Moon Chosen Box Set: BBW Werewolf Shifter Romance

Chapter 3

3

I followed Greenwood into the passage and towards the dining hall. We passed the empty eating room and climbed a set of stairs just past the arched entrance. The area was still modern, but all these stairs and passages had me lost.

“Who designed this place? A madman? It never seems to be the same twice” I quipped.

“The architect was quite mad,” he agreed.

I rolled my eyes. “Of course he was. No sane person would deal with werewolves.”

Greenwood led the way through the rat maze and to the rear of the large, modern building. We passed through a few rooms with desks and filing cabinets, and I even saw nameplates on some of the desks. There was a scent of printing paper and disinfectant in the air, and the empty halls were no longer empty. We passed several men in dress shirts and pants. In their hands were bundles of paper, and their faces showed the strain of an office life.

“Finally, the twenty-first century. . .” I mumbled.

“Unfortunately,” Greenwood spoke up.

I snorted. “You really need to get out of the dark ages.”

“I don’t need technology to know that the more things change, the more they stay the same,” he countered.

“And that means what?” I asked him.

We rounded a corner and found ourselves at the final rear hall in the New Den. The passage stretched down the entire rear of the building. Our hall connected to the center of that rear passage and showed a pair of doors on the wall opposite us. The doors were open, and inside I could see the room was a large council room complete with uncomfortable chairs for the audience. At the far rear of the room was a curved row of tall chairs curved for those who presided over meetings.

The sounds of voices reached our ears. They were loud, frightened voices. I glimpsed men painge the floor in front of the row of chairs.

Greenwood’s face twisted with disgust. “It means that people never change.”

Greenwood strode forward and I hurried after him. We entered the large meeting room and I noticed Lord Greenwood sat in the center chair. The wall behind the chairs was covered in a painted mural. The scene showed the view I’d seen from the old dock. There was a cloudless night sky with a full moon over the dark silhouette of the island. The only odd bit to the picture were six stars that encircled the moon.

Something in front of the mural moved and caught my attention. In the shadow of the lord’s chair stood Lady Greenwood. She smiled as we entered, but I noticed her face was pale and there was darkness beneath her eyes.

Four of the six other chairs around Lord Greenwood were empty, but I counted a number of men equal to the number of chairs in the room. They were all older individuals. The youngest couldn’t have been less than fifty, and they wore elegant cloaks over their broad shoulders. Some of the men paced the floor in front of the chairs, and two sat on either side of Lord Greenwood.

“What if another happens? What then? Some of us don’t have as much land as others and can’t move our houses,” one of the seated men squawked. He sat two chairs down from Greenwood and wore a cloak of black with canary-yellow lining.

“Then we will handle the situation in a calm manner,” one of the standing men quipped. He was tall with silver hair at the temples and a firm chin.

“We can hardly expect everyone to act that way. Next time there may be a panic, and then we’ll see how well your land policies work,” the seated man pointed out.

Lord Greenwood listened to the conversation in silence with his chin rested on one fisted hand. He raised his eyes and his head when we entered, and the others turned to us.

“What’s happened?” my guide asked the men.

“What would you care?” the squawking man argued.

“I care because the islands are my home,” Greenwood snapped at him.

“Quiet, both of you,” Lord Greenwood ordered them. His narrowed eyes swept over the group of six men around him. “These panicked what-ifs do nothing to alleviate the fear in our people, and your swiftness in fleeing your own islands for the safety of the Old Den doesn’t help matters.”

“We sought only reports,” the gray-haired man argued.

“And brought none of your own, Deacon,” Lord Greenwood scolded. He leaned back in his chair and pursed his lips. “What we need are reports. Where is Teagan?”

“Here, My Lord,” a voice spoke up. I turned in time to see the leader of the cloaked guards sweep into the room. He passed to the chairs and bowed to Greenwood. “My men have reported that several buildings were damaged, but no lives lost. There are some minor injuries, but nothing serious.”

“And the reason for the earthquake?” the lord questioned him.

Teagan shook his head. “We can’t find the answers, but my men are still looking.”

“Have you asked the Diggers?” the young Greenwood spoke up.

“‘Diggers?’” I repeated.

Deacon raised an eyebrow and sneered. “They’re nothing more than animals. What could they know about the root causes of earthquakes?” he argued.

“Even animals have their uses. They know the underground of these islands better than any of us. We should at least approach them and see what they might know,” Erik insisted.

“If you’re so eager to have someone speak with them then might I suggest the young gentleman go himself?” Deacon challenged him.

Lord Greenwood stood and glared at Deacon. “Are you suggesting my only son go into the unstable bowels of the Old Den to speak-”

“I will do it,” Erik spoke up.

The lord frowned at his child. “We don’t know the extent of the damage in those ancient halls, and another earthquake may occur.”

“Then right now is the time to act before another earthquake happens,” Erik insisted. He swept his narrowed eyes over the group of men. “I’ll leave the talking to you gentlemen, and keep action for myself. Good day.” He bowed to the men and strode from the room. He left behind him a wake of sneers and angry men. Some of them turned their narrowed eyes on me. I sheepishly smiled and slipped from the room.

I hurried after Greenwood and caught up to him halfway down the hall. “You must be popular around here,” I quipped.

His eyes didn’t even flicker to me. “Hardly,” was his reply.

“So who were those guys?”

“They are the new government, called the Council by some. Each delegate represents one of the larger islands and is allowed a say in the decisions,” he explained.

“Sounds messy,” I mused.

“And an exercise in the futility of electing leaders who’s ambitions rival only their cowardice,” he commented.

“Speaking of cowardice, is this suicide mission something I need to be a part of or can I go back to planning my escape?” I asked him.

He stopped and spun around to face me. I shrank away from his blazing eyes. “Is that really what you want?”

I gathered my courage and scowled at him. “Um, yeah, it’s what I’ve been trying to do since I got here,” I reminded him.

“Haven’t you noticed you’ve had several opportunities to escape this morning?”

I rolled my eyes. “When I’ve been surrounded by-” He held up three fingers between us.

“You haven’t tried to escape from any of your watchers, you had ample chance in the conference room to slip away, and even now you followed me rather than flee.”

“T-that’s just-well, I didn’t see them at the time-”

He lowered his hand and shook his head. “I believe you did, and yet you stayed.”

“But I don’t want to stay!” I insisted.

“You have no choice. Our bond compels you to remain here, and even now you follow me like a lost dog,” he argued.

My cheeks reddened and I balled my hands into fists. “Well, what about you?” I growled.

He pursed his lips. “What about me?”

“You saved me in the library, you wanted me to go with you to the conference room, and you’re teaching me all about this whole messy place. You wanted me to follow you, and you want me to stay here,” I pointed out.

“What has that to do with anything?” he countered.

“It means you’re stuck in this ‘bonding’ thing, too,” I explained.

“What has your counterargument to do with my pointing out that you don’t wish to leave, nor are you able to considering our bond?” he asked me.

“It. . .um, it proves something. Something important,” I argued.

“It proves nothing but that you wish to deflect the topic away from yourself,” he told me.

I threw my hands up and turned my back on him. “Never mind! I don’t even know why I’m bothering talking to you!” I marched away from him. At ten yards my steps slowed until I stopped. I felt a strange, familiar tugging in my chest. I peeked over my shoulder. He stood where I’d left him. I glanced around at my surroundings and bit my lip. The walls and staircases all looked alike, other than the differences in wings. “You. . .you don’t happen to know where my friends are, do you?”

He shook his head. “Not all of them.”

I straightened and smoothed the creases in my dress. “Well, I can’t exactly escape if I don’t know where I’m supposed to escape to, do I?”

“It’s possible,” he argued.

“Yeah, well, I don’t work without some sort of plan, even if it does involve just throwing myself at a bunch of mangy werewolves,” I countered. I marched back to him and gestured with my hands down the hall. “Well, lead on. These earthquakes aren’t going to solve themselves, and I don’t want anyone getting hurt in another one.”

He bowed his head and led us onward. We passed through the modern part of the Den and into the old. Greenwood guided me to the ground floor and to the side of the building. One of the halls led to an old wooden door similar to those used in the dungeon area where the other girls and I were held before the Choosing.

We stepped outside and I had my first glimpse of the opposite side of the island from the cell block. This side of the island held a steep slope that led through piles of gray, shattered boulders to the edge of the lake. White waves crashed over the rocks and left pools of dark water between the large stones. The area was desolate of vegetation. Neither trees nor shrubs, nor even weeds, grew in the cracks between the boulders. There was a rough path over the rocky ground, made muddy by the weather. There was a mess of dark clouds overhead, and a cool wind blew off the lake waters and swept over the barren ground. Sprinkles of rain splattered the path and slipped down the tops of the boulders to their bases like tears.

I looked back at the Old Den. It towered a hundred feet above us and ended in a sharp, peaked roof of black shingles. Square towers with flat roofs marked the two corners of the building I could see. The sheer wall before us stretched for a thousand feet and seemed to block out the world. The first ten feet of the structure was carved from the dark, jagged rocks of the island. The upper parts were made of a mix of thick, primitive blackened bricks mingled with smaller native rocks. Arched windows looked out on the desolate grounds. Some had glass, others were empty like those in the hallway of our bedroom.

Greenwood stepped onto the path and threw his cloak over his shoulders, but I hesitated. “Isn’t there a greener, less murderous-looking path to take?” I pleaded.

He half-turned to me and shook his head. “No. The Diggers wished for this part of the island to remain untouched, and it has been so for centuries.”

“Yeah, about that. Who, or what, exactly are these diggers? A bunch of mole people?” I guessed.

“No, rats,” he corrected me.

My eyes widened and I stepped back into the Den. “Did. . .did you say rats?”

“Yes.”

I cringed. “Um, I think I’ll try that escape option now.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You dislike rats, don’t you?”

“It’s a mutual hatred.”

“You have nothing to fear from the Diggers. They are generally hospitable, and won’t harm us,” he assured me.

“What are rats doing under an island of werewolves, anyway?” I asked him.

“They built the Old Den from the island’s stone, and as p*****t were allowed to build their homes beneath the island so they would be protected by us from any threats above. Thus werewolves have nothing to fear from them,” he explained.

I sighed and stepped into the weather. The wind whipped my dress and I wrapped my arms around myself. “You guys have an ingenious plan to keep us kidnapped girls here by giving us worthless clothes, don’t you?” I commented as I walked up to him.

He turned away and proceeded down the rocky, uneven path. “The cave isn’t far,” he told me.

“Neither is a bad cold. . .” I muttered as I followed him.