Moon Touched (Zodiac Wolves: The Lost Pack #1)(39)

I believed it, for her at least. Me? I was still an outcast here.

I washed up and ran the dishwasher, before heading upstairs to spend the rest of my evening resting. Training had really taken it out of me, but as I laid in bed, I found that I couldn’t relax. Last night I’d fallen asleep easily, between my exhaustion and grief, but it wasn’t so easy tonight.

There were too many questions that needed answering. I glanced out my window and found puddles of moonlight on the ground outside. For one, I needed to understand the strange power I’d used to get away from Jordan back at the Convergence.

I got up and padded to my door, listening. The house was quiet. I opened it and stepped out into the hall. Kaden wasn’t there, snarling at me, so I figured it was safe.

I crept down the hall and down the stairs. Still nothing. I relaxed as I made it to the back door and stepped out, relieved to be leaving the house without any of my guards. I made my way into the forest as quietly as I could. Not too far, but just far enough that if Kaden or Stella happened to look outside they wouldn’t see me.

I stepped into a patch of moonlight and tilted my face up to the moon. It just seemed like light, nothing special about it. I didn’t feel the strange tug in my gut or the way the world had shifted. I closed my eyes and concentrated.

Still nothing.

Had it been only a one-time thing? Some strange survival instinct that shifters had?

Then I remembered that I’d felt as if I was going to die, and tried to conjure up the same feeling of fear and panic. I need to escape, I thought. I need to get away. The urgency grew within me easily enough. It hadn’t been too long ago that I’d been hunted like an animal, and the feeling was all too familiar.

I drew in a sharp breath and opened my eyes. I was ten feet away from where I’d been before. I nearly laughed, though it contained no humor. Whatever power I'd used before was still inside of me.

I closed my eyes and tried again. It was like shifting. The more I did it, the easier it became, like working out a muscle. I made a circle around a copse of trees using only patches of moonlight and then tried to skip over a patch. That didn’t work so well, but at least I was beginning to know the limits of this strange power. When I paused to take a breath, I felt tired, like I’d been training or running.

Suddenly the feeling of being watched raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I swiveled my head around, trying to see who it was. Kaden leaned against a tree about twenty feet away, completely in shadow, but there was no mistaking him for anyone else. I'd know those broad shoulders anywhere.

“What are you doing?” I asked, hands on my hips. “How long have you been watching?"

He uncrossed his arms and stepped into the moonlight, letting it illuminate his way-too-handsome face. “I need to make sure you’re not going to escape, since you decided to leave the house in the middle of the night, acting like you were sneaking out."

“I just wanted to figure out how this weird power works,” I said. “I didn’t have it before the Convergence, and I haven’t exactly had time to practice yet. You know, being locked in a cage and all.”

I expected Kaden to snarl something at me, but he simply ignored my jab and stepped closer. I took an involuntary step back, but then stood my ground, lifting my chin. I wouldn’t let him intimidate me.

"I know what you are," Kaden said. "I suspected it before, but after seeing you move in the moonlight, it's obvious now. You’re Moon Touched."

“I'm what?” I’d never heard the term before.

“You’ve been given a special gift by the moon goddess, Selene,” he elaborated, which didn’t really clear anything up at all.

"Why would the moon goddess give me gifts?" I snorted. "I’ve never been anything special in my life." Dad had made it exceptionally clear that I wasn’t anything to write home about.

Kaden's eyes raked up and down my body in a way that made me shiver. Instantly, I flushed with heat, but I shoved the feeling away. It irritated me to no end that my body responded to him like this.

“I have a theory," he said.

“Mind sharing with the class?” I asked.

He smirked at that. “Yes, I do. I think I’ll hang onto it for a bit.”

Asshole, I thought.

“How much do you know about the Ophiuchus pack and why we’re outcasts from the rest of the Zodiac Wolves?” he asked before I could snipe back at him.

I shrugged. “About the same as any other shifter, I’d expect. We were raised on ghost stories about you. I didn’t think your pack was real until I saw you." I tilted my head as I recalled some of the things I'd heard. "The legends say your pack interbred with the Moon Witches long ago to try to gain extra powers. They also say that you tried to take over once before, and all it got you was being kicked out of the Zodiac Packs.”

“Partially true,” Kaden said. “Long ago, the Moon and Sun Witches were allied, and they enslaved all wolf shifters to fight a war against the vampires."

I held up a hand to stop him. "Wait, hang on. Vampires? They're real?"

"Yes, although there are very few of them left, from what I've heard. They tend to live in Europe."

"How stereotypical," I muttered.

He shot me a look as he continued. “As I was saying... After the witches won the war, the shifters revolted and earned their freedom, with the help of the Moon Witches. The Sun Witches didn’t take kindly to this betrayal, and the two groups became separate. The Ophiuchus pack remained on good terms with the Moon Witches and sometimes mated with them, but the other Zodiac packs didn’t like our pack's growing power, and cast us out." He paused as if waiting for me to interrupt him, but I was just shocked by all this new information—and because I'd never heard him say so many words at once before. “The other twelve packs allied with the Sun Witches instead, which was a big mistake. The Sun Witches manipulated the twelve packs into thinking they were allies, but in reality, they're controlling them."