon and stars, skin so pale it was almost white marble. A few strands of dark hair slipped forward, over his forehead, hanging over his even darker eyes. They were as soft and fine as silk and they gleamed. The only color on his face was his lips, pink and plump like a bow. Despite the darkness around us, his beauty shone like a wild untamable flame, drawing my breath and my eyes to only focus on him.

Divinity. I knew this instantly as though it was whispered in my ear. This man is no ordinary man but a God, a celestial being, someone sacred and untouchable. I was in the presence of immortality. To look at him was like a blessing in itself, and at our close distance, I felt that I might combust from his godliness.

There was something frightening about him and hellish. A power unlike any other surrounded him and it suffocated me. He could kill me with one look if he wanted to, but he doesn’t.

He only stares at me with this unreadable expression as if my presence has completely shaken him.

I do not know how long I had been staring at him, but the shock didn’t seem to want to wear off. A God. I was in the presence of a God.

Could we have been wrong all this time? Was the Moon Goddess actually a God?

That was the only explanation. Our Goddess is a God and I do not dare question him about it as he was staring at me like he couldn’t believe he was actually seeing me. He heard my prayers to him. He has come because I called for his help.

He reaches down, his thumbs gently wiping the tears that were still falling down my face. The touch… it was electric, like the air around us was thick and ready to explode. His skin was warm like fire on a cold night and his smell was of nothing I have ever smelled before and I know I will never be able to smell it again from anyone else. The scent was enticing in a thousand different ways. It made me think of sweet licorice or sugary nectar and something else, something I can’t point out, something forbidden and attention grabbing. It was dark and masculine… the smell of an untouchable God.

“You are safe now.” His smooth voice made my breath hitch.

I did not trust myself to speak, because what could I say to such a being? He seemed bigger than the world itself. No words that I would come up with could ever be enough.

Dark eyes roamed my body, lingering at new bruises and old scars. His lips curled in anger, an anger so powerful that it made the lush ground he was standing on turn black... with death. “Who did this to you? What has happened?”

I rub at my injuries, trying to hide them. “My past.”

“And they will remain in the past. You have my word.” There was a danger in his promise. Was he aware that shadows were dancing behind him? Like weapons ready to lash out at any moment? He kneels in front of me, making my heart stop and my head spin. A God was kneeling in front of me but my mind didn’t get to grasp this information because his fingers started to caress my skin, allowing a different kind of sensation to travel down my back. His warm touch grazes my tingling skin softly and when he passes through my wounds, the blood and the cuts disappear like magic. When he’s done, he looks into my eyes. “Emma Noor,”

I met his gaze in surprise. He knows my name. Of course, he knows my name. He’s our maker. “Moon God,”

He shakes his head as if his divine title frustrates him. “You may call me Kieran.”

“I couldn’t possibly. You’re my creator, our God. I am but one of your people,” I emphasized, with hands flailing about.

His eyes were sharp and his voice was commanding, the godliness of it creeping out. “I am Kieran to you and only you. Now say it.”

My lungs felt like they would burst at any moment as my thoughts whirled and my skin burned from the ghost of his touch. “Kieran.”

I hear him suck in a breath, his eyes fluttering close.

The air was thick again, electricity buzzing in the air and making it hard to breathe.

When he finally opened his eyes, they were of a beast, even darker than it was before and more frightening. His words, though they were anything but terrifying, were sensual and almost seductive. “You belong to me now, Emma Noor. You are mine. And only mine. Mates.”

Words abandoned me. Of all the things that have happened today… this one knocked the pain of James’ rejection right out of my heart. A big part of it is because a handsome and powerful God had just claimed me as his, a mate when no one else wanted me, but also just— what? What is happening right now? I must have hit my head real hard in that fall on the rocks. I’m hallucinating or something.

The Moon God quickly dispelled this thought as he took my hand in his, the warmth seeping into me and stitching up what hurt inside. Not a hallucination then, but reality. My reality.

“Will you come?” He asks in that deep baritone that rocks the ribs inside of my chest.

My heart tightened with something I could not name. Fear of the unknown, and excitement for a different life and hope for a better future... with him. I didn’t have to think about it any longer. “I’m yours, Kieran. Take me.”