The Alpha's Oracle (SAMPLE, IronMoon #1)

Nightmare Coming

"We're wolves! You're my father, you're the Beta, you aren't going to do anything? You aren't going to make Alpha Jermain fight?"

My father shook his head, "Gianna, there's a great deal you don't know, that we've kept from you."

"I know we're wolves and we don't let other wolves take what's ours without a fight! I'm an Oracle and I have to tell a warrior this?" I sputtered. Shadowless wasn't some tiny little pack. We were a large pack, a strong pack. We didn't just roll over because some other pack has told us to.

"Mind your mouth, Gianna." He growled at me.

His growl would have sent me cowering, but now it had no effect. A warrior who would not fight? A male who would just tuck his tail between his legs? I looked at my father, and part of me didn't even recognize him anymore. His prestige and power over me eroded. He should have been angry at Alpha Jermian, he should have challenged his cowardly Alpha, but instead, he just growled at me.

Alpha Gabel of IronMoon. Angry or not, the name still sent cold shivers through me.

Three years ago, the IronMoon had been a small pack living in some cold, northern forests. Just a bunch of punks who fought amongst themselves, and usually killed each other before they hurt anyone else. Then Alpha Gabel had appeared. He trained his warriors to be brutal and fierce, then had turned them onto the small neighboring packs. Devoured those packs, moved on to larger and larger prey.

He didn't kill the packs he conquered.

The IronMoon tortured their victims.

The IronMoon broke their victims.

Alpha Gabel made it easy to avoid his wrath, and the inevitable indignity of begging for mercy. Surrender, swear allegiance and pay annual tribute to the IronMoon. He left the packs to rule themselves, and life for them continued on as normal. Except knowing they had been leashed like dogs.

Now the smallest packs surrendered, and some even swore allegiance before Gabel got around to threatening them.

Rumor was Alpha Gabel wanted to build an empire and crown himself King Alpha, but the idea was so silly everyone scoffed at it. There hadn't been a King Alpha in five hundred years. The last time there had been three, each with their own kingdom, until a war had broken out between the three. Nobody had won, the kings had died, the wolves nearly gone extinct and the kingdoms destroyed, never to be rebuilt.

Nobody since had attempted to be a King Alpha. Nobody believed it was possible in the modern world.

Alpha King ambitions or not, Gabel had been menacing packs of Shadowless' size for the past year, and with our territory not far from IronMoon, it was just a matter of time. A fight with IronMoon was inevitable.

At least that's what I had thought until that evening.

There would be no fight. Alpha Jermain of Shadowless would surrender to Alpha Gabel of IronMoon without so much as a growl.

I couldn't believe it, and I refused to accept it. No one expected Oracles to be courageous, we weren't warriors, afterall. But weak, timid Oracles would be lost on the Tides, drown in the Moon's Eye, go insane from the whispers and visions. I also came from a long line of warriors, that fire burned within me, and I couldn't imagien Alpha Jermain--my Alpha, the one I obeyed without question-- kneeling down in front of Alpha Gabel. Not without Gabel ripping out his hamstrings so Jermain had no choice but to kneel.

"Gianna," my father tried to take a stern tone with me, "This is how it's going to be. You don't know as much as you think you do."

He always said when he wanted to get out of an argument with me. He still treated me like I was a stupid child. I was eighteen. I had been born a Seer: a female wolf blessed with visions and whispers from the Moon. At sixteen I had finished my training and taken the vows to become an Oracle. I wasn't a child.