Born By Moonlight by Krista Street

 

Chapter 1

~ WYATT ~

My feet pounded on the floor as I sprinted down the healing center’s hallway. Wes McCloy, my boss and the top commander of the Supernatural Forces, ran right behind me.

Magic permeated the air, scents of fear drenching it, but my thoughts focused on one thing and one thing only—Avery Meyers.

A young healing witch waited just outside of Avery’s patient room. Bavar Fieldstone, my friend and fellow Major, stood right beside her.

Bavar’s bright orange hair looked disheveled, as if he’d run his hands through it repeatedly. “Wyatt, I tried to call you—”

I pushed past him. I knew he’d tried to call, but Douglas—a top SF sorcerer—had reached us first, and right now, all I cared about was getting to Avery’s side.

The second I careened into her room, her lilac scent hit me. It overrode the healing magic surrounding her, but more importantly, that scent verified she was still alive.

My racing heart slowed, if only a little.

She was awake and sitting upright. Long mahogany hair tumbled down her back, and her inquisitive brown eyes flecked with gold assessed me in confusion. A quick scan of her had my rapid pulse slowing more.

The malevolent purple magic that had vibrated from her body only hours before was absent.

“Avery?” I said hoarsely, dropping to my knees by her bed with a thump. Relief pounded through me in unrelenting waves. She looked unharmed.

“Wyatt?” Surprise laced her tone, but then her eyes narrowed with distrust.

I nearly doubled over. Her apprehensive stare was like a punch to my gut.

My inner wolf snarled at me. He hated that I’d turned my back on our mate three months ago. It was my actions that caused her accusing glare, but I’d made that choice for so many reasons—to protect her dream of becoming an ambassador, to not pressure her into a long-distance relationship that would inevitably last years, and to uphold my promise to Marcus, which meant I couldn’t be fired from the SF—something that would have happened if I’d pursued a relationship with her.

Still . . . it had been an agonizing choice, and it had all come down to timing. Fucking timing. If only I’d met her again two years in the future and not three months ago.

But now was not the time to think about that.

“You’re alive and awake.” I curled my fingers into my palms to stop myself from touching her.

She brought a hand to her forehead. “Why does everyone seem so surprised by that?”

I frowned, wondering how much she remembered of the Safrinite comet and the effects its arrival in the fae lands had on her.

Only five hours ago, we’d been lying in a field outside of the fae lands’ capital waiting for the ancient comet to arrive. The entire country had been celebrating since the comet would invigorate the fae realm with new magic.

Avery massaged her temples. Darkness still tinted the windows in her patient room. It was barely five in the morning, and the sun still hadn’t risen. The most agonizing night in my life still hadn’t ended.

Her hands dropped and she watched me, her suspicious stare palpable.

More than anything I wanted to pull her into my arms, hold her, kiss her, reassure myself that she was still here with me. But I didn’t.

Because she wouldn’t want that.

She clutched the bedsheet to her chest, as if shielding herself from not only the unfamiliar events unfolding around her but from me as well.

“Do you remember what happened tonight?” I asked softly.

“I remember going to the fae lands.” Her face screwed up into a knot of confusion. “We were in a field. Eliza and Charlotte were with me, then we saw you, Major Fieldstone, and your friends.” She shook her head. “But then . . . it gets fuzzy.”

“You don’t remember what happened to you when the comet arrived?”

She shook her head.

My pulse quickened. Avery had been incapacitated only hours ago. At the time, I’d feared she wouldn’t survive.

I still feared it.

“It’s not unusual for an event like that to result in patchy memories,” Douglas said. The middle-aged sorcerer stood near the wall, Wes at his side.

I’d completely forgotten they were there. Was it really only minutes ago that Douglas had called Wes and me, urging us to return to the healing center? But why? Avery looked fine.

I scented Wes’s trepidation. He knew my true feelings for Avery, but Douglas didn’t. Nobody else did, not even Avery. Only Wes and Dee Armund knew, and Bavar had probably guessed it.

Avery winced, bringing her hand to her forehead again.

Alarm shot through me as Farrah—the healing center’s highest-trained healing witch—dampened a cloth and pressed it to Avery’s forehead. Avery’s eyes closed in bliss, and it was only then I became aware of the heat rising from her.

Heat that should never rise from a mixed-blood supernatural if she was healthy.

Panic squeezed my veins. I shot to standing and whirled around. “What’s wrong with her?”

Douglas’s eyebrows pinched together. The sorcerer jerked his head toward the door.

Farrah handed the cloth to Cora, another healing witch, and came to the end of Avery’s bed. Both Farrah and Douglas wore worried expressions.

My wolf snarled inside me as Wes and I followed them out of the room.

I cast another anxious glance over my shoulder at my mate, but the other witches had already moved in, using their potions, spells, and comforting hands to care for her. Avery leaned back in the bed and closed her eyes, her long lashes fluttering on her flushed cheeks.

My wolf paced in agitation. Something desperately wrong had happened to my mate.

And it didn’t appear anyone was doing anything about it.

A growl tore from my throat. “Why is she—”

“Come with us,” Farrah said briskly before striding down the hall.

Seething, I followed.

“You need to see this. It’s why I called you,” Douglas said to Wes.

The three of us followed hot on the witch’s heels. She led us to a room two doors down.

I passed Bavar on the way. He was leaning against the wall. When he caught my expression, he straightened, but I shook my head. Now wasn’t the time to fill him in.

We followed Farrah inside the room. The walls glowed with a magical hue. Images of a person’s body stared back at us. Organs, vessels, bones . . . the organic matter was laid bare for all to see.

“Why isn’t she better?” I demanded. “The purple magic isn’t around her anymore.”

Farrah merely inclined her head toward one of the scans. “That’s why.” She pointed at a circular object in the center of a person’s chest—inside their chest.

“That magic is still inside her, but it’s changed.” Farrah crossed her arms. “It was pulsing and growing when she initially arrived, but with each minute that’s passed, it’s grown dimmer, almost shrinking in on itself.”

Wes frowned, his gray eyebrows knitting together. “What does that mean?”

“We don’t know,” Douglas replied. “But we do know it’s not a hex or a spell. Our tests would have detected if it were, which means it was the comet that caused this. Yet despite conducting every test in our arsenal, all of them have yielded either nothing or inconclusive results. The bottom line is that we simply don’tknow what the comet did to her. But we’re confident it’s done something. Her fever began when the magic turned inward. It’s hard to say what will ultimately happen, but the reason I called you and told you to come so urgently is because of this.”

He shifted, moving to a magical apparatus. It showed lines, numbers, spheres, and graphs. Everything glowed from the holographic machine like a shining rainbow of bad news. “This monitors a supernatural’s life force and magic. And if you look at this graph here, you’ll see that it’s moving very slowly downward.”

My muscles seized. “Meaning what?”

Douglas’s eyes dimmed. “Meaning that whatever happened to her in the fae lands will inevitably kill her. Right now, she’s on borrowed time.”