The Wild Moon by Riley Storm
Chapter One
The full moon is supposed to be a time of new beginnings. Of starting over. Finding yourself.
In my experience, that’s been a load of shit.
The full moon brought me plenty of things. Embarrassment. Humiliation. Discomfort. Pain. Confusion. Anguish. Loss.
That last one really hurt. They all did, of course, and every month I had the unbelievably luxury of being forced to relive them. Each and every one. Over and over again.
I’m not bitter, though. Nor do I hold a grudge. Not against the moon. It waxes and wanes, without thought, without care. It’s not sentient. It didn’t pick me. It wasn’t the moon that fucked my life up.
No, that honor belonged to one Johnathan Aldridge.
Now there’s someone I hold a grudge against. It’s only natural when he destroyed my entire world, isn’t it? That’s how I justified it, at least.
Muttering angrily to myself as I dredged up old memories, I strode along the sidewalk through my hometown of Seguin, trying hard not to make eye contact with anyone I passed.
Home.
That word had a different ring to it now, and I’d prefer not to dwell on it.
“Dani?”
I looked up at a familiar voice. “Hey, Fran,” I said, trying my best to feign politeness as I took stock of my surroundings.
Apparently, my brain had been auto-piloting me across town without thinking. Usually, I avoided the post office and my old boss.
“How are you?”
I stared, momentarily unsure how to answer such a simple question when my answer was anything but.
Telling the truth was an option, of course. I could tell her all about the shitty, fucked-up life I was living in the big city. Then there was the trauma I experienced every month on my return to this dying hellhole. Or the trauma about my family. Or. Or. Or. The list went on and on some days until it felt like I had a damn CVS receipt worth of issues. Which wasn’t entirely fair. There were only like three. Or four.
I didn’t go into detail, though. Frannie was a nice woman, and she didn’t deserve to be unloaded upon like that. I should be polite.
“I’m back here,” I said instead, letting my face do the explaining. “That should tell you everything.”
The other woman smiled sadly, shaking her head at me. Her hair, long, brown, and locked into a simple braid, bounced easily from the motion. “The Wild Moon.”
I nodded. “The Wild Moon.”
It was the only thing that brought me back. Sort of.
Technically, it was the Alpha’s rule. All shifters must be with their pack on the Wild Moon, or they would be deemed Wild and hunted down. So, I came back to avoid being hunted and killed by Lars Aldridge and his enforcers.
Yes. That Aldridge. I really do have great taste in men.
“See you tonight, then,” Frannie said, accurately recognizing that I didn’t really want to talk. My return to Seguin wasn’t social, nor even of my own choice.
I had to be here.
Nodding, grateful for the excuse not to continue the conversation, I moved past my old boss and old workplace at the post office and continued along Seguin’s sole main street.
Half the places I passed were boarded up, businesses and houses alike. I wish I could say that the place had gone to shit since I left, as people left in protest of my treatment, but in reality, it had been this way for years, slowly shrinking as people died and weren’t replaced.
Our population was shrinking. Nobody wanted to talk about it, at least not with me, but it was obvious if someone took thirty seconds to pay attention. I’d wondered why that was when I was younger and not so cynical. Now I just attributed it to the long-ruling Aldridge family being a bunch of assholes and nobody wanting to be in their pack.
It probably wasn’t the truth, but it fit my hateful little fantasy of them, and that was what mattered to me.
I purposefully took the long route to my destination. The shortcut would take me past a dark, abandoned house. In that sense, it was just one of dozens in the tiny little town, but this one hadn’t always been that way. Up until eight months ago, it had been very, very different. Alive. Vibrant. Full of love and energy. Hope.
Now it lay dormant, absent those things, just like it was absent the family that once lived there.
Like my parents, I would never return to it.
