Iron Oracle (IronMoon #2, PUBLISHED/SAMPLE)

A Glimpse

We didn't get back to IronMoon until the afternoon. Gabel and I had not said a word to each other since we had left SaltPaw, and I hadn't slept, and neither had he. He looked more haggard than he probably wanted me to tell him, with almost two days of scruff on his normally clean-shaven jaw that only drew out the circles under his eyes, and I was sure I looked like roadkill. I felt like roadkill. Flat and well-jerked by summer sun.

"Alpha, Luna." Flint greeted us on the front steps, gleaming with steaming sweat from training. Eroth and Anna flanked him, Anna thinking this whole greet-the-leaders when they returned silly. "Where is First Beta Hi and the others?"

"Remaining in the south until the situation is stable." Gabel said, voice impatient and taunt.

"And the MarchMoon?"

"Dismantled. They are IronMoon now." The tightness of Gabel's voice increased.

Flint had his opinions on this. He glanced at me for a cue. I twitched my head. Gabel was still seething under that tired skin. Instead, he changed the subject, "Gardenia is dead, Luna. We have disposed of her body without ceremony."

"Is Cook still here?" I asked.

Flint nodded. "He understands she made her own end and had infinite chances at redemption."

"One chance too many." I muttered without thinking.

By the Moon, Gianna.

I was so tired. My brain shifted in a bed of sand.

Dragging myself up the stairs sapped the last of my energy. Forget the shower, forget food, I just wanted to sleep. I wearily stripped off my clothes, and even that was too much effort. I collapsed into the bed with bra, panties, shirt and one sock still on.

"I will wake you for dinner." Gabel said.

"Where are you going?"

"The pack will talk if I am not here."

"Most of the pack isn't here." I reminded him. "Come to bed, Gabel."

"No. I am fine."

"You are not fine. You are exhausted. Come here."

"No."

I groaned. Demands wouldn't work. Gabel was just flinging himself against his chains. He'd probably go obsess over the defiant SaltPaw, and he was exhausted, and that combination wouldn't end well. I tried a different tactic. "I won't sleep well if I know you're prowling around. It'll worry me."

Gabel caved as if I had sliced a blade across the back of each hamstring. "Only if you take off the rest of your clothes."

"Even right now?" I whined. He refused to accept sleeping with even a thread of clothes on.

"Clothing is a shield. It is impossible to relax if one is about to jump up."

I cracked my eyes open. So that was his aversion. Not just about modesty as he had told me, but the same thing that made these rooms have no windows. He was a feral, so clothing to him, while natural to me, was something he had acquired much later in his life. Something he wore to move through human and even werewolf society. Because it was expected and needed, not because it was normal to him. Clothing was functional to him. An armor, a guise, a different set of fur to hide the one he had worn in his youth.

Who wanted to sleep in armor?

"Deal." I agreed, finding the energy to squirm out of my remaining clothing.

Gabel watched, and only once I was naked, did he take off his own clothes and collapse into bed next to me.

"They outsmarted me." he said, staring at the ceiling, as if he could not believe it. "They ran and hid somewhere. The whole pack."