“Just like you, I was lost,” she says. “This place became my sanctuary. But it is not meant for us to stay. You need to find the way home, the way back.”
“How?”
“Remember who you are and what you know to be true.”
“I don’t know anything,” I say, hating the tears trickling down my face. “Without him, I don’t—”
Elias takes a step forward as well. “The truth you need is as obvious as the moon,” he says, looking over to where she sits, hovering between the horizon and the clouds. “We’re always with you, Max. Remember that as you make this next choice.”
“Wait,” I say. “You’re leaving already? I ... I don’t know what to do.”
“I believe in you, Max,” Jenny says, stepping back. “We all do and we’re all here for you.”
“Then tell me what to do!”
Elias steps back as well, the two of them joining the line of blood wolves that seems to reach from one horizon to the other. “You are the next in our line, Max. You’ll do the right thing.”
The eyes of the blood wolves glow a brilliant shade of red, so bright I have to turn away.
With my eyes scrunched I hear another voice, only it isn’t one voice, it’s the voice of every blood wolf from the beginning of time, speaking as one, right into my mind.
“We’re always with you, Max.”
When I open my eyes and look back, they’re gone. All of them vanished.
“Wait!” I cry out, turning in circles. “What am I supposed to do?”
Was there some hidden meaning to what they said? They showed up out of the blue just to tell me I belong to this long line of blood wolves then bolted. How is that helpful?
“What do you want me to do?!”
My voice echoes across the vast landscape.
I collapse to my knees in the dust, facing the moon, which seems to have grown to twice its size.
Loneliness compresses my ribcage. I wish Jasper was here, or Katie, or Aisha, or Mason, or Omar, my parents, I wish anyone was here, I wish ...
The moon stares back at me silently. But I don’t need it to talk, I can feel the energy coming off it. The lunar energy that gives us our wolf selves, that matches us with our mates, the thing that links every werewolf on the planet. Every lonely soul.
“One pack under the moon.”
Light begins to glow at my chest, a brilliant white orb.
Because maybe sometimes every wolf feels as alone as I feel right now and maybe that’s just one thing that unites us. Because we’re never actually alone, we’re all linked by the moon. Just as I’m linked to every blood wolf that came before me. We’re a pack. We’re all one pack.
The light at my chest grows and expands, until it surrounds me like a massive bubble. I lift from the ground, my feet hanging beneath me as I rise. My body is weightless. My mind is clear. Above the landscape I hover, me and my light, like a mini-moon. Stretching my arms out on either side and finally, closing my eyes, I whisper, “One pack under the moon.”
I repeat it like a mantra.
“One pack under the moon. One pack under the moon. One pack under the moon.”
I let the light surrounding me expand and expand and expand until I can’t hold it back any longer.
Energy and light erupt from the core of my being. So bright and so brilliant.
My soul begins to lose its form, dispersing particles that float away and vanish into the expanding light.
It absorbs me until my body no longer exists, until all I am is light.
