The Alpha's Oracle (SAMPLE, IronMoon #1)

Waiting For Gabel

 "We're wolves! You're my father, you're the Beta, you aren't going to do anything? You aren't going to make Alpha Jermain fight?"

My father shook his head. "Gianna, there's a great deal you don't know, that we've kept from you."

"I know we're wolves. That means we don't let other wolves take what's ours without a fight. I'm an Oracle, and I'm telling a warrior this?" Shadowless wasn't a tiny pack. We were a large pack, a strong pack, and we didn't tuck our tails because another Alpha growled at us.

"Mind your mouth, Gianna," he snapped.

His authority as First Beta meant nothing now. He was a warrior who wouldn't fight. He was a male who'd tuck his tail and cower, and worse, he'd let his Alpha cower. This brief exchange dissolved all his power and prestige over me. He should have been growling a challenge at his Alpha. Instead he turned his snarl on me.

Alpha Gabel of IronMoon. Angry or not, the name still sent cold shivers through me.

Three years ago the IronMoon had been a small pack living in the cold, northern forests. Nothing but a bunch of punks who fought amongst themselves and usually killed each other before they hurt anyone else. Then Alpha Gabel had appeared. He trained his warriors to be brutal and fierce. Under his leadership IronMoon had consumed all the small packs in the region, then moved on to bigger and bigger prey.

He didn't kill the packs he conquered.

The IronMoon tortured their victims.

The IronMoon broke their victims.

But Alpha Gabel made it easy to avoid his wrath, and the inevitable indignity of begging for mercy. Surrender, swear allegiance, and pay annual tribute to the IronMoon. That was all he seemed to want, and he otherwise left his liege-packs to rule themselves and manage their own affairs. It wasn't such a bad deal if you could get past being leashed like a dog.

Now the weakest packs surrendered before Gabel got around to menacing them. Shadowless had become one of those packs. There would be no fight. Alpha Jermain of Shadowless would surrender to Alpha Gabel of IronMoon without so much as a growl.

Gabel had never explained why he collected packs like hunters collected trophies. The rumor was he intended to crown himself King Alpha. In public people scoffed at the idea, and Gabel didn't do much to support the rumors. He didn't maintain any kind of court, he didn't dissolve and annex the packs he conquered, he didn't even style himself as Lord-Alpha. His IronMoon stormed out of their heart in the north like locusts every few weeks, swept over their target, Gabel got his promise of tribute, and they went home. Not very much the conquering monarch.

The last of the King-Alphas had killed themselves off five hundred years earlier. The war had shattered our culture and almost extinguished our species. The kings had died, their kingdoms had fallen, and werewolves had moved on. Monarchies were dead in the modern, human-dominated world.

King-Alpha ambitions or just collecting packs to be a herd of milk-cows, Gabel's IronMoon had graduated to devouring packs Shadowless' size in the past year. He had already taken GleamingFang to our south and MarchMoon to our east. A fight with IronMoon had been inevitable.

At least that's what I had thought until this evening.

"Gianna." My father tried to take a stern tone with me. "This is how it's going to be. You don't know as much as you think you do."

"I am not a child," I snapped. "I stopped being a child four years ago." Other twenty yearold females struggled for respect and position within a pack and were excluded from much of the pack's management, but I was a Seer: a female wolf blessed with visions and whispers from the Moon. I had finished my training at sixteen and graduated to adulthood as an Oracle. Shadowless' concerns and business weren't much of a mystery to me, no matter how hard my father tried to keep me in the dark. No one expects Oracles to be courageous in the face of battle. We aren't warriors. But weak, timid Oracles are get lost on the Tides, drown in the Moon's Eye, go insane from the whispers and visions. I also came from a long line of warriors, and courage had been bred into my bones. I couldn't accept Alpha Jermain kneeling in front of Alpha Gabel unless—and until—Gabel ripped out his hamstrings.