Daughter of the Moon (The Moon People, Book Two) (56 page)

We are people,
Netya wanted to sob.
People just like any of you.
But her throat was dry and tight, and she could not bring herself to give voice to such feelings. Instead she swallowed, blinking some of the redness from her eyes, then raised her head and looked at the man through a tangle of dark hair.

"If I tell you, will you tell me something?" she said.

A look of fear crossed his face, but he bobbed his head eagerly.

"How many of my clan did you kill last night?"

Nekare averted his gaze for a moment. It was difficult to tell whether it was a gesture of shame or wounded pride. "I do not know. I saw no one fall, and many say they fought nothing but spirits. Perhaps we took many more lives than the two our alpha claimed, perhaps not. Most of our number are still missing. We travelled only with those who had the strength to follow."

Netya cast a glance around the rugged tunnel. It was true; there were far fewer wolves with them than she had seen leaving the valley.

"Will you answer my question now?" Nekare pried.

She looked back at him, feeling even more numb than before. "Yes, Adel is a demon. She is a demon greater than any your seers have ever dared to glimpse. No dark spirit refuses her call. She can poison a man's mind to madness with a single word, and her curse will follow your alpha to his dying breath."

Nekare's brow twitched. She could tell he doubted her words, but perhaps the fear of them being true was enough to keep him silent. She buried her face in her arms again and closed her eyes, trying to block out the world around her and find some small spark of hope in the darkness.

It was truly a miserable morning. Even Netya's captors seemed quiet and subdued as they sprawled out around the tunnel to rest and lick their wounds. Those who had been unfortunate enough to stumble upon the traps were the worst off, shivering and sweating as if afflicted by potent fevers while their companions attempted to rouse them back to their senses. A few more stragglers began to appear as the day grew brighter, but more than half of Miral's number were still unaccounted for.

Thankfully none of the other men approached Netya, keeping their distance from her fire as they tended to their own concerns. Perhaps it was only Nekare's presence that kept them away, for she saw the way they looked at her. She was hated and feared by these men, just as her own kind had reviled the Moon People. Did they still desire further retribution for their defeat?

Netya must have been exhausted, but sleep was impossible. Thoughts of Meadow and Selo still hounded her every waking moment, until the danger of her situation eventually forced her to push past them. Her pack-sisters might be dead, but she was not. As much as she wanted to give up, to close her eyes and hope that when she opened them she would be back in the valley, she knew that such self-pity would not help protect her unborn daughter. Even if the child had to be raised a captive of Miral's pack, it was Netya's duty to have faith in the vision she had been gifted. Syr's light must still be there protecting her. It had to be.

A few foragers returned with handfuls of dirty roots and hard nuts for the others to chew, but when Nekare moved to hand Netya her share Miral's voice interrupted them from the other side of the tunnel.

"Not for her. Let her go hungry a while longer." The alpha stared at Netya, his eyes bloodshot, one leg bound tight against a straight branch. He leaned back against the rocks, watching her for a moment, breathing heavily, then gestured in Nekare's direction. "Tend his wound, then come here and bind my leg properly. I need a seer's touch."

Netya stiffened, drawing back from the alpha's gaze, but a tiny shake of his head and a warning look from Nekare stilled her. She did not want to anger her captors any further. Miral's sickly smile returned to his lips as she shuffled around the fire to do as he had instructed, shivering with revulsion.

"It does not seem bad," Nekare said as he loosened the improvised dressing from his hip, peeling away the bloody wad of grass so that Netya could examine his wound. "I took a javelin from one of your warriors."

"Is it painful when you breathe?" she asked, distracting herself by focusing on the task at hand.

Nekare shook his head. "Only when I walk. The pain is all in my hip."

"You should not dress it with grass. It may slow the healing, or make it worse," Netya said, allowing Nekare to untie her wrist bindings so that she could work properly. With her hands free she lifted the man's clothing to examine the ugly wound the javelin had punctured through his flesh. "I could make you a proper dressing with the right leaves."

"Tamnin," Nekare called, jerking his head in the direction of one of the recently returned foragers. "She needs leaves."

The man showed no particular aversion to Netya's presence as she described to him what she needed, for he seemed far too weary to do anything but obey instructions.

"She could poison you with her plants," one of the others muttered.

"She won't," Miral said, giving Netya another dark smile. "Our young seer knows what will happen if she tries."

It took a great deal of concentration for Netya to focus on what she was doing once Tamnin returned with the leaves, and her hands shook and moved sluggishly as she worked, but Nekare's wound did not seem serious. Still, she lingered on the dressing, delaying the inevitable for as long as she could until Miral eventually grew impatient and called her over.

"Thank you," Nekare said under his breath. "Remember what I told you. He is your alpha as much as he is mine now."

Netya's nose wrinkled with distaste. No matter what she said or did, Miral would never be her alpha. She tried not to look him in the eye as she approached and knelt down by his leg. Try as she might, she could not seem to focus on her healing knowledge this time.

"Don't worry yourself, child," he said, making her flinch in discomfort as he ruffled her hair with a coarse palm. "I'd not anger the spirits by taking the life of one of their dark-haired daughters. Not even a sun wolf."

"You speak nothing but lies," she said softly.

"I speak true," he growled, his hand suddenly tightening in her hair as he forced her to look at him. "You are the one who will make me a liar if you refuse to learn your place." His reddened eyes pierced hers for a moment, then he smiled again and let go. "Bind my leg."

Netya tried her best to ignore that she was in the presence of the man who had killed her friends, seeing only the injury that needed tending. Every moment she spent touching him was a moment too long, and she hurried to finish as quickly as possible. The gashes across Miral's knee looked to have come from a huge set of claws, and the bruising and swelling suggested broken bone, though it was impossible to be certain. She could have asked the alpha to describe his pain, but the sound of his voice was not something she wanted to endure any longer than was necessary. He had told her only to bind the leg, so she would bind it.

Even though he must have been in immense pain for many hours, he voiced not a word of protest as she dressed his wounds and bound both the original branch and a second, sturdier one to either side of his leg with knots of cord that were far tighter than they needed to be.

"You have a poor touch for a healer," Miral said as she finished, then looked over at Nekare. "I thought she was Adel's apprentice?"

"That was what she told me at the creek."

Miral snorted with amusement, addressing Netya again. "You should not have spared him. I am grateful to have my warrior at my side still, but a male would have known better than to let his enemy run free. That is why your pack will not last."

"We drove you from our valley last night."

Miral's hand shot out as soon as the words left her lips, her scalp bursting with pain as he dragged her by a fistful of hair to face him. "Remember how your sisters died when you tried to face me." He said the words with venom in his voice, slowly, deliberately, as if explaining something to a child. "Many of these men," he gestured to those around him, "they fear you. But you and I know what you really are. Your tricks, your spirits—there is no more power in them than the strength you hold in these little arms." He snatched Netya's wrist in his free hand, twisting until she cried out in pain. "Do you think your den mother has the courage to face me in true battle? Do you think the man I smell on you will come running to try and take back his female?"

Netya struggled to keep from buckling beneath the alpha's vicious gaze. Her wrist felt like it was about to snap. She let out a gasp of breath that was desperately close to a sob.

Miral bared a row of sharp white teeth at her. "I hope they do. Let them come for you without the magic of their valley to protect them." With a deep grunt of exertion he crooked his good leg beneath him and hauled himself upright, yanking Netya after him as he limped toward the centre of the tunnel. "What do you think she will do to you?!" he bellowed at the others. "You think a seer's power is greater than a warrior's? You think this spirit totem will protect her?" He snatched the back of Netya's wolf pelt cloak and held the animal's head up above her own, forcing her to don the headdress that was the symbol of her status. "A white wolf," Miral continued, his voice growing more aggressive despite the great pain he was clearly in. "White like the sun. You defile this great beast's spirit by wearing his skin." With a jerk of his wrist he tore the garment from Netya's back, the thin leather ties ripping through the edges of the hide as they pinched tightly against her shoulders.

She stood there in the midst of Miral's pack, more isolated than ever without the comforting weight of her cloak about her shoulders. The alpha held up the precious garment for all to see, then cast it upon the flames of the nearest fire.

A chill silence fell over the group, punctuated only by the crackle of the embers and the sound of Netya's shuffling feet as she struggled to break away and save her white wolf from the flames. Miral held her tight, forcing her to watch as the headdress began to steam and smoulder. To burn such a revered garment was an affront to the spirits, but to Netya it was as if the alpha was burning part of her soul. The great white wolf, the first spirit she had met face to face, who she had feared, and then grown to love as he guided her through her visions. The cloak she had worn to signify that she was no longer an alpha's concubine, but an apprentice to the seerhood. It had become a part of who she was.

Just like Meadow and Selo. Just like her pendant. Miral had taken it from her in the blink of an eye.

And he could take more. It was only then that Netya truly realised it. Her own life could vanish as quickly as the ties holding the pelt to her shoulders had snapped. It was in Miral's power to do all of these things, and worse. There was nothing standing between her and the alpha's wrath.

She stood there watching her cloak burn even after Miral let her go, leaving her to stand in the middle of the cave as an example to his followers. It was not the first time in her life she had felt hopeless, but it was the first she had felt truly wretched. What was she now, but a girl claimed by another conquering alpha?

The beautiful white had burned away from her wolf's fur by the time Nekare finally took pity on Netya and pulled her away, leaving the remnants of the charred hide to crumble away to ashes upon the dying coals.

—38—

First Blood

The morning drizzle became a patter, then a downpour, washing away Netya's scent with it. Caspian's fur was soaked, dragging him down with every heavy step he took. He could barely see where he was going with his muzzle so close to the ground, blinking rain from his eyes and snorting it from his muzzle every time he breathed in. He was losing her. The elements themselves seemed bent on driving him back, pushing a divide between him and Netya until their bond broke. With every moment that passed he felt her growing farther and farther away, taken as some prize or trophy for Miral and his ilk.

He huffed more water from his muzzle, snarling in anger as he imagined sinking his teeth into Miral's flesh, making him pay for the lives he had taken and the pain he had caused. The wolf that Caspian so rarely communed with was free and wild, ready to bite and tear and kill.

But the rain was beating him, and as his fury grew more impotent, so too did his strength to push on. He trudged through the mud on the bank of half-dry riverbed that was quickly refilling to a murky stream, his fur feeling like clumps of clay as it hung in bedraggled tangles from his lupine body. He did not know where he was, only that he was following Miral north, not west toward the river like he had expected. The land had become new and strange once the trail passed beyond the boundaries of his own territory, and on four legs he was too low down to see the landmarks that usually guided him when he was out hunting or scouting. To the west lay a stretch of forest, and to the north and east grassy scrubland rolled toward what he could only assume was the land of rocks and evergreen trees in which they had spent the previous winter.

It was no longer the wolf, but now the man that was clawing at the back of his consciousness, roaring at him to listen, to pause and consider what he was doing, to relinquish his animal body so that he could think clearly once again. But Caspian's wolf had been ensnared by something even more powerful than the scent of the sweetest prey, and he refused to let up for an instant, even as his strength ebbed and the trail he had been following grew cold. He growled into the freezing wind, tearing at the long grass around him with his teeth. He had to find her. He could not rest until he did.