Chapter 239

Sarah POV

GinnyWolf: Sarah is a MOON WOLF??!! Are you KIDDING ME?

WhiteKnuckling: This is a hoax. Total bullshit.

PPPPJohnP: I knew it.

ShangHairSurprise: Will she be reforming the Luna Temple again?

Rosemary&Sage: Hey now, PPPPJohn, THAT’S bullshit.

With a laugh, I put the phone in the purse Lainey had brought me from the villa along with my blue suit and nude pumps. She’d come after me with some makeup as well, but I’d kept it to some lipstick and eyeliner. I was coming out of a hospital, not attending the Met Gala.

Besides, the important part of my appearance was my neck, not my face, with its new red matebite from Zane, matching the one on my own mate’s neck. I looked down to check the girls, and they both looked well-scrubbed and tidy, which was all I wanted for them at their age.

The doctors had insisted on keeping me overnight, which meant we’d been able to keep the cameras out for the most part, though two photos taken surreptitiously by staff had made it online, one of me as a wolf and the other in a new hospital gown. Everyone in the hospital, it seemed, had been on television talking about being there at the emergence of a Moon Wolf and swearing their fealty to me and to Zane. As both Pack Alpha and the mate of a Moon Wolf, his status had skyrocketed along with my own.

“Are you ready to show yourself to the world with your fated mate?” Zane asked me. He was dressed in an immaculate gray suit with a blue tie, authoritative and strong, while his blue eyes looked over me with love and concern.

“Or to show yourself as a Moon Wolf?” Lainey asked. Whitfield was standing next her practically vibrating with excitement, and I found myself laughing again.

I looked down at Grace and Chloe. “How about I show myself as your mother?”

They nodded. “’Bout time,” Chloe added under her breath.

I stepped toward the door, which Travis opened. Outside, I smiled at Dr. Vassles and several other personnel. The hospital administrator had asked about making a speech, but I asked him to refrain. This already felt like an impromptu coronation as I walked down the hospital corridors and passed the wolves and humans who were looking at me with expressions I didn’t really want to think about yet.

Zane’s words came back to me. No, I wasn’t ready to do any of this, but I hadn’t been ready for my life ever since I found a little basket on my doorstep. I was doing my best just to be there, just to rise to the occasion, just to keep myself sane and protect the people I loved.

Outside, in addition to a couple dozen security agents Zane had insisted on considering Ella was still out there, Ollie was waiting for us with the car. Zane helped me inside and then saw to the girls. Everyone else was going in the second car.

I’d texted all the “lieutenants” to make promises of visits and future talks, but in truth I wanted a few days with just my family at the villa. I had a lot of thinking to do, and of course now I could access all those books and documents that had been denied to me as a human.

People on the streets recognized the plain black car and pointed, but I closed my eyes and leaned back against Zane’s shoulder, enjoying his strong arm around me.

“Tired, love?” he asked.

“I could do with a nap or two,” I said.

The drive home wasn’t long, and once we were past the gates to the grounds I felt myself relax. It was late afternoon, and the sky was getting heavy with the colors of the evening. I needed a good night’s sleep—so impossible in a hospital—more than a nap, and I’m sure Zane knew it. In any event, we enjoyed a light dinner together before I took a long, lovely shower, put on my nightgown, and went to bed with my mate.

I suppose in the movies we’d make passionate love to celebrate our union, but I knew Zane was as tired as I was, and soon we were asleep.

I should have realized I would dream.

The first thing I registered was that I wasn’t in a forest but a grass-covered valley. Around me, up the slopes, were Moon Wolves, dozens of them.

A gray wolf was standing to my right, and I smelled Ella. Snarling, she glared at me and pawed the ground. The Moon Wolves barked and growled but did not approach. As a group, they were telling me this was my fight.

I woke up, slipped silently from the bed without waking Zane, and walked down to the front door of the villa. I could feel the many other wolves and few humans in the house and nearby, a pack urging me to action.

I slipped off my clothes, opened the door, transformed easily, and padded outside, following the Ella-scent to the east. I found her standing in a grassy clearing off the main path, again snarling and pawing the ground.

I did not go into a trance, but part of my mind saw more than the grass in the security lights, wisps of white creatures that I knew were the spirits of Moon Wolves waiting to be born: my own children and the children of other humans who held the Moon Wolf inside them. I had never fought as a wolf before, but they guided me, whispering to come up on her right flank and wait for her to attack me first.

She snarled and barked before lunging at me. I twisted away and raked the claws of my right paw down her side. She yelped and spun away then whipped back around with her fangs out, reaching for my neck. I jumped back and snarled at her, confident and unafraid.

Again, the wisps of spirits circled us, a dance in the night that whirled under her vulnerable belly. I charged, feinting toward her neck, and then dived down to snap at her legs and claw her underside.

She tore herself from me, blood spraying, and attempted to back off. I knew if she escaped she’d come after us all again with her poisons and schemes, so I pursued her. She fell back against her right leg, which I’d weakened, and then she was on her back and I was on top of her, biting down with all my strength on her neck, which snapped.

As werewolves do upon death, she changed back into her human form, naked and bloody. I released the dead weight of her, spat the fowl taste of her out of my mouth, backed away, and howled. My voice was joined by another, and I looked down and to the side to see a black wolf, my mate, howling in triumph with me. The girls stood there as well in their pajamas, howling in their human forms.

A gray spirit twirled around Chloe while a darker, almost black form hovered over Grace, both looking satisfied if not downright smug, and I knew I was looking at the spirits of the alphas my daughters would become.

With joy, I darted around Zane, nipped at his ear, and laughed as I danced away. Once more, gloriously, we howled.