Page 37 of Shifted Fate (Broken Luna #1)

Chapter Thirty-Six

N

ix? I called out in my mind.

I’m trying to rein it in, but she pissed me off. Her voice was low. I watched her shake herself, but she was still riled. Megan trotted over to her and rubbed her side down Nix’s. I watched as my one wolf calmed my other one, and when Nix finally nodded, I opened my eyes to see I had shifted back.

I rubbed my arms, and Ronnie ran his fingers through his hair. “Please don’t shift until your father has been fixed. I don’t think I could keep up with Nix, nor keep her in check.” Ronnie shook himself before heading back upstairs.

I could still make out Aurora’s screaming, but we headed all the way back upstairs. “What about the tools?”

“Beck will grab them.” I nodded and headed up the stairs while Ronnie closed the door behind us and he called back up to me. “Amy?”

“Yeah?”

“You, ugh, you have a knife in your back pocket.”

Confused, I patted my pocket, and sure enough, I had a small knife I had grabbed from the room with the tools.

I pulled it out and flipped it over in my hand.

It wasn’t silver, just a small switch blade that I could use to torture Aurora with no lasting damage.

“Right.” I went to toss it back to Ronnie, but once he got a closer look at it, he waved his hand.

“I thought it was a silver knife. A regular knife is fine, keep it. Your dad would probably love for you to have that knife.” I flipped the knife in my hand and waited for Ronnie to join me.

“That was the only thing your mother ever gave your father. He loved it for so long, and passing it down to you would probably be the best thing.” Ronnie closed my fingers around it then pulled me out of the pack house.

“Are you sure?”

“Nope, but we can just ask the man. It isn’t like he’s dead.

” Ronnie chuckled as we walked past the backyard and into the forest. We walked for a while before something caught my attention.

There was someone screaming from far away.

Or so I thought. We walked a little farther and then Ronnie walked up to a thick tree, pushed his hand into a knot in the tree, and pulled it open, revealing stairs downward.

The screams were coming from down here. Ronnie looked at me and grimaced. “Is that?”

He nodded and headed down the stairs. “Seems like Loki gave control back to your father.”

We made our way to the bottom of the stairs and my father was pacing behind the bars of a cell. His snarl forced Ronnie to bear his neck, but I pushed past his power and aura. I walked up to the bars of the cell. “Dad?”

“What are you doing to her?” He snarled again, slamming his aura into me, but his power crashed over me like a wave against the rocks. It was powerful, but I held firm.

“Doing to whom?” I played dumb as I looked him over, trying to find something out of place. But he wasn’t wearing any necklace or jewelry.

“My Luna. Where is Aurora?” He charged the bars, reaching out to grab me, and I let him. He wrapped his hands around my throat again and squeezed.

Ronnie screamed and rushed over to me, grabbing my father’s hands and trying to pull him off, but being this close gave me a chance to see if there was anything that had a sigil on him. But yet again I came up empty.

I cut my eyes to Ronnie, who was begging my father to let go. “I can’t watch this. Gavin, you are my best friend, I can’t watch you kill your pup knowing how you will feel when you come back to yourself.” Tears sprang to his eyes as he begged, but my father was having none of it.

“Shut the fuck up Ronnie, I already told you she isn’t mine.

Ainsley was a whore who was cheating on me.

She still cheats on me. You lock me in here every fucking time like an animal.

You have begged me for years to get a new mate and now that I have, you’re backtracking for this imposter.

” My dad’s words cut deep, but I was distracted.

I tried not to flinch, but I caught the pink glowing from below my chin. I turned, and the glow was gone. So I turned back to Ronnie and looked from the corner of my eye, and I saw it again.

I put my hands up and I pulled myself out of his grasp. I kept his hand in mine as I turned my head to the side again, and there it was. A light pink sigil was burned into the back of my father’s hand. One he couldn’t see.

“Hold his hand out.” I pulled it out far enough, and Ronnie looked at me.

“What?”

“Hold his right hand out now.” My father was screaming.

“What the fuck are you doing? Ronnie, if you fucking listen to her I will kill you,” He snarled. His aura tried to come out, but it didn’t reach us.

“What the hell?”

“Your dad spelled this cell so that he couldn’t make us release him. He wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be a danger to the pack.”

I nodded and braced myself. I pulled his hand out as far as I could and nodded to Ronnie. He wrapped his hand around his arm. Once he was settled, and he gave me a nod, I let go. I wrestled his hand open, and I pulled the knife from my back pocket.

“Amy, what are you doing?” My father fought harder, slamming Ronnie’s back against the bars.

“Do you trust me?” I asked Ronnie as I fought to hold my dad’s hand straight as I brought the knife closer.

“Of course. But what are you doing?”

“If I’m right, what I am about to do will not be pretty, but it needs to be done.”

“What are you talking about?” He pushed back against the bars, but I couldn’t hesitate any longer.

I cut into the skin on the back of his hand, peeling it back as I went.

He went crazy. Screaming, howling and pulling back his hand, but with the two of us holding on, my dad couldn’t beat us.

“Amy?” Ronnie’s voice wavered as I continued to cut the skin away.

“He will heal. I need to get this off of him.” I strained as I finished cutting around the sigil. Then I scraped the skin away from the muscle and bones underneath.

Ronnie gagged as I worked, but I couldn’t think of it.

I couldn’t think that this was my father, and I was peeling his skin off.

This was saving him. That was all I could focus on.

“Amy.” He gagged again. My father used his feet pressed against a few bars, trying to rip his hand from our grasp.

He pushed and screamed, fighting harder, nearly dislocating his arm in his fight to get away from us.

“I’m almost done.” I finished and ripped the skin from his hand as Ronnie lost the fight and his arm slipped back into the cell. I fell to the ground, clutching the flesh in my hand.

“Amy, what the fuck is going on?” Ronnie looked down at the blood that covered him and nearly emptied his stomach again.

“Magic.” I stood and walked back over to the bars.

I watched as the skin regrew over my father’s wounds and I breathed out in a sigh of relief.

I turned to face Ronnie and checked, but the sigil was truly gone.

I moved the chunk I had in my hand and sure enough, the pink sigil still burned there.

“I got what I needed. Stay here with him. I’m going to finish this. I will call you once it’s done.”

“Amy, are you sure?”

“Yes.” I went to pat his shoulder, but he dodged my bloodied hand.

“I’m sure. Let me out of here.” Ronnie walked me up the stairs and released me.

I ran the entire way back to the house and up to my safe.

I grabbed the book of shadows and ran back to the clearing. Once there, I called to my grandmother.

I looked around, dropping to the ground and waiting, but even after five minutes, I was left alone. I flipped the book open and went page by page until I found the one I needed. The reversal of the infatuation spell.

I called out one more time before I realized she wasn’t coming. It was up to me to save my father from this. I felt the panic bubble inside of me, but both Megan and Nix came closer to the surface, lending me their strength.

We are here. You can do this. Nix’s smoky voice comforted me and I nodded.

“It says I need a fire.” I stood and ran back into the forest, searching for dead wood and twigs, anything that I could use to build a fire. “I have to make it hot enough to destroy both the necklace and the skin.”

Heat won’t be an issue, keeping it going long enough will be.

Gather a lot of wood. Megan’s voice cut in and I nodded to myself.

I made multiple trips, gathering enough wood to burn all night.

Then I grabbed stones I found to create a barrier from the remaining grass. I didn’t want this to get out of hand.

“Okay. I think I’m ready.” I barely took a breath as I arranged the stones and placed the dead wood and twigs. I felt my wolves pull back, and I took a deep breath before I linked myself to my power, gripping the white pot that just budded. And I flipped to a different page.

“Alsh firmate alite.” The fire ball flew from my hands and exploded against the dry wood.

It caught, and soon the fire was burning through the wood quickly.

I fed more wood, bigger pieces into the fire, and waited for them to catch too.

I wanted to be sure that this was going to burn for a while before I moved on to the next step.

Once I was sure that the fire was good, I flipped back to the page I needed.

I read the entire page twice before I put the book back on the ground. I pulled my mother’s necklace out of my pocket and my father’s skin. I prayed to the Moon Goddess that I was right before I tossed both in.

“Ista nox luva sit nu.” I slowly repeated the word three times, and I watched as the fire flared and turned pink. I sat back on my heels, and hoped I was right before. Now I just had to wait.

I stoked the fire and watched as the necklace slowly melted away, and nearly gagged from the smell as the small bit of my father went with it. I let the fire go until I saw everything turn to ash, then I let the fire burn away.

I took a deep breath before I did the thing I was most scared of. I took out my phone and called Ronnie. “It’s done. How is he?” I closed my eyes and held my breath, waiting to hear his screams.

“He’s perfectly fine.” I could hear the relief in his voice.

“Are you sure? He isn’t playing you?” I wanted so badly to believe what he said, but I was afraid.

“Yeah. Amy, you did good.” Ronnie’s voice trailed off.

“Pup?” My father’s ragged voice was on the line and I felt like I could cry.

“Dad?” My voice wavered.

“I’m so sorry, pup. I don’t believe you are an imposter. You are one hundred percent mine. And I am so sorry for hurting you. Loki and Ronnie filled me in. Are you okay?”

I lost the fight, and tears fell. “Yeah Dad. I’m okay.” I let out the breath I was holding. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I know. But we made it out, thanks to you. And now we have things that need to be handled. Can you meet us in my office?”

“Of course I can.” He said he loved me and then I was left listening to a dial tone. I wiped my face and gathered the book. I turned around to head back and I found my grandmother sitting on the stump, beaming. “You came?”

“Of course I came, pup.” She stood and walked over to my makeshift fire pit.

“I needed your help.” I wanted to be angry.

“No love, you didn’t. If you did, I would’ve been here, instead I stayed in the shadows watching the whole time. But you did it all. You figured it out and performed the spell perfectly. You saved your dad.”

“But what if I was wrong?”

She pursed her lips before she sighed. “I would have stepped in if I thought you were wrong, but you needed this.”

“I needed this?” I laughed. “What? I needed to feel like I was about to doom my father to that cell forever?”

“No, my love, you needed to trust in yourself. You have been second guessing everything since you came back to this life. We all do it. But you needed a defining moment that you knew what was wrong and that you could fix it. This was your defining moment. You saved your dad. You worked your magic and performed a large spell alone for the first time, and you came out of it on the other side.” She walked closer and raised her hands to cup my face.

“It’s a hard lesson to learn, but the one you needed most.”

“But why?” I felt my lip tremble as a tear fell from my eye.

“Because, you needed to trust yourself, your wolves, and your magic to do what you needed to, in order to save someone you loved. It cements all your pieces together.” She leaned up and I felt a shadow of a kiss on my forehead and I closed my eyes.

“You’re whole, for the first time in both of your lifetimes. ”

I opened my eyes to find myself once again alone. But I felt her words resonating in my soul. I felt whole. I felt closer to both of my wolves, and my power was growing. I could do so much more than I could in my last life.

I rubbed my stomach where I could still feel the phantom of my pup.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you in this life, pup.

We will be together again. I promise you that.

If the Goddess gifts me with you in this life, I will kill anyone who even thinks about hurting you.

” Both my wolves growled their agreement, and I started back to the pack house.