Chapter 137

Kayla

We ran for a little while, the cold night wind whipping at our faces, before the group eventually slowed and came to a stop in a large clearing that was cut through by a small, frozen stream. Noah stopped alongside the frozen water and I slipped off his back, briefly pressing my forehead to his wolf’s in thanks before he shifted back into his human form.

Emma, Jade, and Marcus approached, all beaming and breathless from their run.

“Well?” Jade asked, wrapping her arm around my shoulders and tugging me close. “How was it? Invigorating?”

Despite my earlier anger, I couldn’t help but nod and smile softly. “It was nice. Really nice.” I glanced at Noah. “Thank you, Noah. I feel a lot better now.”

“Anything for a friend,” Noah replied, looking almost sheepish.

As we all caught our breath, I noticed that a group of warriors across the clearing were talking animatedly, gesturing wildly with their hands. They looked excited, more excited than I’d expected, and I heard one of them mention something about a festival.

“What are they talking about?” I asked, nudging Marcus with my elbow and nodding toward the warriors. “Something about a festival?”

“Oh, they’re talking about the Darkmoon Festival,” Marcus replied.

I furrowed my brow. I hadn’t heard of that festival before.

“It’s a festival exclusive to Nightshade,” Noah explained. “It happens once a year on the first new moon after the spring solstice.”

“It’s called the Darkmoon Festival because of how dark it gets that night,” Emma added.

I nodded slowly, considering. It sounded intriguing; every pack had their own traditions, after all. Bluemoon had a yearly feast that lasted an entire week, called the Blue Corn Feast. It started back in the ancient days of our pack, when our people were known for the delicious blue corn that they grew in enormous fields.

Once, those fields were said to have gone barren for years, only to suddenly produce a bumper crop that miraculously fed our entire pack and returned our strength during a time of famine. But that was many generations before I was born, and now it was just a fun festival with kitschy themes, corn mazes, and a whole lot of popcorn.

But we still grew those crops today, and one of my favorite snacks as a kid were the blue corn chips that you could get only at the feast. They were always extra salty, just the way I liked it, and had the perfect amount of crunch.

But the Darkmoon Festival wasn’t one that I was familiar with.

“What does the festival entail?” I asked, cocking my head.

“It spans three days,” Emma said. “Nightshade wolves with survival skills enter into these very forests, surviving on nothing but their own abilities. During those three days, on top of surviving with no food or shelter, they’re supposed to hunt down a rare white stag.”

Marcus nodded and continued, “The white stag is especially large and powerful. Only the most adept of warriors can take him down. Whoever catches and kills the stag first is crowned that year’s ‘Darkmoon Royalty’.”

“After,” Emma went on, “the stag is cooked and fed to the entire pack, and we praise the Moon Goddess for sending the stag to us.”

I furrowed my brow. “Why praise the Moon Goddess and not the wolf who hunted it?”

“Hundreds of years ago, it’s said that our people were starving in the middle of a harsh winter. They had run out of crops and food stores, because the winter went on for far longer than anticipated. One day, a warrior spotted an enormous white stag roaming the woods,” Jade replied.

“Apparently it took him three whole days to track down the stag and eventually kill it,” Marcus added. “The stag took nineteen arrows, and still wouldn’t fall. The warrior eventually hunted it in his wolf form, killing it after a brutal battle, and brought it back to the pack. The pack was so grateful that they named that wolf the new Alpha, and the current Alpha at the time stepped down of his own will.”

“So it fed the whole pack,” I mused. I supposed pack traditions weren’t so dissimilar from one another after all.

Marcus nodded. “Now, it’s said that the Moon Goddess sends us one white stag per year to remind us of that time. So every year, we hunt down the stag, relive the Alpha’s struggle, and feast in the Moon Goddess’s honor.”

“And there’s lot of wine and music,” Emma added with a grin. “We can’t forget about that.”

Jade snorted. “Brutal butchery of rare, endangered animals aside, I think the wine and music is the best part.”

As I considered this festival, which was apparently coming up in a couple of months, I wandered away a bit and left my friends to talk amongst themselves. I leaned over the frozen stream, peering at a particularly polished bit of ice that cast my reflection back up at me.

The Darkmoon festival sounded intriguing, to say the least. But I had no wolf, and it sounded like the sort of thing that only those with wolves could participate in.

Suddenly, Nora’s face appeared in the ice beside mine, startling me. I jerked my head up to find her standing directly beside me, her lip curled in a sneer.

“What do you want now?” I snarled, already bracing myself for her usual vitriol.

Nora shrugged, then glanced at my friends before looking back at me. “Was that you earlier? Riding on Noah’s back?”

“What does it matter to you?”

“Isn’t that something kids do?” she asked.

My face reddened, and I opened my mouth to retort, but my friends suddenly appeared at my side. “Shoo, Nora,” Jade said, waving her hand like Nora was a pesky fly. “Go back to your little gaggle of witches and leave us alone.”

Nora just smirked at me one last time before turning and sauntering away.

Jade turned to me. “She’s such a bitch, always meddling when—”

“She’s sort of right, though,” I admitted, glancing at Noah. “If I could shift, then I wouldn’t need to do things like ride on people’s backs. And maybe I wouldn’t have a whole slew of other problems, too.”

Perhaps Nicholas would finally want me for real then, I thought, but quickly shoved it away.

My friends frowned at me, saying a chorus of reassurances. I offered them thin smiles and waved them off, promising that I was just messing around, that I didn’t actually mean it.

But I wasn’t lying. Nora knew exactly what she was doing, and her words struck me deep, far deeper than I wanted to admit.

If only I had a wolf, then I wouldn’t feel so… hopeless. Disconnected. Weak.

“A wolfless weakling who brings nothing to the table,” Nora had said in the kitchen all those nights ago. “He’ll cast you aside even more quickly because of what you are.”

Perhaps he had cast me aside already.

That night, as we returned home and I climbed back into bed, those words echoed relentlessly in my mind. I fell asleep that night with a bitter feeling in my chest, and had dreams of racing through the woods in my wolf form, chasing a white stag.