~ Melissa
Following is an excerpt from Broken Melody, book two of Luna's Children.
Broken Melody
Coming January 2014
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It was a beautiful day, the kind of day that was made for being outdoors in the sunshine. Bright blue skies were dotted with white puffs of clouds and the wonderful heat of the sun beamed down in silent blessing. A gentle wind slid down the hills and through the trees into the little valley were its inhabitants found any reason they could to enjoy the early break from the deep South summer. The trees had burst forth with vibrant green leaves while underneath, a multitude of flower blossoms danced and swayed.
In the middle of the meadow, a young girl, no more than eight years old, crouched, giggling softly as her best friend, Tammy, called out numbers. She flattened herself on the grass when she heard the girl call out, “Ready or not, here I come!” Several moments passed, Tammy thrashed noisily around in the tall grass until finally spied her prey. She squealed, “I see you!” and ran in for the tag.
The girl jumped up and bolted as fast as her little pudgy legs could go. Reaching her hands out to touch the trunk designated as home base, she almost made it when she tripped and fell headlong into the tree. There was a thump, followed by a burst of stars in her eyesight as her forehead made connection with the immovable object. Carried by the momentum, she rolled into the tree and then slid off to the side. She laid there a moment, blinking her eyes to clear the bursts of lights dancing in her vision. Raising her hand up, she pressed it against her head and pulled it away bright red with blood. Looking down, more blood splattered across her shirt as well.
“Mumma is gonna get me,” she whimpered.
“Stupid freak! Didn't even know I was there because you can't see! You're just a human freak! A real wolf would have known and could see! You're just a Cur! Freak! Stupid!”
She felt the tears burn, threatening to run down her cheeks. Through the blur, she could make out Jeremy, Lucas and Henry laughing and pointing at her. Their cries of “Freak,” “Human,” and the most vile of all names, “Cur,” echoed in her ears. Slowly she stood up and faced them, her hands clenched into fists at her side. She glared at them. These three had been bullying her for years, ever since the pack healer had figured out she was missing her inner wolf, the spirit that every werewolf had inside. Her mumma always told her to ignore them, to not let them bother her, but they did.
Standing there, facing them as they continued to jeer at her, her anger burned hotter and hotter until her eyes began to glow, shifting from deep sapphire to sky blue. Her hair blew back as if touched by the wind; her cheeks stained a bright pink. Drawing a deep breath, she opened her lips and screamed as hard as she could at them.
“GO AWAY!!!!”
The world stopped and held its breath as she poured all the pain, hurt and frustration into her cry. Once she had run out of wind, she staggered forward, her strength completely depleted and dropped to hands and knees. Raising her head, she saw Tammy staring at her, wide-eyed, face pale white.
They were alone.
“You made them disappear,” Tammy whispered. “They're gone.”
Turning, Tammy ran back towards the village, screaming at the top of her lungs. “She made them disappear! She made them go away! Zandria made them go away!”
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Gasping for breath, Zandria sat bolt upright in bed, one hand fumbling for the light switch beside her. Sweat plastered her hair to her face and her heart thundered in her chest. The light tank and shorts she wore to bed were twisted around her torso as evidence of the tossing she had done. Her covers lay in a heap on the floor. Several moments passed before she was able to get her breathing under control and her pulse to steady. The nightmare, one of many that continuously haunted her, had felt as real as the day it had actually happened.
She jumped when she heard pounding on her front door. Slipping out of bed, she slid her feet into her slippers and glancing at the oversized clock, squinting until she could make out the numbers. Only one person would be beating her door down at two a.m. Wiping her face with a tissue, she took a breath then opened the door.
“Zan? Are you alright? I felt you panicking,” Cayson's emerald green eyes fastened on her worriedly. She turned away quickly.
Damn that gift of his that allowed him to pick up on emotions. Just when she thought she had a good handle on hiding hers from him, she learned just how wrong she was. It was getting harder to shield herself from him and the effort was taking a toll on her. She knew without looking that there were dark circles under her eyes and the faint white scars that crossed her face would be standing out. Wearily, she nodded. “Just a nightmare,” she murmured. “You didn't have to come all the way over here.
He chuckled and the sound sent little tingles through her body and her toes curled appreciatively. Reaching down, he picked her up like she weighed nothing, stepped inside and closed the door with his foot.
“Put me down, please.” She pushed against the thick expanse of his muscled chest. It was like trying to move a building. “Cayson, please?”
He grinned at her in that lopsided way that made her heart skip a beat, pressed a kiss to her forehead and gently set her down on her feet again.
She took a step back and knuckled her fists on her hips. “I don't recall inviting you into my house.”
One eyebrow shot up and he looked down at her. “I didn't think I would have to wait for my mate to invite me in.”
“I'm not your ma...,” she began.
He stopped her with a growled, “not yet.”
Zandria threw her hands up. “How many times are we going to go through this? I've told you over and over, I'm not interested. You are so stubborn!”
He snorted. “I'm the stubborn one?” He pointed to a small round mark over her left breast, approximately two inches in diameter made of red and white swirls and lines resembling a fingerprint. “That says differently. That one and this one,” he touched his own mark, a mirror image to hers, “says we are mates. Our hearts say it and so do our souls. The only one refuting it is you.”
“You don't understand,” she huffed and flopped on the sofa, pulling her legs up to sit Indian style. Picking up one of the small brown pillows, she hugged it to herself with both arms.
Cayson folded his six foot five inch body up and sat beside her. Even though she was plump, having curves where most wolves were all lean muscle, he dwarfed her, making her feel almost petite. Reaching a hand out he cupped her face. His touch sent electricity racing through her nerves to center in her chest. “Then make me understand, Honey, because I really don't. I know you can feel that, feel us. Why do you fight it so hard?”
His words were soft and beseeching, his beautiful face wrinkled in concern and just a touch of hurt. Zandria's eyesight was failing and the room dim, but she knew every inch of that face and though she would like to ignore it, his pain tore at her heart. Shoring up her defenses, she pulled her face out of his hand. “I'm not fighting anything. You think you want me and that I'm the right mate for you, but I'm not. I'm not even a real wolf.”
He growled. “We've had this conversation before. I don't think it, I know it. I spent four years thinking I was in love with Amanda Thistle, four years waiting for her to realize it too. I was told that one day I would look into the eyes of my true mate and forget what Amanda looked like. I didn't believe it then but now I do. Zandria, I couldn't tell you the last time I saw her, what she was wearing or what she was doing, but I can recite to you everything about you going all the way back to the day you first arrived here. I know what color hair band you wore last week. I can tell you that your toes were painted pale pink for three days and you had a small spot on your pinky toe on your right foot. The cutoff shorts you wore yesterday had one string that was twice as long as the others. I
notice everything about you.” He leaned in and touched her knee. “Everything about you interests me. It interested me even before you finally let me look in your eyes!”
She swallowed and tried a different line of reasoning. “But Amanda...”
“Wasn't my mate. She knew it, her family knew it, my family knew it. By Luna, everyone knew it. Even my own wolf - he knew she wasn't right for me, for us, but he knows you are. It's nature. We are made for each other.”
She shook her head. “Your wolf is wrong. I don't have one. I'm a freak, a human born to wolf parents. I'm just a.. a..” She swallowed then forced herself to say the hateful word. “ a cur.” She lowered her head hiding her face behind a curtain of blonde. “I'm nothing,” she finished softly.
The tone of his voice steeled. “You aren't 'nothing', and you damn well are not a cur. Don't let me ever hear you call yourself such a filthy word again!” He took a breath and softened a bit when she flinched. “You are a wolf. Humans and wolves can't be life mates. The link that forms between them is a doubled connection – human to human and animal to animal. You are a wolf, a beautiful, wonderful, exciting one and you are my mate. We are trying to find out more about your gift and maybe explain why your beast is repressed, but one thing I know as much as I know my own name, you definitely have one. Maybe it's your gift? It's so special, there hasn't been one like you in centuries and we aren't sure what all it means.”
She looked up, tears welling in her eyes. “I don't want to be special. I want to be normal just like everyone else. This isn't a gift, it's a curse and I hate it. My whole life I've had to deal with it. You don't know what I've gone through,” she spat out bitterly.
“Then tell me. Zandria, let me in. Let me help you.” Using his gift of empathy, he gently pushed love and sincerity through his hand on her knee. She was hurting so badly, and he was totally locked out of her heart, unable to help her. Just the thought of it felt like a dagger slicing through his chest.
She felt him in her mind, begging with her to share her pain with him. She gasped and jumped up, breaking the contact. “I.. I think you need to go.” She took a step back, tossed the pillow back onto the couch and pointed at the door.
“Zan, please let me help.”
“You can't help. Please go before I.. call the Enforcers.” Her hands had begun to shake. Looking into his eyes, she barely kept from falling into them again. “Please,” she pleaded. She looked at him, the slight illumination from the moon shining through her window causing the tears to sparkle brightly in her eyes. The sight of his Zandria, standing so boldly with her lip trembling and eyes so full of pain broke him.
He sighed and got up. Putting his hand on the knob, he turned back and gazed at her again. He began to say something but with a wince, changed his mind. Shaking his head sadly, he opened the door and walked out, closing it quietly behind him. She watched him go and once she was sure he was out of hearing, dropped to the floor and threw her face into her hands, finally letting the floodgate down and bitterly weeping for the life she wanted but could never have; a life as Cayson's mate.
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