Chapter 212

Sarah POV

I woke up back in my cozy room, and it was all I could do not to scream in rage. What had I been thinking last night? Had I been thinking at all?

After a moment, though, I calmed down. Last night wasn’t like me, and it also wasn’t like Zane. What was this Luna Temple that the second we saw each other we were going at it with no thought to personal safety? I was trying to escape, and instead I made love to Zane and fell asleep on the temple floor.

I hadn’t even been uncomfortable. Not like now, I realized. In fact, I whipped back the white blanket and saw my right ankle was bound to the bed with a pure white (of course) rope.

OK, now I was getting pissed.

My door opened, and Janine entered with two Oracles in tow. I wanted to ask her just what the fuck she thought she was doing, but thee three women all looked so happy and reverent that the words stuck to my tongue.

“You and Alpha Zane have blessed our temple!” Janine cried out, and there were actual tears in her eyes. “Luna accepts your offering with divine gratitude!”

“What?”

“You have strengthened our temple,” Janine said, and now the tears actually slipped out of her eyes, falling (somewhat strategically, I thought) down her pale cheeks. “You have brought us closer to Luna, just as your spirit walk foretold.”

“Take this thing off my ankle, and let me out of here,” I growled.

Janine actually dimpled at me. “Omegas don’t respond to the Alpha Voice, dear. It’s yet another reason we’re shunned.”

I shouldn’t have let myself get distracted, but what she said managed it. “I’m not a werewolf, let alone an alpha.”

“I know!” she seemed almost rapturous. I wondered if they’d been smoking something from that herb garden of theirs.

In fact, looking at them, they all looked a little glassy-eyed. At a quiet knock on the door, the Omega to Janine’s right turned and opened it. A naked omega male walked in.

“This is Hollister,” Janine said, “our head priest. Is he not magnificent?”

That’s a word, I suppose. Hollister was quite tall, so much that I had noticed him before. He was also hung like a donkey and somewhere around seventy years old, not that that would have made a difference. I felt physically ill.

“You people are insane,” I whispered, but at least last night was starting to make a little more sense. The Oracles had done something to me and Zane, perhaps drugged us with odorless incense or just used their mental powers, which is why we’d forgotten ourselves. And now they obviously wanted me to continue the “blessing” this Hollister.

“You will give Hollister many children,” Janine the Nut Job was saying now. “Your children’s children’s children appeared to you in your spirit walk. Do you not remember?”

“I remember I came here freely, and I would like to leave the same way.” I pointed at Hollister. “I am not having sex with that, neither am I having children with that. I pointed at the white rope around my ankle and snarled, “Take that off.”

Instead of doing what I said, the omegas let in several more Oracles, four, in fact, and then pulled out their white ribbons. For the first time, I start to feel real concern.

“You can’t—”

“We can do so much with the power you have brought us,” Janine said next as she held out the other end of her ribbon. I put my hands behind my back.

“I want to go home! Let me go!”

Instead, some Oracles crowded me, forcing my right hand out in front of me and tying the ribbon around my wrist. More of that white rope was produced from someone’s pocket, and my left hand was tied to my waist.

Meanwhile, the others had joined a semi-circle around my bed and Hollister, who stood there like the stud bull he was, and they closed their eyes.

“Sarah,” Janine said, her voice quivering with excitement. “You come here to find your enemies.”

“You’re my enemies!”

“Are they the demons that you seek?”

“You’re a bunch of demons, all right!”

“You seek also to protect your family, which you will add to today.”

I glared at her as an Oracle entered the crowded room holding that disgusting chalice.

“You must be honest here, Sarah Astor. You must seek the truth today, not what will serve you best.” She took the chalice and then turned to offer it to me.

“You can totally shove that thing up your ass.”

She held it toward me a little more insistently.

“Fuck. You.”

She lowered the cup, then took a swallow, gave it back to the Oracle who had given it to her, who turned and left. Then Janine took something out of a pocket and uncapped it.

A fucking syringe.

“Keep away from me!” I screamed, but then I was being held down and my arm held still. I felt the sting of the needle, and then almost instantly I was back in my forest, Janine standing in front of me with a pathway stretched out behind her.

“We call on the goddess to guide Sarah to her truth,” Janine said.

The other Oracles were standing along the pathway, all holding white candles. At the end of the path, I saw Hollister holding out his arms to me.

I looked up and saw the moon. Holding out my arms, I welcomed its glow. I let it fill me, falling onto my upraised palms like snowflakes. I felt myself grow warmer and warmer.

“Sarah?” Janine asked.

I said fuck you, bitch.

When I was ready, I looked back at the Oracles on their path and their naked sacrifice to the moon, and I knew Luna was as disgusted as I.

I pushed my light and warmth toward them, blinding them. A couple of them screamed. Good.

The light and heat intensified, brighter and hotter until the air seemed to burn.

I closed my hands into fists, and the energy dimmed and dissipated. When the pathway was visible again, I saw the Oracles and Hollister lying along it, panting and writhing.

“I said, I want to go home.”