Iron Oracle (IronMoon #2, PUBLISHED/SAMPLE)

Weed Wacking

My first official act as Luna would be an execution.

Gardenia waited in the basement.

Gabel went with me, but only to observe. I was the Luna. The discipline of she-wolves was my concern now. One that Gabel was very glad to hand over to me. He didn't know what to do with a female who needed rough handling. They mystified him, as if it didn't occur to him females could behave just as badly as males.

Hix, however, didn't care about handling anyone roughly, and had shackled Gardenia in the basement. She slumped against the concrete wall. The shackles held her hands above her head, but she was able to kneel. She trembled from the burning agony of the silver insets on the leather shackles. The leather was a torment: while the silver prevented shifting, you could (in theory) chew through them. The moment the silver components were ingested (unavoidable), it made things so much worse.

It was a way for a wolf to kill themself. An option given to those who didn't need to be kept around for questioning or spectacle, but for whom death was a certainty.

Hix had given Gardenia the option of ending her life herself, at her choosing. How appropriately Hix.

Gardenia raised her head when we approached. Her skin was translucent and blue-tinged, her eyes haloed in purple darkness, bruises forming on tender flesh as the silver poison caused tiny capillaries and blood vessels to rupture. Hatred and fight still burned in her blue eyes.

What a damn waste.

She could have been so much more. Even now she was still full of fight, and wouldn't quit, even with silver eating away at her cardiovascular system and poisoning her brain.

I had to respect that, even if I also had to destroy her. She and I couldn't exist in the same world.

Her gaze moved to Gabel, then slowly back to me.

"This is the end." I told her.

She looked at Gabel again, this time she didn't look away.

Gabel said nothing.

Gardenia believed she could have had Gabel. She believed she had been denied.

My vision shimmered, and the RedWater Ghosts, their coats fading now from the tawny they had been in life, to a white like fresh snow powder, came to me. The pair of them stepped over to Gardenia, sniffing her, the sparkling tips of their hairs drawing strange blue tendrils from Gardenia's skin.

Long training forced the shock away from my mind. This was a new trick.

The blue tendrils drifted towards the sparkling tips as they sniffed her all over. Gardenia seemed unaware, Gabel unmoving behind me.

My awareness teetered on the edge of a realization, like my toes just over the edge of the cliff. The tendrils moved and swayed like marsh grasses massaged by a gentle current. The two RedWater Ghosts sat down and stared at Gardenia, the blue tendrils drifting over their fur-tips.

No. She hadn't wanted Gabel. She had wanted power, and she had pursued it even to death.

She tore her gaze away from Gabel, back to me, and hissed at me like a pit viper.

In a weird way, I had to admire her. Even now she refused to give in. Flint was right about the courage of females. A male would have broken by now, but not Gardenia, and I understood it. The same reason I had fought the Bond, and punished my body just to punish Gabel. It hadn't mattered how much it had hurt. Unlike her, I hadn't been willing to die for it, and there was a point at which I had always stopped. Death was the easy way out of a Bond.