The Pink Moon

After the Faber brothers dragged me out with them, I’d taken to bathing in the river as rarely as possible to avoid being caught there. Primarily because I now knew they hunted there.

I went down there in the hours just after dawn when the wolves were coming in from hunting or border patrol and heading to slumber.

I was rising and creeping out to try to forage what food I could. And to wash. Another female had figured out the same thing I did.

She was a pretty woman with long, swinging blonde hair, nearly the same shade as mine. She was throwing water over herself. Her golden skin shimmered as the water poured over her.

She was beautiful and I envied her a little as I sat huddled by the trees, waiting for her to go so I could wash.

Eventually, she’d turned and spotted me.

“Hey, you there. What are you doing?” She leaned forward, frowning in my direction. “Come out of there.”

I hesitantly emerged. Checking the rag covering my head, I pulled the cloak tighter around myself.

She relaxed upon seeing my face. “You can come in, you don’t have to wait over there.”

It occurred to me that she’d dared to order what might be a male from hiding.

~She’s bold,~ I thought in admiration.

“I’m Laura.” She grabbed some soapweed and scrubbed it over her smooth body. “Who are you?”

“Valerie.”

Laura was friendly and easy to talk with. I grew comfortable with her immediately, though I still waited on the edge of the bank for her to finish washing and go before I dared strip off my disguise to bathe.

We discussed how afraid we were of what Martha had told us the males might do. I’d managed to escape unscathed when we were hunting because they were so focused on the deer. But there would be few distractions come the Mating Moon.

“No one is breeding with me,” she said confidently, working her way to the edge of the water and climbing out. A cascade of water poured off her as she swept up a bundle of clothes along the rocks.

“I don’t want to be either,” I told her, hugging my knees to my chest.

“Then we’ll fix your hut up like mine.” She finished adjusting her dress and threw her silky hair back.

“How?” I leaned forward.

“I’ll show you.” She grinned. “Tomorrow afternoon work?”

“Yes!” I said excitedly.

“We’ll need to get it done right away.” She looked up, assessing the sky. “Mating Moon will be here day after tomorrow.”

~They’re as likely to kill you as mate you.~

~The males go wild with violence when they want to mount.~

I swallowed, Martha’s warnings echoing in my ears.

“I’ll be ready tomorrow afternoon, then.”

I watched her leave, feeling the first surge of hope that I might actually survive this pink moon.

***

I tried to sleep that night. Turning one way then the other. But always that lone drop of blood came back to me. I could see all the figures behind it in some grotesque scene, but no matter how hard I tried to focus the memory, I couldn’t see beyond that one torturous drop.

The one difference tonight was that I could hear voices. A woman’s ground-shattering scream and the whimpering of scared children.

~No. No. No!~

Then running. Endlessly running.

Then that fall. The hideous crack as my head hit a rock. A crunch which resounded in my ears, echoing on through the immediate darkness.

That sound and that moment were forever on repeat.

Crunch. Blackness. Crunch. Blackness. Over and over.

The sound of footsteps behind me and the sense that I was running for my life.

~Why can’t I retrieve more? I need to know more! ~

I was breathing raggedly. Sweating ferociously and utterly terrified, I woke up. I reminded myself that I wasn’t there. That whatever had wanted to kill me, couldn’t get to me.

~It’s over. It’s gone. ~

But a part of me wanted to remember. Wanted to know what happened.

~What had I been trying to run from?~

~And who drove me here? ~ I knew someone had lightly urged me this way, but for the life of me, I could no longer see the face that had stepped into my path. I’d been too groggy from my head wound to set that memory anywhere permanent.

Now I couldn’t find anything more than blue eyes. I groaned and flopped backward on my cot, massaging my forehead as I willed my tensed body to relax enough that I might yet get some sleep.

But it remained just out of reach. I tossed and turned all night.

I saw glimpses of a dark cottage where sun glimpsed through a far window in the next room. Seeming impossibly far away.

In the cottage was my wolf. A cream beast sitting in the corner, peering back at me.

~This was where it happened.~ I recognized. ~This was my home.~

I watched as a door was shoved open. Everything was moving so slow that I saw wood splintering and heard the snarling as they piled in. They scrambled over each other in their haste to attack. I could see bits of their faces but nothing stuck. Nothing that I could capture and twist into that shape my wolf had seen in the doorway of the cottage.

~These are faces I don’t know.~

Until I saw one head lift in the back and glimpsed that familiar scar ripping up one cheek and over one eye, splitting his brow. His eyes were cold black things, as hollow as he was.

But to my shock, fear wasn’t what I felt.

My wolf bared her teeth, her gaze locked on that male. Her lip quivered over pointed fangs and her eyes flared in fury.

~She wants to kill him.~

I realized how different we were, she and I.

~She’s everything I’m not. She wants things I don’t.~

Then the faces of the Faber brothers entered my mind. Calming the grotesque flashes and taking over my vision. I couldn’t tell if she or I that had conjured them into my dreams.

***

The next afternoon I was still bothered that I’d seen the Faber brothers in my dreams, that they had calmed me. Trying to find answers, I kept replaying the scrambling faces bursting into the cottage.

Laura arrived later with a basket in hand. It had small metal pins and a wooden handle jutting out.

I eyed it curiously as I let her in.

“Oh, this place is going to take some work.” She eyed the window with the splintered shutters. “Oof, let me go see if I can find some discarded ones that we might be able to use. There’s a pile of spares toward the back of camp. I’ll check.” She scurried off but quickly returned with two new panels.

She showed me the wooden handle with the metal top. She taught me how to hit the metal pins to better attach the wood. It worked far better than all I had tried.

“So has Old Martha talked to you yet?”

“Yes,” I confessed. “Is it true what she says? That the males are as likely to kill us as mate us?”

Laura nodded.

“Because she says so?” I asked hesitantly. “Or has it…”

“A friend of Martha’s was killed during the breeding under a Mating Moon,” Laura said.

I blanched. “That sounds terrible.”

~They’re that violent in the haze of their lust?~

“I’ve heard them, you know,” Laura said. “The cries, wails, and grunts. Every year that pink moon rises.”

“That sounds awful.”

“It’s terrifying.”

I learned Martha had warned Laura of all the same things she had me, which gave us much to talk about while we worked that afternoon. We even went to get more of Martha’s tea while it was safe in camp.

Laura showed me how to use loose wood we gathered from around camp to block the shutters. We put a branch diagonal over the window and securing it with a metal pin on one end. We folded it over and let it sit along the floor. She showed me how I would place it and drive more pins through it on the day of the Mating Moon. We did the same next to the door. We placed one on each side, so it could fold down and overlap the door, forcing it to remain closed.

She had me move them a few times to show her that I understood what she meant.

I did what she told me to, feeling more confident by the moment.

~I can keep them out.~

I wasn’t going to be attacked again. The Mating Moon could be different from what drove me from my home. But the mere idea of danger dug up my bloody memories and the fear of it happening again.

~Lose everything I’ve learned all over again.~

Which brought up the same old questions that endlessly plagued me. ~Who was I? Why was I living in an isolated house in the woods? Who wanted me dead?~

~What did I do so wrong?~

Laura and I spoke about strategies to avoid being caught alone beneath the Mating Moon. She told me things I could do to prepare to stay indoors, collecting food and washing the day before.

“No matter what,” Laura cautioned me. “Do ~not~ go out once the sun has set.”

I nodded. “I understand. Thank you.”

She smiled sweetly and nodded her head, leaving me.

I practiced moving those logs. I put the handle into the basket with the pins and tucked it against the fireplace, hiding it from view unless someone was right against it.

***

Despite all the mental preparing I’d done for the pink moon, I wasn’t ready. I pulled all my barricades into place. Blocking the entrances, I reinforced them with what little furniture I had.

The number of howls shook the night. They came from within the wall and beyond.

~They’re everywhere.~

Some were close, I could smell their musky scent.

I’d thought that might happen but what I wasn’t prepared for was what came next.

“Valerie…” I heard Huntley calling from beyond the window. “Open it for me?”

I held my silence, afraid if they knew I was in there, they would rip through all my efforts to get to me.

“Valerie,” Victor’s voice was more assertive. “We know you’re in there. We can smell every inch of you.”

“Valerie…” Chase sing-songed.

They sounded like they had my hut surrounded. Their musk was potent, filling my nostrils through every crack in the wood.

“Valerie,” Victor commanded. “Come out to us.”

I shook my head, my fingers curling into my cloak as I huddled in the corner.

Huntley was at the window, Chase was at the door, but when I heard Victor next it emerged from the other side of the wall I was pressed against.

“We can smell you, woman. Your sex, your wolf, cries for us.”

As if his rough voice had conjured the reaction, my body wept for him. Dampness warmed my thighs, and the center of my body began to ache as if desperate to be filled.

A tiny whine escaped my throat unbidden. I covered my mouth, knowing I was sealing back the sounds of my she-wolf.

“There you are,” Victor murmured. “Come out here, Rabbit. Let me have her. I’ll make her moan.”

I swallowed. My mouth had gone dry as barren dirt. I still clutched a hand over my mouth, but I felt my forehead beading with sweat. My body yearned to obey him. As if I was made to do exactly as he ordered me.

~No!~

I twisted my fingers into the skin of my face, hoping that the pain would draw me from whatever was happening.

“Valerie,” he coaxed.

I swear I could feel the words vibrating through the opening in the boards, his breath brushing against my tingling skin. Goosebumps emerged over every inch of my body.

My wolf raged against her cage, fighting her way to the surface. She circled every obstacle I threw her way, until fur pushed through my pores and twined through my hair.

Huntley and Chase were banging against the entrances, hammering their fists in pure rage. But Victor was the one I found the most terrifying.

He wasn’t fighting his way in. He was coaxing ~me out.~

“Don’t turn.” Victor’s voice almost sang the warning. “Or we’re all coming in to get you.”

I didn’t expect fighting my own wolf back would be so hard. I slid to my knees and Victor moved with me, his voice as low to the ground as I was.

“Come out,” he said huskily. “Come to me.”

How could his voice be so hypnotic? I could feel warm spots on each side of my shoulders, where I knew his hands were against that wall, warming all the way through and penetrating to touch me.

It was dizzying.

~If I change, every male for miles could sense me in here.~

~Don’t change. Don’t change,~ I chanted in my head.

My head fell back, and my hands itched to grab that handle in the basket and beat the branches barricading the door aside. ~And head straight out into their arms.~

~Let them have me…~