I glanced at Orion, but he’d settled back onto his heels. He was once again giving me space to fight my own battles.
And the answer felt clear. I needed to know what was going on with my sister so I could keep her safe.
“Tell me,” I demanded of my aunt.
With an effort, we captured Celeste and Finnegan’s attention then spaced ourselves inside the sandbox in an arrangement mandated by Vega. Two couples facing each other in a diamond, me between Celeste and Finnegan and directly across from Orion.
Outside our little grouping, Vega waited until the night turned quiet. Then she spoke words that were deeply familiar but that I’d never experienced quite like this.
“Beneath the silver moon, matebrand shall unite…”
The moonlit sky above us had been clear one moment earlier. But now, clouds appeared out of nowhere and darkness deepened. Only the distant glow of a streetlight allowed me to make out Orion’s silhouette while, to Celeste and Finnegan, our surroundings likely appeared pitch dark.
“Forged in love and lore, woken in the night.”
The slow cadence of Vega’s recitation matched the bite of sand now flinging itself against my ankles. I glanced down…and saw myself, or a shadowy version thereof, coalescing out of sand particles. I was hunting peccaries in lupine form. Quite literally running into Orion.
Sparkles of incipient matebrand rose between the miniature, sandy versions of ourselves. Beside me, Celeste started speaking then snapped her teeth back together around the first word. Somehow, we all knew now wasn’t the time to interrupt.
“Woven ancient runes,” Vega continued, “two hearts beat as one.”
For a moment, I could feel the fullness of the matebrand that had once been. The sand at knee-level transitioned into a swirling mass of symbols I remembered far too well while, across from me, Orion’s eyes reflected the glowing magic.
Even though we were an arm’s length apart, I could feel him hugging me close. Warmth suffused me. Safety. Unity.
I relaxed in a way I hadn’t for weeks. In a way I seldom had before meeting Orion.
This was right. This was…
“Tattoos turn to stone, matebrand’s path undone.”
My tattooed arm went abruptly numb and I hissed despite myself. Emptiness sliced through me, emptiness I remembered far too well from the day Orion broke our mate bond. The loss was as strong now as it had been a month earlier. Stronger maybe, since I knew Orion better. Knew what I’d given up without even attempting to cling on.
I was alone. My throat tightened.
Across the sand, Orion leaned forward as if he wanted to take my pain away. He couldn’t, of course. What was broken would remain broken, for now at least. And we needed to stay focused, because the important part was coming, the part relating to Celeste.
“Where the glyphs lie halved, null shall overlay.”
Sure enough, the swirling sand formed the exact same symbols that were inked into Celeste and Finnegan’s wrists. Glowing half-moons of aerial debris rotated until it became obvious how the key of one might fit into the lock of the other.
The sandy symbols clicked together. The numbness in my arm turned to ice.
I peered down, expecting my tattoos to be moving or glowing. They weren’t. Instead, they were fading. Disappearing into my skin like snow receding in the face of spring sunshine.
Then Vega spoke a new line. One that filled me with dread because it suggested that, once again, my relationship with Orion wasn’t going to be decided rationally between the pair of us. That it would instead be forced into a shape we hadn’t chosen by an outside power.
“Sister matebrand formed on the fifty-second day.”
No image in the sand. Instead, a moon not far past full pushed out of the clouds above us. Ink on my arm reappeared, looking just like it had before I stepped into the sandbox. Unmoving but also deeply black, unfaded.
Whatever the poem forecast, it hadn’t happened yet. Hadn’t happened but would if I didn’t find a way to halt upcoming events within—I ran the math quickly in my head—four short days.
Chapter 5
Along with the final line of the poem came a feeling that someone had sunk a hook into my gut pulling me west. Not a surprise since that was the direction of Orion’s territory, Vega’s territory, and the outpack. Plus, I had a germ of an idea for deciphering the poetry, an idea that would require me to travel in that exact direction…
But there was nothing I could do about any of it that night. Or, rather, that morning. Because dawn was already softening the air around us by the time Orion’s patrolling pack mates reported Council operatives dangerously close to our location. The burned-out basement had riled them up like a nest of ants fighting back against an anteater, and the city wasn’t large enough for us to avoid their search parties indefinitely.
Still, we lingered, arguing our way to a reluctant consensus. Celeste would return home to Julius. She hadn’t wanted to. Had intended to stick by Finnegan, especially after Orion offered to house the near-stranger. And while I’d been itching to get my sister away from the Council ever since learning about their dark side, nothing about Celeste’s slapdash plan passed the sniff test.
“You can’t just abandon your class.”
“It’s summer vacation.”
I should have known that. Still… “Julius will move heaven and earth to find you if you disappear.”
“I’ll call him.” Even though she was ostensibly speaking to me, Celeste’s gaze never parted from Finnegan’s.
“And tell him what? That you’ve realized he’s involved in caging shifter children? Any potential leads will dry up immediately. We’ll never get them out if we tip off the Council.”
It was an underhanded move on my part, focusing on the still entirely hypothetical kids. But it worked. Well, it worked after we got a second report of Council operatives even closer than they’d been ten minutes earlier. And after Vega reluctantly granted permission for Finnegan to take refuge in our pack instead of Orion’s.
“You’ll be responsible for his actions,” my alpha warned me. Then, before Orion could say what he clearly wanted to—that he would join us and keep an eye on Finnegan—she bit out, “No.”
Which meant, half an hour of evasive maneuvers, one plane ride, then an hour’s drive later, I still wasn’t following that hook in my gut, which now told me to travel north. Instead, I was leading a shifter who couldn’t shift and who I didn’t trust back toward the subadult housing unit where I’d promised my sister he’d be safely looked after.
Vega had parked in front of her home then left us to walk through the blazing desert emptiness together, and I should have realized what was coming. After all, my gut had been twisting ominous warning for hours, telling me that I’d forgotten something critical. Meanwhile, the adobe house we were walking toward was well past the center of the pack’s main housing cluster, off on its own where raucous parties wouldn’t disturb the peace of light sleepers…or where ambushers could lie in wait without worrying about pesky passersby disturbing their attack.
