The Shadow Luna - Book 2 of the Shadow Saga

Chapter Three

River

The days fly past as winter draws nearer. Every minute I'm not with Holly is spent in meetings and discussions with the Elders Council and with our agricultural team.

Amid coordinating scouting missions to both the North and the East—directions we assume to be where the Strikers may be laying low—we also brainstorm a means of ensuring The Pack has enough food to last us through the worst of the cold season.

Inviting our Eastern factions to our lands was a necessary step in fighting back against the Strikers, but a costly one, too. Supporting that many mouths for six weeks took more than a third of the stores we had set aside for our resident pack for winter.

Our head of agriculture, Thomas, has promised that the winter crops he's planted will produce a healthy harvest, but we won't know for certain until the end of December.

The scouting missions we've embarked upon have yet to yield any results. We're finding nothing. Absolutely nothing. And it's driving me up the fucking wall because it makes no sense.

How the Strikers could be expanding at the supposed alarming rate we were told of, then simply vanish in a matter of just weeks is...Near to impossible.

It's not only the fact that a pack of their size should be preparing to hunker down and dwell somewhere for the approaching winter, but also the fact that if they are truly remaining in their animal forms as much as we think, there should be evidence of it.

We've not found any carcasses with wolf-like kill wounds, or make-shift dens, or even any remarkable amounts of wolf shit, for fuck's sake.

It's as if they've retreated all the way back into whatever hellhole they first crawled out of. Which only drives me further into my oblivion of frustration, given all I can think of, day in and day out, is finding that hellhole and destroying it.

The extermination of this rival pack would be not only be for the sake of my pack members and their families, but for my family now too—and I don't mean just my parents, or Sam, or Rosa. Of course, they're part of the equation, but...Not in the same way Holly is, not in the same way our little bump is.

Every day I wake up and I look down at Holly sleeping next to me. I stare at her and think of everything we're about to have and am quickly moved to near sickness at the thought of losing it all: Holly and our unborn child she carries.

I know I wouldn't survive it, that loss. There isn't a single ounce of doubt in my mind that it would break me. Entirely.

It would shatter my ribs, and my chest would cave in, and I'd never again be able to breathe properly. Every breath taken would be laborious and painful, knowing I draw breath in a world that has allowed my greatest love to be taken from me.

My senses would eventually weaken and dull: food would lose its taste, the sun its warmth. All of it would mean nothing, and there wouldn't be enough of me left to even care about getting it back. Because none of that is worth having if I cannot have it with her.

It's shocking how quickly you can go from feeling so infallibly untouchable to utterly vulnerable.

My family is becoming my greatest pride and also my greatest fear. I've never wanted anything more, yet I am terrified of the idea of anything going wrong. Of losing this before really getting to have it.

That's what drives me to keep organizing the scouts, and then accompanying them on their every excursion, even if it takes me miles away from my lands and from Holly. Leaving her for hours, even days at a time, is nothing short of my own personal torture. But I do so because I have no other option. I have no other means of controlling this outcome if I'm not the one at the forefront of every effort.