The Sixteenth Moon: A Rejected Mates Romance

Chapter 19: From the Shadows

She tried to get out of the bed, her movements frantic and useless—the bedsheet acting like a tether, a live snake, wrapping around her to hold her captive. Her chest burning with trapped breaths, her muscles both flexing and frozen, her blood rushing through her veins to fuel the need to go!—run!—live!

But the urge hit too late.

Five men surrounded the bed, tall, aggression bleeding from their pores—they were living, breathing danger. A scream climbed up her throat, but she swallowed it when the barrel of an assault rifle kissed her forehead.

"Scream, and I'll put a bullet through your brain, and I know that even disgusting Breed bitches can die from losing the back of their skull." The man's voice was menacing, entrancing, holding her attention with every word and inflection. Because he'd just threatened her life.

Breed? That was the hateful name some anti-shifter groups called shifters, like they were somehow a freak of nature, an unnatural breed that needed eradication. And that man had used it, which meant....

"You're here to kill me," she rasped, blinking up at him. The man smirked.

He knew she was a shifter—err had been a shifter, but how? It wasn't like she advertised that she'd once been the vessel for a wolf spirit and was now as empty as a Walmart during COVID.

"Not yet, pet," he snarled, and the men around him shifted. "Death is too quick. We're gonna have some fun first."

Naked, flat on her back, terrified...the shock was settling in quickly.

There were five men in the room with her, their assault rifles pointed at her where she lay in a bed where she'd just fucked her boyfriend.

Shit, Cole!

"Cole!" she cried, her mouth as dry as dust. Where the hell was he? Was he okay? He got out of the room just in time, so maybe he was able to get out of the house before the men came through the window.

Seems convenient that he left just minutes before the window shattered.

And what was with that phone call? He'd even used the word Breed...hadn't he?

Too late, Kana realized she'd taken her attention off the clear and present danger staring right at her.

"Fucking Breed animal," the one in the front and center, staring at her through the black tactical oil face paint, his sneer of disgust not at all camouflaged. "Can't even tell she's been betrayed by her boyfriend." The man snickered, and the other four did the same, and with each snort and chuckle, the truth she knew deep down from the beginning sank in. "He's been working with us for years, targeting shifter bitches, getting in nice and close, then maneuvering them into a quiet, secluded place where we will step in."

Cole...wasn't the man she thought he was. She nearly choked on the rage and then agony of his betrayal as it formed in her chest. Once again, she'd given her trust to a man who'd delivered her up to a fate she did not deserve. And she could only blame herself this time.

Drawing herself up to straighten her shoulders, she tightened the sheet around her, holding it as close to her naked chest as possible. It was a flimsy and almost transparent shield, but it was all she had.

"Who are you, what do you want?" Surprisingly, her voice was clear and unshaken, unlike her thoughts. Gods, this would have been the perfect time to still have her wolf; she would have shifted and at least leapt out the window and taken off into the woods. They'd track her, but at least she'd have the speed and stamina of a shifter to aide her. Now, though, she was as weak and vulnerable as a human woman. Which made Cole's betrayal all the worse. All those hours spent together, sharing her life with him, thinking he was sharing his life with her. And the whole time he'd thought she was something she wasn't. It wasn't like she could have told him the devastating truth of her loss, her deepest wound beyond the one in her leg.

"You don't need to know names, Breed bitch, just know that The Human First Coalition is doing it's duty to put down Breed dogs wherever we find them. We are the culling, the euthanasia, the cure for the disease that is shifters."

Her heart racing, she listened to the man's words, her stomach curling with the hatred and disgust in the man's tone.

She was going to die because of what she was, not anything she'd actually done, other than breathe air at birth. And she wasn't even a shifter anymore! After her rejection, her wolf...disappeared, taking with her most of Kana's shifter abilities. She was still stronger and faster than a normal human, but what good was that in her current situation? She wasn't faster than guns, or stronger than five men!

Something moved in the shadows behind the Main Asshole, and her breath caught.

A man.

Dressed in black.

Holding a sword.

Where the hell had he come from?

In a blink, the man moved, slicing through Main Asshole in one swing. Before his body even dropped, the man had cut down another two men, and before the remaining two even knew their comrades were dead, they were dead, too.

In less than ten seconds, she was alone in a room with someone fast enough to kill five men.

And he was staring down at her.

What the hell just happened? Her chest burning with captured breaths, Kana could only stare back at the man. His face was covered in a mask...the kind she saw in those cheesy ninja movies. The sword, which looked sharp as hell, was a katana sword, a lot like the ones her own father had hung with such reverence in his home office.

Kana, numb, shocked, unable to speak, watched as the man sheathed his sword with practiced movements, and moved toward the bed, agilely maneuvering around the bodies on the floor.

Panting now, Kana could feel her blood congeal in her veins, her heart racing and yet seizing at the same time.

The man stopped at the end of the bed, still staring at her, a glint of something knowing and a lot like awe in his eyes.

Then he spoke, and turned her entire world on its godsdamned head.

"Hello, niece."

**Author Note**: Yes, I have a habit of making short chapters, but I am updating as I go along. I don't want you all to have to wait for longer chapters, because I have four other projects I'm working on, too. 

What do you think so far?