New Moon Summer (Seasons of the Moon) by SM Reine

O NE
    Eight Seasons
    Two years earlier.
    The forests of Gray Mountain were filled with shrieks and howls. Hunter was pitted against wolf. The soil absorbed splashing blood as gunfire echoed off of the rocks.
    A woman, tall and dark-skinned with blazing eyes, dragged her son onto the rocks ringing the top of the mountain. Together, they approached the swollen moon.
    “Where’s your girlfriend?” Eleanor demanded, shaking Seth’s arm hard.
    “I don’t know,” he said through gritted teeth.
    He was telling the truth. He really didn’t know that Rylie was watching from the trees.
    She circled the battle silently, searching for a way in without getting shot. Her pack was getting killed as she watched, but she couldn’t do anything without risking Seth.
    Her paws gripped the earth. Her nose tilted to the air.
    The wind smelled of blood and bullets.
    Eleanor shook her son again. “Rylie! Come and get him!” Her voice echoed over the yelping wolves.
    The sight of Eleanor’s hand on her son filled Rylie with cold fury.
    She leaped.
    The power of the wolf’s muscles launched her from the trees and onto the rocks atop the mountain. Eleanor raised the shotgun, but Rylie bit before she could fire.
    The feel of her teeth sinking into Eleanor’s leg was fleeting, but satisfying. Rylie jerked the old woman off her feet, and another wolf jumped onto the rocks to help—Abel. He was out for his mother’s blood.
    But Eleanor wriggled free of them and smashed the shotgun into Seth’s gut.
    Both wolves froze.
    “Get down, Abel,” Eleanor commanded, and he could only obey or watch his brother get shot. When he slunk far enough away to satisfy her, she faced Rylie. “Change back.”
    She did.
    A few moments later, she was human. Blond hair hung around her bare shoulders. Her heated skin steamed.
    Eleanor pressed her gun harder into Seth’s stomach and grinned an evil grin. “Walk to the top. Do it. Go on! Call your gods down, and tell them to save you!”
    Rylie ascended, feet melting the ice. Late spring air kissed her bare arms with frosty wind.
    Gray Mountain was supposed to be the seat of the gods, but Rylie never believed it. Not really. And yet, if she was the Alpha—the leader of the wolves, the one who could save them all—was it really so hard to believe there might be more than that, too?
    She reached the top and stretched her arms toward the moon.
    It was waiting. Expectant.
    Her boyfriend watched her from below with desperate eyes, silently begging for her to save herself.
    “Sorry, Seth,” Rylie whispered.
    And she jumped.
    Later, Rylie would try to make sense of what happened after she plummeted off of Gray Mountain’s peak.
    She should have been bashed at the bottom of the cliff. She should have broken every bone in her body and died. But that obviously hadn’t been the case. Her memory was pretty blurry on the facts, but her survival was undeniable.
    She was also certain that someone had spoken to her. Rylie had only the vaguest sense of what they said, but she knew it was apologetic. Something about how the werewolf ability wasn’t meant to be a curse.
    Shouldn’t there have been a face to go with that voice?
    All Rylie remembered clearly was the moon hanging low in the sky. She remembered being bathed in silver light and a weight lifting from her chest.
    She had been given a gift: the ability to change into a werewolf at will, rather than being chained to the cycles of the full and new moon. It was liberation from the monstrous hunger.
    But years later, she still had no idea who had done her such a favor.
    When Rylie climbed to the top of the mountain, she wasn’t the same girl who had fallen.
    She dragged Eleanor off of the cliff, and the woman died at the bottom of the rocks in the way that Rylie hadn’t. The smell of her blood washed over the breeze.
    Maybe she was imagining it, but the moon seemed satisfied.
    She embraced Seth and Abel, went home to Aunt Gwyneth’s ranch, and they worked together