Under The Moon's Shadow: Night's Tale (On Hold)

Under The Moon's Shadow: Night's Tale - Chapter: 1

Under The Moon’s Shadow: Night’s Tale

Chapter 1

Lightning streaked across the darkened sky causing thunder to roll through the thick dark gray clouds as the rain began to fall towards the dry parched earth filling the air with the scent of rain. The once dry cracked ground started slowly to turn to mud making the ground harder to run on. Danger was nipping at our heels like wild dogs, one miss step in the mud and those wild dogs wouldn’t hesitate to pounce and kill the unfortunate soul who slipped. Muscles stiff and sore from the continual running I was falling behind the others. We just had to make it to the river, with each mile we covered danger closed in around us creating a hangman’s noose that once pulled would end all of us. Someone nudged against my shoulder to keep me from falling any further behind the others. Once the river came into view we picked up our speed. Within minutes we had crossed the river and into safety while on the other side the enemy stood unable to cross the river due to the magic that stopped anyone but our own from entering.

On the other side of the river was the forest of the ancients. More specifically The Forest of The Ancient Wolves or at least that is what the locals call it. Nothing entered except the occasional giant wolf. The locals gave the forest wide berth in fear of these giant wolves. They where ancient looking, wolves so large that they could take down a wooly mammoth, mussels slightly shorter than the gray wolves of today and an extreme danger that just seemed to radiated off of them. The locals believe that these wolves where the off spring of some ancient wolves that died out long ago. What they didn’t know was that we where the ancient wolves, the ancestors of wolves and werewolves. Wolves now are the descendants of those cursed by the goddess to forever walk the earth in animal form and the werewolves of legend don’t exist, we however do an ancient wolf blessed by the goddess to walk the world as man or beast. We are one or the other not both like the legends of werewolves say.

Slowly we entered into the forest, everyone alert and tense after the long and tiring run here to safety. We were finally back home within the forest of our ancestors. The sound of paws hitting the dry leaves that lined the forest floor, the sound of rain falling struggling to make it past the canopy above to reach the ground below and the rolling thunder all mixed to make hearing the slightest noise impossible to hear unless one was listening for it. I wasn’t listening for it so I didn’t hear the beating of his heart or his foot falls upon the ground next to me. I felt his warmth radiate through my thick snow white fur coat. A smile played at my lips as I turned my head in the direction of the warmth radiating off the intruder. There walking proudly next to me with the light from the lightning setting his black as night fur shimmering was Sorin my identical twin brother and the alpha of the pack that was our family. Identical twins we were in human form, in wolf form however we looked nothing alike.

Sorin whose name means “Sun” was reflected in human form with bronzed skin that shone, his long black hair shone so that it looked like silk and his eyes where such a golden color that it looked as if the rays of the sun had been captured in them. In his wolf form one would never guess what his name meant, with thick night black fur and darkened golden eyes he was my opposite. I am Nyx which means “Night” like my brother this was reflected in my human form, with bronze skin that didn’t shine, long night black hair that is so dark light gets lost in it and silver eyes that shine like a full harvest moon on the darkest night. In my wolf form no one would guess my names meaning, with thick pure harvest moon white fur and night black eyes I didn’t look much like the night of my name. I heard the jingle of his tags as he nudged me in my shoulder with his. A whine escaped my lips the moment he nudged me. After a week of running with no end in sight every muscle in my body was sore.

After he nudged me a second time everyone began to take on some semblance of a formation. I was close to the front of the formation. I was many things in this pack the alpha’s twin sister, the caregiver, the lookout thanks to my slightly more acute hearing and sense of smell, the princess of this forest and I was also the only female in the pack giving me the position of alpha female until the both of us find our mates. We weren’t like wild wolves in that sense; the goddess gave each of us a mark on our chest just above the heart. This marked us not only as her children but also meant that somewhere out there our mates bore the same mark above their heart. Each mark was different there were only two that where the same and those are the marks of mates. There wasn’t any fighting amongst females for standings, the males are the ones who fought to determine their position in the pack while a females’ standing was based on that of their male mate. If a female wanted to be an Alpha her mate would have to challenge for that position something that didn’t happen often.