Daughter of the Tides, Servants of the Moon Book 2
a half leaf of silver

The sun was high in the sky when he awoke, a tray of food, long cold, sat on the bed. He had been covered with a quilt, it smelled like Del.

There was a note in Ainsley’s curly script, Went to Mamó’s.

Nyall forced himself to eat as he had so many times since Moire’s death, as he had seen his father do every day for the years that followed his mother’s death. He felt so guilty about loving Del, but hopeful at the same time. He never imagined he would feel this twisted up. He knew Moire would have liked Delilah, and even Essie. He never imagined when they fled this land a decade ago that he would find such good friends. That he would learn so much more about the Oracles and the Servants of the Moon than Mamó had taught them. He believed in the importance of teaching the faith of the Goddess and the path of warrior honor to many wolves who had lost their way in recent generations. For the first time, he wanted to be the chosen one and he knew who he wanted for his second.

Kaiyou, the head warrior and Beta of Moon’s Gate, was his friend and mentor, and was mate-lost like Nyall. Kaiyou had taught him about the strength and courage of she-wolves. His mate had died protecting her pregnant sister and their pups during an attack by another pack. She had fought with many fatal wounds and did not stop until her last breath. Her heart held a courage Nyall could admire. After her death, Kaiyou lived only for his children, then his infant brother and his service to the Goddess. Often Kaiyou, Ketsu, and Nyall performed the same task, usually travelling with Essie, unless she and Del traded places. Then they protected Del as she sought answers the Moon did not give her. Kaiyou and Essie had been the ones who brought Nyall home after Moire’s death and his months of darkness. It was one the few times both Essie and Del were in the field working together. He had avenged Moire and all the New Wemyss dead.

Suddenly, Nyall needed to not be in this house. He shifted and ran to the place that were they had lost their innocence. His wolf laid by the pool in the mossy grotto and whimpered as he looked into the water. Both he and his wolf felt guilty for having feelings for Del, with her love of books and soft manner that helped him grieve and taught him how to have faith again after years of disbelief. She wasn’t his first lover since Moire died but she was the one that meant something. He knew Del missed her mate as much as he did. The mate bond had pulled on them every night until the Wolf Blood Moon eclipse. He was so tired of being alone since Moire’s death, and Del made the feeling of emptiness go away. Mamó had told him whom he chose would become his true mate, whom else could he chose besides the one who had given up her own true mate so his wouldn’t be alone in the Fields of the Moon. He was mentally and emotionally exhausted when he got back to the farm house.

That evening, he came home to a freshly showered Del making holishkes or cabbage rolls. She had turned in his arms and kissed him, exactly the way Moire had done so many times. She cooked and talked of their day while his tears fell in her dark hair. She knew what he was feeling so she let him feel it and was just there for him. They had not been successful in getting into Mamó’s den after a day of digging. That night he made himself lay in his and Moire’s bed. He did not sleep, just stared out at the dark forest beyond.

The next day after another few hours of their wolves digging, Comhnyall was able to wedge the door open enough for Del and Ainsley to squeeze inside. The rooms were in ruin, filled with dirt, support beams shattered by an earthquake after they left. After an hour more of digging and rummaging through the surviving contents of Mamó’s centuries-spanning life, the two she-wolves shoved a knapsack out to Nyall before they wriggled out. They tried to brush as much grime off them as they could before dressing.

“Most of what was in there was destroyed or buried, but we got what we could,” Del said as Ainsley sneezed.

I am starving! I’m dirty! We need to go home before I die. She made the signs with her hands and feigned fainting.

Del laughed, “I need a shower too, and a lot of food, little fox.”

“By the Moon, you and Essie could eat more than a pack,” Nyall complained but his tone was teasing as they walked back to the Jeep. “And Ainsley isn’t far behind.”

Moire’s little sister stuck her tongue out him, it made him laugh, but Del just shrugged, “Hey, girls like food too.”

Lots of food. Ainsley’s hands danced as she grinned, showing white teeth surrounded by dirt.

That evening at home, freshly showered and fed, they sorted through the treasures from Mamó’s den. They were laughing as they shared stories of Mamós ‘punishments’ and pranks. The over-two-centuries old shewolf had a vicious sense of humor, almost as sharp as her teeth. They had all loved her so much.

Nyall was looking through a book containing the names of all the New Wemyss wolves born in this land, he would need to add Moire, their pup’s, and Mamó’s death dates to it. Del was looking at Mamó’s healer’s tools and oracle bowls, particularly very old set of stone runes that contain many that are not used anymore. Ainsley sorted through the jars they had taken from a shelf that had survived. She stopped, shaking a tiny clay pot with a lid, sealed with resin and wax, she couldn’t get it open, so she handed it to Comhnyall who popped it easily. The smell of silver filled the room and he set the jar down quickly as Ainsley leaned back. Del picked it up and dumped it in a napkin over her hand. Two strange, tarnished arrowheads fall into her palm. She studied them, turning the deadly objects over and over, one had three flanges and the other four. The edges were serrated. Del placed the four part one in front of Comhnyall.

“What is it and why would Mamó have kept such a dangerous thing?” Del demanded.

Nyall poked at the four-flanged arrowhead with a fork, “It’s called a broad-head, but I have only ever seen one like this. I pulled it out of my leg when we fled the keep. Serrations mean they do more damage and silver means they were meant for wolves. This must be the two that Mamó pulled out of Moire and I.”

“Why does this one have three and that one four?” Del asked fiddling with the tri-blade but before Comhnyall could answer, the third blade broke off. Both scowled, and Comhnyall growled.

“Well, they’re poorly made, if they come apart that easily.”

Del suddenly got a strange look on her face, “It looks like a leaf,” she whispered laying up the double-bladed piece and the broken flange for Ainsley to study.

It’s a leaf! Signing, then Ainsley ran from the room, as Del began whispering, almost chanting, “A half leaf, a half leaf of silver, Oh Goddess how could I be so stupid... it’s a half leaf of silver.” Tears began running down her face, she looked in his eyes with a haunted expression, “Oh Nyall, I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand what She meant by it.”

Nyall struggled to keep his composure. It was never a good thing when Oracles start freaking out. “What about half leaf of silver?”

Ainsley rushed back into the room with two drawings, both of Moire, both have the half blade of the broad-head drawn in them as a leaf. She has tears running down her face, she kept opening and closing her mouth in a distressed way, but no sound came out. She pointed between her drawings and the broken arrowhead.

Del’s voice was a grieved whisper, “When Moire got pregnant, Mamó sent me a letter asking me to scry for her. To see what was making her sick. What I saw didn’t make sense. I saw Moire was sickened by a strange half of a leaf, it was made of silver, in her stomach like she had eaten it. I didn’t know it was a piece of an arrow left behind. I mean I...” Her words cut off as he grabbed her arms and dragged her to her feet.

“You knew!” He roared, shaking her, he could feel the need to shift. Ainsley was sobbing silently in her chair, crushing the pictures against her chest.

Del nodded her head, choking out her words, “I’m so sorry Nyall, when I asked the question, I always got the same two images. One vision of her holding a half of a silver leaf in her hand against the front of her belly. The other vision showed the half leaf in her stomach like she had eaten it. I sent Essie here to help Mamó search for anything silver that she could possible swallow, we even tested the water for silver. I’m sorry I didn’t know what the Goddess was trying to show me. I didn’t know that arrows could look like leaves.”

“You let her die,” he growled in Del’s face. Words distorted by descending teeth. “Then you took her from me forever and gave her to another.”

She kept whispering I’m sorry, over and over as if he could ever forgive her.

Nyall hated her, he hated the Moon, they let his Moire die. He didn’t know that Essie had come here before the day they fled to the oracles’ packs. Everything for the last eight years had been based on a lie, the Moon Goddess had never intended to let him keep Moire when She had taken his vow. He didn’t realize he had extended his claws until Ainsley was prying his hands from Del’s bleeding arms.

“Let go!” Ainsley’s whispered shout seemed to bring in partly back to himself.

“Be gone when I return. Both of ye!” Nyall turned away but Del clutched at him, pleading forgiveness as he tried to walk out of the house.

“Please Nyall, I love you. I’m so sorry.” When she tried to stop him from stepping off the porch, he slapped her hard enough to knock her backwards and into the wall. She collapsed in a heap, sobbing.

“Stop it!” Ainsley got between them.

He resisted the urge to push Ainsley out of the way and beat Del further. He had never hit a woman when it wasn’t in battle. Under his anger he felt shame as his own wolf lashed out at him.

“I hate ye, Delilah, and your Moon,” he snarled viciously. “It was all a conspiracy, Ye let Moire die.”

Ainsley knelt to put her arms around a distraught Del, looking at Comhnyall like he was a monster, like he had finally gone mad. He dropped into his wolf and ran. He couldn’t bear to look at them any longer because he feared he might kill them.

Frost turned the empty branches silver in the waning moonlight. His wolf’s breaths made clouds for him to run through. It wasn’t until he stopped on the burial mound of his pack that he realized how far he had run. The sun had hours earlier, and the waning half-lidded eye of the Goddess looked down on him as he snarled his contempt.

His angry mind repeated, the Moon and her oracles let his mate and pup die. They knew what was wrong and no one told him. Mamó didn’t tell him, Essie didn’t tell him. Delilah didn’t tell him; even little Ainsley had known, and none told him. He wanted to kill them all, his wolf howled the song of the warrior luna called to battle. He howled the song of the destiny his Moire had been born to and then denied.

He shifted into his skin and shouted at the Moon, “I am finished, let your enemies destroy the world with war, I do not care, ye heartless bitch! I won’t do your bidding any more. I hate you! You took everything from me! First, you took my mother, then my father and brothers, and my pack, and then you took my mate and our pup! You even killed an entire other pack so I wouldn’t leave this land. What more do you want from me? I have nothing left!” He collapsed to his knees, overcome with grief, “I have nothing left.”

He sobbed quietly. He couldn’t feel her watching him, couldn’t feel anything except the hole where his mate bond had been.

“Oh Moire! I cannot do it without ye.”

Fur replaced skin and his wolf howled and howled until it had no voice left, mourning like a lost soul of the Christian Damned from a book he had once read. It was called Dante’s Inferno, he didn’t need a book to tell him about levels of Hell, he was living the werewolf version of it.

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