How do you fight the Moon?
The King has fallen to a God.
The world is gathering, surrounding the Northern hemisphere on all side, crushing, strangling the land in a tight noose.
All they demand is Charlie's head. The female Alpha born from two alp...
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No more fogged eyes—Lana is seen with clarity. Only fire can cleanse away her veneer.
. . . I saw her.
Her face has been stripped away of who she used to be to me. I'm left seizing to take a solid breath in. Lana stands before me, not as a healer but as a husk of a body that harbors no Wild.
A deep sense of emptiness comes from her angular posture. A dead thing that should have died a long time ago but still remains breathing.
Taking a few steps away, I waiver on everything I believed to be true. My mother was right to be wary of Healers.
My mother was right. . .
Tree roots turn and dig into the ground around my feet.
"You've poisoned me my entire life, not just my body, but my thoughts." I rummage through my memories of the teas I drank with her. Lana winces as I choke on a breath, holding my stomach.
"Look into my eyes," I demand.
Lana flinches upwards momentarily, then back to her feet. The burns on her face faded days ago but not before I saw her Wildless face that has withered. The Wild within my own body riots.
"There is nowhere to hide, Lana. I've seen you. The fire burned your false face. I'm left with the real you now."
Teeth. I show her teeth. I want to grab her hair, pull back on her head and expose her neck. I want to bite at the throat of life. Is this what I am to become—a monster?
My love for her has always been over-inflated by my own doing. The lies I have told myself are unforgivable.
Insidiously creeping, "Will I become a monster like you?"
Lana regards me. The wind is not gentle against my skin.
"That's up to you." She doesn't answer my question. There is no self-confession. Maybe I don't want an answer—the Wild prowls and shifts within, waiting to unleash herself upon the world.
"You need to purposely walk in the right direction." Her hands remain at her side. No directions are given by her vacant body.
"If that direction is filled with blood?" Anxiety gnaws grotesquely into spaces I never knew existed within my structure.
"If it's the right direction, the blood changes nothing." Her eyes are controlled. Not scuttling towards the dark grove of trees that look like a solid figure in the distance—a side of it moves. My eyes play tricks in the dark.
"Blood changes everything." I want to scream at her.
"I'm afraid of losing control. Is that because of you and your teas?"
Lana is quiet, so I go on.
"I'm afraid I will hurt everything if I'm not careful. Is that because of how you have poisoned my thoughts?"
