The Luna's Gift

Chapter Eight: Traveling

                                                                                            Stella

    After spending about an hour diving into everything Athan, Dawn was ready to meet her potential mate. We still called him potential because even though I saw the two as mates in my visions, there still had to be an initial chemistry. Regardless of who or what they were, everyone still had to have some kind of connection for it to work. Technically on paper, they didn’t make sense one bit. Dawn was a bit more controlled than Athan and was proud to be who she was. Athan hated being a vampire even though he reveled in the perks of being one. It would probably take a lot more convincing to get Athan to believe this woman was his mate, but I was hoping it sort of worked the same way as it did for us. According to Dorian, it was. The first time that he saw Savannah, he knew.

    “Stella, we need to go. We want to save as much daylight as possible unless you want to camp here for the night. I don’t think Jake will be too happy about that, and I would rather not get back home and have him smash my face in,” Dorian said half-jokingly, half-serious.

    I could tell that Dawn was nervous the instant she stood and followed me outside. It was difficult to go from being alone for years like her to possibly having someone with you all the time. Hopefully, it would make a lot more sense to her once she saw him for the first time.

    “Ready?” 

    Dawn looked between Dorian and me before nodding her head. “I figure that I don’t have much of a choice now. After the way you described him and told me all the trouble that he has gotten himself into, I have to say that I am a little curious.”

    That made two of us. We started out figuring that if we were cutting it too close, we would run. For now, we all walked in silence, enjoying the sounds of the wilderness around us. I cast a protection spell on Dawn to protect her from the sun for our walk. It would last long enough for the few hours we needed to get to our destination. 

    Since we had a while, I decided that there was no better time than to reach out to Jake. He must be furious with me by now and going absolutely bonkers. ‘Jake, are you there?’

    ‘Stella.’ I could hear the low rumble in his voice as he spoke my name. Jake was for sure upset, but not as furious as I expected him to be. ‘You blocked me out. Why?’

    ‘You wouldn’t understand, Jake. The instant I would have told you what I was doing, you would have demanded that I come back home.’

    ‘Your damn right I would have. Stella, there are people out there that want to hurt you. Do you understand that? Do you not understand that your safety means everything to me? I can’t even think about something happening to you.’ He sighed. ‘But I understand why you did it how you did. I can be irrational sometimes when it’s your safety I am thinking about.’

    A smile crept upon my lips without even realizing it until Dawn and Dorian were staring at me like I was crazy. “She is mind-linking her mate,” Dorian filled Dawn in.

    Dawn turned her attention back to Dorian, letting me get back to my conversation. “How does that work exactly,” I heard her ask before I turned my attention back over to my mate, waiting for a response.

    ‘At some point, you are going to have to let me show you that I’m not that same girl you met, Jake. I’m stronger, more capable of taking care of myself. I can do this, but not without your support. You need to believe that I can do this on my own, just as I believe it.’

    ‘I do, my Luna, I do. Just promise me that you will hurry home.’

    There was an urgency in his voice that made me slightly worried. ‘Is everything okay back home?’

    ‘Yes and no. No immediate danger unless you count me as that danger. I f****d up bad, Stella. I pushed Priya a little too far, and she is pissed at me. I don’t know how to fix it with her. We have been friends our entire lives, and the last thing I want to do is lose that.’

    ‘That will never happen. Listen, I can’t do anything here, but I will be back home shortly after nightfall. Wait on me, and I will help in any way that I can. I love you, Alpha.’

    I broke the connection, leaving him with my promise. After a few hours of walking, Dorian had stopped a few feet in front of me, crouching down behind a fallen branch, signaling us to follow his lead. “Hunters,” he whispered.

    Hunters? Well, if they were hunters, then I should be able to speak with them given that I am a Luna. They would be able to tell the instant I let myself be known to them. So, I stood to my feet and rolled over the wrinkles forming on my pants.

    “What the hell are you doing?” Dorian asked, pulling me back down just as I was about to step toward them. “These aren’t your kind of hunters, Stella. These are human hunters. We are on human territory now. You can’t just walk up to them expecting something from them. These guys are out here looking for someone or something specifically. They don’t seem like the kind of guys to stop their mission. If they see you emerging from the woods, they will grow suspicious. It isn’t normal for people to wander out of the woods that aren’t supernatural.”

    Dorian had a point, but at the same time, how exactly would they know? Did they plan on shooting anything that moved out of these woods? It seemed highly unlikely. “Let me take care of it. I can hear their thoughts if I focus hard enough.”

    Before Dorian could stop me, I closed my eyes, focusing on the five men a few feet from us. Their minds were scattered and in frantic states. I could sense their fear. My jaw felt like it was closing as if something were choking the life out of me, but I kept as quiet as I could. I could see it in my mind, what they were so afraid of. It made sense now why I felt like I could breathe. My blood was being drained from my body. They were looking for a vampire.

    “Vampire,” I whispered the instant I broke the connection. “It's Athan. He must have done something terrible here.” Suddenly, I was second-guessing come out here. To read the minds of those hunters, to feel what they felt was horrific. 

    “Hey,” Dorian said, grabbing my chin and forcing me to look him in his dark eyes. “Are you okay? You are looking a little pale.”

    I knew what he was doing. He was acting and some good acting at that. Dorian picked me up in his arms as I wavered between being awake and passing out, which wasn’t an act on my part. Having all those emotions flow through me was a lot to take on all at once. Now all I could feel as if my body was limp, a small side effect of using my powers.

    Dorian ran out of the woods with me in his arms and Dawn putting on an act all on her own. “Please help us,” she cried out.

    The five of them approached us, taking one look at me. “What happened to her? Is she okay?”

    “Something…. something out in the woods hurt our friend. It was too fast for us to see what it was….” Damn, she was good, almost too good.

    There was a tall man among the bunch who seemed to be the one leading this hunt. He was at least six feet tall from the angle I had, older. I would guess in his fifties, his grey hair was starting to peek through in certain areas, and his beard was as long as his hair was. I could tell that he wasn’t as gullible as his friends appeared to be. “What were you three kids doing in the middle of the woods?” 

    “Camping,” Dorian answered quickly, giving him no time to suspect anything. “This is my girlfriend, Dawn, and my little sister,” he said, pointing down to me. “It is her birthday, and I wanted to do something different for her this year.”

    “Hmm,” the hunter buzzed. “Alright, then. Take her into town and find Jugs. She will make sure she is alright.” He stopped, coughing a bit before continuing. “She wasn’t bitten, was she?”

    I could see the hint of a smile on Dawn’s lips. “Bitten? What is that supposed to mean? Of course, she wasn’t.”

    “Alright then, go ahead. When we get back into town, I will find you to check-in. Tell Jugs that Bear that sent you, and she will get you guys taken care of.” He then called out his friends using a strange callout, and they all ran behind him further into the woods, carrying their guns in front of their chests.

    Dorian sat me down when they were out of sight. “Jugs? Bear? Man, these people got some strange ass names. You okay, Stella? Seriously this time?”

    I nodded. “I’m okay. That power seems to drain me a lot. I haven’t quite figured out how to master it, but I will.”

    After taking an extra minute to make sure I was okay, Dorian led us into the town. Each person we passed by looked at us suspiciously. I swear if it weren’t for the sun just starting to go down, they would have thought all of us were vampires. It made me question how it was that Athan was able to walk around in the sunlight without protection. Maybe he had protection from a witch he knew. Doubtful though. I think that I would have picked up on another witch’s power if they were nearby.

    We continued to walk around the small town, moving in and out of what shadows we could find, trying to pick up on Athan’s scent. Dawn swore that she thought she had him a few times, but it turned out to be a drunken guy walking around the streets begging for money for what I assume was for more alcohol.

    Finally, I caught something. It was brief, and the smell was traveling fast. It sort of smelt like it was coming from all around us.

    “Why are you looking for me?” We heard a deep, cracked voice from all around us but could not pinpoint its location. “If you are here to kill me, get in line.”

    “We don’t want to kill you, Athan,” I spoke, considering that the two I brought along with me were trying to find out where his voice was resonating from. “All we want to do is talk. I have something important that I want to share with you if you will let me.”

    A wicked laugh echoed around us, sending a chill down my spine. “Others don’t just seek me out to talk, especially two vampires and a werewolf. Are you gathering vampires as your slaves now? Have you werewolves not taken enough from us that you have to belittle us too? I tell you what sounds better. How about I just get this over with and kill you already?”

    “Lay a f*****g finger on her, and you die!” Dorian hissed in the way he did when I first met him.

    “I’ll take that as a challenge,” Athan responded. Suddenly, I felt a weight over my body coming out of nowhere and nails digging into my sides, making me scream from the unexpected pain.