Cresent Prophecy Axelle Chandler (beach read .txt) 📖

paws snow white, and his eyes a startling shade of amber. He was massive, at least the size of… The wolf that had attacked me. There were so many things wrong with what was happening, but I didn’t have the strength to ponder the implications.

“Holy fu…fruitcake,” I exclaimed, causing Lucy to turn.

Wolf-Boone snarled, baring his razor-sharp teeth, and lowered his head in warning.

“No… You’re… You can’t be!”

The wolf stepped forward, tearing through the barrier like it wasn’t there at all. It flared purple, then sputtered before dying completely.

I stared in shock as he advanced on Lucy like the Terminator. Menacing, without fear, and with deadly intent.

She raised her hands, calling on her magic, and I opened my mouth to scream a warning, but Wolf-Boone had felt it, too.

His jaws snapped, and he sprang forward, his haunches launching him off the ground at an alarming speed. He collided with Lucy, and she fell onto her back with him on top. His jaws snapped and…

I turned my head away as the witch screamed, the sound of tearing flesh and crunching bones making me want to hurl.

“Stop!” I screeched, tears streaming from my eyes. “Boone, stop!”

My magic flared, and the restraints holding me down were broken. Lucy’s magic had been severed, which meant…

“Oh, God,” I whispered, rolling onto my side. I heaved, but my stomach was empty.

Dragging myself off the stone slab, I glanced up at Boone, who’d stopped his frenzied attack and was now staring at me.

“Boone…”

His eyes fixed on me, sparkling in the torchlight. His fur was matted with blood, and his teeth were red with it.

“It’s over,” I went on. “You can change back now…”

Trying not to look at what was left of Lucy, I crawled toward him.

The wolf lowered his head in warning, a low growl coming from his jaws. I hesitated, my fear almost getting the best of me, but I wasn’t backing down. Despite all his animal instincts wanting to take over, Boone was still in there.

Reaching out, I ignored his deepening growls and grasped the fur behind his ears. The moment I touched him, I felt my magic snake through my arm and flow into his body.

The effect was immediate. The tension seeped from him, and he whined, his head rubbing up against mine. Nestling beside me, his snout nudged my arm, and then his tongue lapped at the cut. I shivered, fearful he would lose control and chomp down on me at any moment, but he didn’t. The touch of Crescent magic had called him back, and he was little more than a puppy. The wild wolf had been put back into his box…for now.

“I’m okay,” I whispered to the wolf. “I need you to come back.”

He blinked and lowered his nose.

“Please.”

He whimpered softly, then his bones began to crack as his body went through his change.

I sat back on my heels. I never liked seeing him go through it, but I’d also never seen him as a wolf before. Back when I’d first found out he was a shapeshifter, I’d asked him why he only had a few animals in his arsenal. His answer had been surprising and kind of alarming. He never tried until was sure he could change back.

Holding my arms against my stomach, I waited as his snout shrunk and his fur disappeared. I waited until his humanity began to show before I sighed in relief.

Finally, he knelt before me, naked as the day he was born—covered in the blood of the witch who’d betrayed us—and began to shiver. I opened my arms, ignoring the sting of my own wounds, and held him against me.

“Who am I?” he whispered, clinging onto me for dear life. “What have I done?”

“What you had to,” I replied.

“I killed her…” He was on the verge of hysterics.

“Boone, listen to me,” I said, grasping his face in my hands. The cuts on my arms didn’t seem to hurt as much anymore. “You did what you had to. Do you understand what she was trying to do?”

He nodded, his bottom lip quivering. “She was tryin’ to break the curse.”

“Which means she wasn’t our friend. She was never here to help us.”

His expression faltered, and he reached up and grasped my wrists. “Skye… Your arms…”

“Huh?”

Glancing down, I gasped as I saw the cuts Lucy had opened up with her dagger had begun to knit back together. All that remained were two long puckered lines. How… Wolf-Boone had licked them like a lollypop!

“So you have a magical tongue now?”

“I don’t know how… I didn’t know I could… That’s not one of me shapes.”

It may not be, but he had a whole past he knew nothing about. He probably had the ability to change into a whole menagerie, and he wouldn’t even know.

“We can try to piece together this later,” I murmured. “Right now, we need to go home and prepare.”

“For what? We stopped the ritual… Didn’t we?”

I frowned and lowered my head.

“Skye?”

Grasping Boone’s hand, I rose to my feet. I wasn’t so sure, but there was no way of knowing until it was time for the ultimate showdown. Even if we dodged a bullet this time, there would be another attempt, and another, and another until one of us got what we wanted.

Boone was looking up at me expectantly, but we had bigger wolf-sized fish to fry right now.

“Let’s go home,” I murmured. “Before you catch a cold.”

Chapter 20

I didn’t let Boone shift for our walk back to the cottage.

Gathering what was left of his clothes, I bundled him up and made him sit outside the clearing. While he shivered in his undies, I cast one last spell.

I wasn’t sure if I should thank Lucy for the lessons she’d taught me, but it was her guidance that saw me wipe my hand across the whole scene…and erase it. The pools of blood dissolved like a pot of boiling water that had completely evaporated, steaming and bubbling until it was no more. The torches were snuffed out and began