The Moon Goddess' Chosen

529 A Hard Conversation

Wyatt stared at his friend, his gaze and resolve unwavering. It felt like his last words still echoed through the trashed room.

There were dark circles around the man’s eyes and it was evident that he was fighting sleep. He looked like he could pass out any moment and yet… he didn’t, drawing on every ounce of energy he could to keep himself awake.

“Why would I do such a thing?” Liam hissed.

“Two reasons, Liam…” Wyatt shook his head, “To wake me up… I can’t sleep… No, he’ll take over if I do. The second one… To weaken me even more… if I happen to lose myself.”

Liam stared at the man’s leg and thought for a moment about actually doing it. It was harder said than done. Breaking someone’s leg wasn’t hard for any werewolf really.

Bones were strong and hard but without any resistance, it was only a matter of how strong the werewolf was. And Liam was strong enough to snap someone’s bone albeit with a little bit of effort…

But breaking Wyatt’s leg. That was a whole different issue all on its own.

“I… I can’t.”

“Would you rather watch the hunters put me down?” Wyatt tried to yell. His dull crimson eyes flashed at his friend for a brief moment, rage filling them before softening.

.....

Liam went back to tending to Wyatt’s wounds and tried to put the odd request out of his mind.

Wyatt was weak but even worse, he wasn’t healing… what’s more, he was asking to get injured even further as though that would help him. Liam quickly came to the conclusion that all these injuries were self-inflicted.

Even though Wyatt had mentioned it earlier, believing it was hard. What wolf, in their right mind would mutilate themselves just to stay awake? Was his condition really that dire?

Liam had his doubts… Wyatt wasn’t the type to go down without a fight… Then again, wasn’t he already fighting?

And fast approaching his limit.

This was the first time he was in such a situation. “Hey, Liam. Why…? Why you’ve been avoiding me this whole time? We could have figured things out.”

Liam froze at the question, “Why are you asking me that now of all times?”

“Because… Because I’ve realised that this might be the last time we talk to each other,” Wyatt admitted, “Two years, Liam. Did I really betray you that badly? Just how weak was our friendship?”

“I’m right here, aren’t I?” Liam snapped at the weakened alpha, his breath going up as it did. A pang of guilt ran through him…

Why had he been avoiding Wyatt? What kept him away all this time?

The questions were just as difficult as they were painful to think about.

Wyatt stayed silent and stared at his friend.

The two appeared like mirrors of each other in the sense of health.

In contrast to Wyatt’s bruised, clawed, wounded and weakened state, Liam was clean and without a blemish on his skin.

What had Liam been doing all that time?

“What was your real reason for going with Lina on the Trials?” Liam asked Wyatt instead.

“Huh, isn’t she the reason we both lost our rights to succeed our fathers? If I could get her through the Trials without a scratch on her, that could be a step in the right direction. We have to get Luna Katie’s approval, don’t we?” Wyatt replied.

“So you weren’t going to stop there, were you?” Liam mumbled half to himself, still trying to wrap his head around his normally malicious friend’s decisions.

“No, I wasn’t. What are you getting at, Liam? I did what I had to do to get my power back,” Wyatt replied, “You should also start working on it. I won’t be around to help you with—”

A loud high-pitched noise echoed across the room.

Wyatt’s cheek turned red instantly as a recollection of the past seconds flashed through his mind.

Suddenly, his cheek was burning and he was very much awake without an ounce of sleep in his eyes. He’d been slapped.

“Ouch, what was that for?” Wyatt yelled.

“Stop talking like you’re about to die,” Liam yelled back.

“Look at me, Liam. What do you see? The rogues have returned and I’m being summoned to join them. I’ve already weakened myself enough during my fight against that Rogue king’s mind. He’ll take over soon enough and when he does, I won’t have much strength left. I’ll die before too long and I suggest you run before he decides on hunting you for sport,” Wyatt yelled back.

Liam stood up and walked to the other side of the room before dropping to the ground with his back to the wall. The two males sat in silence for a few moments before Liam spoke up.

“It’s chaos out there. Humans shifting into werewolves all over the place and ripping the hell out of their fellow humans and werewolves alike.”

“What?!” Wyatt gasped.

Liam scoffed, “Yeah, it’s hell. I ran here as soon as I could to make sure you’re alright… and I find… this,” Liam pointed to the trashed hospital room, “Then I realise you have a death wish.”

“I’d rather die than kill my best friend with my own claws and fangs,” Wyatt sighed.

Liam stared at his friend, furrowing his brows into a curious expression, “Why don’t you… you know, ask for help?”

The idea sounded so… alien to the weakened, bruised and battered alpha’s mind. He’d never once thought of asking anyone to help him.

Him… Alpha Wyatt… asking for help. Wasn’t this supposed to be the other way around? The whole idea was an outrage.

Still…

“Perhaps it’s because I owe everyone around so much more than I could ever repay them. Felt like I should be giving back… or maybe it was just the little pride I have left as an alpha. How much lower must I fall?”

Liam couldn’t answer the last question. As an alpha, he knew how much their pride meant to them, “Well… Dying won’t help you repay them.”

“We can’t just talk about me. What about you? What have you been up to?” Wyatt asked.

“Meh! Nothing much really. I apologized to my father for everything. He wasn’t amused with what happened that day. He was… fuming.

He told me to stop hanging out with you. That you were… a bad influence on me.

I, on the other hand, was mad at you for my own reasons. I was even more of a coward not to confront you about them. Did you… quit smoking?” Liam asked.

“I’ve been trying to do that… not easy. My old man wouldn’t look at me after that incident. I wasn’t able to reconcile with him. I thought perhaps if I could fix the rift between us first, I could fix the one between me and my old man.

Well… you know how that has been going. ‘Should have been easier,’ I told myself,” Wyatt sighed.

Just as the alpha was about to say something more, he gritted his teeth and shut his eyes, clutching his head in pain, “Damn it!”

Liam was by his side in a flash, “Wyatt!”

Wyatt couldn’t hear a word, though.

The alpha was in a whole other world of pain unknown to Liam. His mind crumbled and shuddered against an external pressure threatening to take control of his body.

Liam hurriedly looked around in search of something. A sedative… painkiller… something to cure his best friend of the suffering that ailed him.

He fumbled through the cabinet he’d found earlier, checking the labels of the different drugs that were inside, trying to find the right one.

His knowledge of drugs was limited… and their effects on werewolves were even less.

He continued his frantic search, inevitably growing unaware of the state of his friend. Standing behind him was a large black wolf, its pelt tainted with patches of dirty grey.

The wolf’s crimson eyes told a conclusive story of a great mental battle as two consciousnesses fought to gain control of the creature’s body.

“Just a little longer,” Liam said through gritted teeth, more to himself. Somewhere along the way, he began to hope for a miracle. He knew next to nothing of the drugs he was checking through…

Just a few that the wolves had grown addicted to… Chloroform, paracetamol, ibuprofen… a plethora of medicinal drugs flooded his mind, neither of them coming with their uses…

‘Damn it!’

A ferocious growl brought him out of his frantic search, allowing him to turn around. The massive black wolf stood in place of his friend’s body, staring him down. The wolf bared its fangs and blocked the exit.

“Wyatt?” Liam asked in a high-pitched voice… “When did you get… bigger?”

Something was different about Wyatt’s wolf. The two of them had never managed to decide who was stronger between them but right now, there seemed to be a larger gap than the one Liam was used to.

The wolf before him was larger than it should have been.

Liam quickly shifted into his ashen wolf as well and faced the cold murderous eyes of what should have been his best friend.

Unfortunately for him, Wyatt’s wolf seemed to take this as a threat and lunged forward, claws and fangs extended.

......…..

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530 Letter from a Lost Lover

Lina shot through the medical floor of the Great Arena at a frightening speed. In her wolf form, the speeds she could reach were much higher. Her limits, however, were still out of reach.

The princess felt a well of energy within her, just out of reach. However, the harder she focused on reaching her peak, the harder it got to control her velocity and make clean turns.

Naturally, her wolf’s slender physique, fluffy tail and sharpened claws allowed her to make what should have been, impossible turns, keeping her agility as optimum as her speed.

But when she tried going faster, even this got harder and the risk of injuring herself became a more pressing matter.

Right after her friends had told her about Liam’s reckless actions, she’d searched the mind link and with a bit of concentration, located the disinherited alpha. His mind was cut off from the mind link, which made him invisible to the rest of the pack.

However, with a bit of concentration, this mental protection was nothing to a royal, especially one from the bloodline a wolf served.

As soon as Lina linked with the wolf, tense erratic emotions spilt into her mind.

Fear, longing, frustration, terror…

The alpha’s convoluted emotions did indicate one crucial thing that determined Lina’s next actions… pain.

It didn’t take much concentration for her to tell where the pain, fear and tension were coming from. Liam was engaged in furious combat with another werewolf and it wasn’t looking good for him.

.....

When Lina scanned through the mind link for the wolf’s location, however, she discovered a frustrating fact. The part of the concentric arena that Liam was currently in was on the other side of the ring…

Because of the sheer size of the Great Coliseum, this was easily a few kilometres. The princess cranked up her speed and agility, tearing through the halls in response to Liam’s distress.

By the time Wyatt’s room was in sight, a light grey wolf was flying out of the room and crashing into the wall on the other side. Liam’s large light grey wolf stood on shaky limbs, blood dripping from several wounds, scratches and cuts that mottled its lustrous coat.

He bared his teeth at something inside the room.

A black wolf, tainted with a few hints of dark grey lunged out from the room aiming for the light grey wolf with claws and fangs extended.

Before the wolf could collide with its intended target, however, a slender white wolf crashed into it, viciously throwing it out of the way and wrestling it to the ground. The two wolves rolled in a mess of gnashing fangs and fierce menacing growls before they were truly separated.

Both wolves, equipped with mass and power, collided again in fierce battle giving themselves no time to catch their breath.

Crysta and Bree arrived moments later, crowding around Liam to protect him from the frightening duel. The white wolf was a little too agile and utilized her speed well.

Darting about the black wolf with lightning-fast speed and delivering devastating non-fatal blows to its side and slashing at its weak spots.

The black wolf, after numerous attempts to bite, slash and ram its slender white adversary, got agitated by this method of fighting and began thrashing about wildly.

At first, seeming random until one of its paws struck the white wolf’s head with a devastating blow.

This momentary victory was short-lived as the white wolf blurred out of vision once again and continued its assault albeit more meticulously and with significantly more speed. Wyatt’s black-tainted wolf was quickly overwhelmed.

The princess aimed at its tendons, both at the hind legs, heels and paws. Astonishingly, with each injury, the wolf healed instantly thrashing wildly to throw off the white wolf.

This tactic, however, could only work for as long as the wolf had the strength to keep it up. With time, the healing grew slow and eventually stopped.

Its tendons cut and energy spent, the black colossus of a wolf tumbled to the ground, unable to move.

Lina finally stopped dashing around it and turned to her friends. She shifted into her human half-shift form, keeping her ears trained more on the wolf than her friends, “Liam…”

“It’s Wyatt!”

“What?”

“That’s Wyatt!” Liam’s voice tiredly rang through the mind link.

Lina turned to the wolf and back to Liam, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“He was… bitten,” Liam winced, his wounds from the fight slowly healing.

...........

Cole stared at the two items as though they were objects plucked from one of his dreams… Items from another world that couldn’t possibly be real.

And yet… no matter how many times he blinked or shook his head, they didn’t vanish. The sapphire orb of a necklace remained real as his power to summon storm clouds, glimmering right before his eyes.

The familiar cursive handwriting of his lover never once shimmered nor faded before his eyes.

The letter and necklace were real…

And so was the faint alluring scent that still lingered on them, confirming that she’d personally held them before handing them over to the messenger.

A profound sense of longing tugged at the Lycaon King, screaming at him to rush out and search for her. Katie was really back and the proof was right in front of him.

With a gentle nod from the King of Lycaon, the beta guards parted and let the woman enter the Royal Suite. She briskly walked in and handed these items over to the King before standing aside, assuming a position as still as a statue by the entrance.

Her face gave next to no expressions except for the moment that she witnessed Cole itself. For a brief moment, Cole noticed a shimmer of respect somewhere deep within her expressionless grey orbs.

The King turned his attention to the items in his hands, one arm wrapping tightly around the sapphire orb while the fingers of the other started opening the envelope.

“What’s with all the commotion, dear?” Queen Martha finally came to check herself.

“Cole has received a letter,” King Davin replied.

“Whoever is it from at such a dire time?”

“Katie.”

The room went silent at the mention of the Lost Luna’s name. Kyle rose from the sofa, despite claiming to be exhausted only moments prior to hearing this message.

“Well then, let’s hear it.”

Cole finished opening the letter and unfolded the missive within it. His eyes rapidly skimmed through the contents of the letter and his cheeks flushed a light shade of pink as he absorbed the words contained within.

…words that didn’t leave his lips.

This was before Jason swiped the letter from him, “That’s about all we can get from ‘Lover boy’ here. I’ll read it out loud.”

Cole palmed his face.

”

Hi Cole,

I’m hoping this letter reaches you in one piece.

As you can probably tell by now, I’m not at the Moon palace anymore. You’ve probably felt my presence by now.

For accuracy, I returned a day or two ago… depending on when this letter reaches you.

Keep Kyle with you and probably on a short leash. He’s bound to run off. I can’t have any of you running into one of the Rogue King’s generals.

The goddess’s power placed me where I left the last time… In Brigadia… which is in a pretty bad state right now but you probably know that by now.

The whole world is a mess right now. Death and destruction everywhere… and I mean everywhere.

In any case, I’m currently travelling from one pack to the other, dealing with the situation as best I can.

I can’t say everything’s going right. It’s terrible.

I’m not sure if you can feel it. The two of us are connected to both empires, so you’re bound to feel it. The pain and suffering everywhere… The deaths… The grief… The sorrow…

I need a hug.

Don’t worry too much about me. This mission might take me about a week after which I’ll travel to Sirius.

That’s one of the reasons I had to write this letter.

Travel to the Sirius capital and gather able hunters. The pack warriors and everyone who can fight considerably well.

I plan to end it, Cole

…all of it.

The world can’t go on like this much longer… and frankly there has never been a better time to put the Rogue King down than he is now.

We’ll discuss more on the matter in detail when I reach the capital.

Greet my parents, sister, brother, friends and everyone for me.

Love,

Your Luna,

Katie.

P.S. Summon Sandra… and stop talking to the moon ;)”

While Jason read the letter, Cole’s mind lingered on one note at the very end of the missive… ‘Stop talking to the moon.’

The number of times he’d wondered whether what he was saying ever reached or if at all it was not. The most logical answer was that she couldn’t hear him… right?

The moon… was just so far. And Katie certainly couldn’t speak to him through the mind link at night.

He’d said so much in their one-sided chats. Just how much of it did she remember? Was the wind that tussled his hair during that time just an illusion or an actual response?

Katie could hear him all those times!