Wild Moon
REAL WOLVES BITE...
I was taught my whole life about the importance of true mates, how when you find that one wolf for you, everything falls into place.
Everyone who taught me that was a liar.
When I found my true mate, happily ever after sure as hell didn’t start, but hell definitely began.
I ran away, and now I’ve been searching for peace for weeks as I drive around the country.
I didn’t mean to take the wrong road.
I didn’t mean to make it to that small town.
And I didn’t mean to meet two men, who set me and my wolf on fire.
But here I am somehow, and peace is the last thing I’ve found.
And don’t forget about the serial killer…
1
Rune
I was cursed.
That had to be it.
I’d come to this conclusion somewhere on the highway, lost in the middle of nowhere, in a strip of land so empty and so flat, it made you feel like you were the only person on the planet. Hours after my car had been broken into while I used the restroom, leaving me with only a twenty-dollar bill to my name.
I’d been driving for weeks…or was it months already? And the only conclusion for why my life had thus far been a giant shit show of the most epic proportions was because I was cursed.
I was perhaps also an idiot.
The sun was falling in the west, and the sky was a kaleidoscope of color. A mixture of pinks and reds that at one point, would have made me shed a tear, back when I had a heart that could still be affected by beautiful things.
Alistair had sucked all the beauty out of my life, twisted and tore at my heart until it was incapable of viewing the world as it once had.
And yet something inside of me, something that was irrevocably tied to him for forever, it still missed him. Despite what he had done, what he’d kept from me. Despite the fact that I’d been told my whole life how wonderful my life was going to be once I found my true mate, and then he promptly destroyed any notions of happily ever after I’d ever dreamed about.
Despite all of that, I still wanted him.
And I always would. Because that’s how true mates worked. It was a bond that forced you to need something, even if it would kill you.
Hence why I was thinking that I was cursed.
I dragged myself away from my pity party as the sun finally sank below the horizon. The landscape was changing around me. Jagged rocks were springing up from the land that I’d sworn had been flat as a board just a few minutes ago. Had I been lost in my head for that long? That wouldn’t have been a surprise since I’d spent most of the last few weeks stuck in my head. I really needed to pay attention every once in a while though.
The landscape was definitely getting higher and higher, and I could see even steeper peaks up ahead. The road in front of me winded up through them. And now the sun was officially gone, and the stars were peaking their way out in the velvet sky.
Did I mention I was terrified of heights? And not just heights, add in driving and the dark too, and you officially had the trifecta of ridiculous fears that I’d developed over the years.
For a moment, I contemplated pulling over to the side of the road and trying to sleep until the morning. I quickly shook that thought away.
Despite the fact that a part of me wanted to be with Alistair, my true mate, desperately, all the other parts wanted to make sure we never saw that asshole again. The large majority of my parts also wanted to live, and Alistair would kill me after what I’d done. I knew that for a fact.
Taking a deep breath, I continued to drive, and it just kept getting darker and darker.
There were no lights out here, of course there wasn’t. Because why put lights in the middle of nowhere? I put my brights on, not giving a fuck. If I was going to drive through a mountain range in the pitch black, you better believe I was going to be able to see while doing it.
Looking in my rearview mirror, I began to freak when I saw headlights approaching. Any time I saw another car, I wondered if it was Alistair, if somehow, he’d found me despite the crazy precautions I’d taken to be hidden from him. Like the way I’d snuck a stash of cash from Alistair’s safe and bought a car with it when I was supposed to be grocery shopping. The way I’d used more of that cash to pay for everything I’d done on this road trip from hell. The way I’d gotten rid of my cell phone when I left so there was no way he could track it. The way I’d been wearing an ebony wig twenty-four-seven to try and change my looks.
I breathed a bit easier when I saw it was a Honda Accord. Alistair wouldn’t be caught dead in a car that didn’t scream money and privilege. While I was all about the practicality and the gas mileage of a Honda, Alistair wouldn’t get in one no matter the circumstances, even if it was the only way to catch me.
My breathing increased however as the terrain began to rapidly ascend and I realized I was no longer approaching the mountain, I was going up the motherfucker.
There was a guardrail off to my right, but that didn’t calm me down. I was now hyperventilating as I white-knuckled the steering wheel and leaned forward, trying to make sure I stayed right on that white line. If I was on that white line, then I wouldn’t go off the edge. Right?
A loud honk had me jumping in my seat, swearing, and swerving the car. I hadn’t handled unexpected things with grace over the last few years…but could I really be blamed for that after all that had happened?
I tore my eyes off the white line and glanced in the rearview, only to see that there were now a few cars lined up behind me. The driver behind me seemed to be waving his hands around.
Whoops. A glance at my speedometer showed that I was going about ten miles per hour right now. I highly doubted that was the speed limit, based on the cacophony of angry honks I was beginning to hear.
I rolled down my window, continuing to keep my eyes on that white line since my brain was filled with images of my car tumbling down the side of the mountain and bursting into flames fit for an action movie. I began to wave my arm out the window, trying to get them to go around me. Was there etiquette for this? Besides the obvious move of not driving forty miles under the speed limit.
The car behind me finally got the hint, and it swerved around me, honking loudly and rudely as it did so.
“Jerk,” I muttered. The rest of the cars followed their leader, their brittle horns filling the night.
And then finally, it was just me.
Which maybe I hadn’t been thinking through, because now that there weren’t any other angry drivers to worry about, I was more aware than ever that I was painfully alone.
“What will it be like, Mama? When I find him,” I whispered to my mother as she curled up beside me on the bed, a copy of Harry Potter laying in her lap just as it was every night.
“He’ll make all your dreams come true, baby,” she said with a gentle smile. “He’ll see all the parts in your heart, and he’ll accept them no matter what he finds.”
“Why are there different parts in my heart?” I asked, the six-year-old me very confused about the words my mother was saying.
She giggled in that magical way of hers, and I watched entranced at the love I could see in her eyes. Was every mother that wonderful?