Page 9

On the opposite side of the festival is the source of the music, the dancing, and the drums that are meant to honor the Moon Goddesses. I am not looking forward to going in that direction, because the music and light from the massive fires are only going to make my head worse.

All throughout the center are vendors selling various wares—foodstuff, produce, trinkets, and bobbles shifters can use to “connect with the Goddesses.” Maybe we should shut them down, since no little crystals are going to actually give the shifters buying them favor with the divines, but they bring people hope. Give them something tangible to connect to. And maybe there’s nothing wrong with that.

The nearest side of the festival, which we come through, is all food vendors. Meat on sticks, meat still on the bone, meat ground up into patties and shaped around other meat. They understand their audience, because even with the steady pounding of my head, it smells damn good to my wolf, who has been begging to come out since we got home.

Earlier, the four of us shifted to get to Gavyn’s place on the far outskirts of the Western pack. After a quick run through a frozen forest, we made it to his little encampment, a few hastily built houses out on barren land. It wasn’t hard to find him at all—for a man who claims to be the new alpha of the fringe shifters, he sure didn’t put much thought into defending his house or the people inside it.

We located the nursery by looking in through the windows. Then Denvil—the slimmest of the four of us—slid in through the panes we popped out and wrapped the baby in a blanket Brack brought along, which was steeped in the Western Pack scent. The baby recognized that scent, whether his father would admit it or not, and stayed sleeping as Denvil lifted him up and out of his bassinet, passing him through the window to Brack, who gently took the corners of the blanket in his muzzle and carried the baby, rocking back and forth, all the way back.

Upon returning to the central meeting spot with the baby, we sent out the missive to Gavyn that we had his son.

“Tell him that if he wants the baby back, he’s to come to the Moon Goddess ceremony unarmed and in his footed form, with a sacrifice for the lunar pool that he sees fit to trade for his son.”

The insult was clear—no matter what he sacrificed to the pool, from the regular suspects of goat, chicken—it would never actually be equal to his son. But he would have to imply that it was to get him back.

Then, while I was in my room, desperately trying to cure the ache in my head, the baby must have woken. Because when I came out hours later, knowing I would just have to carry my pain with me to the Moon Festival, my three best friends were huddled around, each trying to get attention from the cooing bundle in the center of the blanket.

“Are you quite done?” I’d asked, crossing my arms and leaning against the doorway. “You know we can’t keep him, right?”

“Maybe we should,” Zade had said, almost sounding serious. “It might be a service to the little man, keep him from turning out like his dad.”

That hung in the room—the obvious undertone there being that for the four of us, not being like our fathers was the primary objective.

“Let’s go,” I’d said, rather than addressing any of that. “We don’t want to be late, give Gavyn a reason to blow his top and do something stupid.”

Now, Denvil murmurs baby-talk to the little guy against his chest as we casually roam through the festival. Maybe all the on-lookers are unaware of who the kid belongs to. Maybe they know. The beauty is in the fact that it doesn’t matter to us.

We got his kid easily. We could squash his little thing easy. That’s what everyone needs to understand after tonight.

“You know,” Zade says, after a long moment of us walking along quietly, Denvil only interrupting the quiet to ask if the baby could have a meat stick, to which Brack quietly called him an idiot and handed him a bottle. “I was thinking about this thing with Gavyn. Perhaps telling him to meet us here was the wrong move.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, my tired eyes sweeping back and forth, trying to stay on alert. Sleep wasn’t great last week, and the headache today meant no nap for me.

“Well, think about it—the Moon Goddess festival is typically attended by our four packs, correct?”

A group of betas pass by us, stop and bow their heads as we pass. We nod back to them, but they don’t see it. That’s a dated social expectation Brack wants nothing more than to be rid of.

“I don’t like knowing they’re always watching for me. Let me pass without all the fanfare.”

“Correct,” I say to Zade now, trying to figure out where he’s going with it.

“Well, surely Gavyn brought a bunch of the shifters from his pack,” Zade puts air quotations around the word. “Maybe it was a misstep. Makes him look more legitimate than he is, bringing his group of shifters to the festival.”

We all go quiet.

Because Zade is, of course, right.

“Why didn’t you think of that ten hours ago?” Denvil hisses, covering the baby’s ears as it gurgles happily. “You know, before we told him to come here?”

Zade shrugs, like this revelation doesn’t matter at all. “Guess my mind is working slower today.”

Brack blows out a breath. “Guess so.”

Our tensions rise slightly as we continue our casual walk through the festival, making our way to the lunar pool, where the sacrifice typically takes place right at midnight. If Gavyn cares about his son at all—which we all imagine he would—that’s where he’ll be. And we’ll make a public show of trading his alpha son for a goat, or some other animal.

It will be worth it. Outweigh whatever legitimizing we did by telling him to come with his people to this festival.

“Sir.”