Summer Moon (A Celtic Wolves Novel, Band 2) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jan DeLima lives in central Maine with her husband of twenty years and two English bulldogs. Unlike many authors, she didn’t pen stories at an early age, but she has always been a dedicated reader. She loves stories and storytelling. It wasn’t until after her children entered school that she began writing. Raised in a military family, she lived in different countries such as Thailand and Germany, but home base has always been Maine. She brings a mixture of all her experiences to the Celtic Wolves series, blending castles and Celtic lore with the wild nature of her home.

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Acknowledgments

A Documented Prophecy . . .

Their course, their bearing,

Their permitted way,

And their fate I know,

Unto the end.

Oh! what misery,

Through extreme of woe,

Prophecy will show . . .

—TALIESIN

From The Mabinogion

Lady Charlotte Guest translation

An Undocumented Prophecy, Until Now . . .

This union, I shall not revile,

For their fear I know,

Their affliction,

And their gift.

To bear in silence,

Four secrets hidden,

In circles of raindrops,

Cloak death.

Alas, false forfeit gains no vantage.

From deadened earth,

Fevers rise, of lust

And lament.

Thence they plan,

Upon Ceridwen’s last fertile daughter,

Eight forsaken warriors

To feast.

For barren not,

Under summer’s first moon,

Comes the prophecy

They most seek.

—TALIESIN

A drunken toast from Math and Rosa’s wedding feast

One

CASTELL AVON, HIDDEN WITHIN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

AVON, NEW HAMPSHIRE, USA

Present Day

Three days after her husband’s execution, Rosa Alban became a traitor to the Guardians of her race.

Oh, she had committed tiny crimes against her late husband—and her keepers before him—throughout the last three hundred years of her life. But none this final or this openly subversive.

If her plan proved fruitful, there would be no explanations needed, or accepted. To openly defy the Guardians, the self-appointed protectors of her dying lineage, was utter madness—and yet necessary for her battered conscience. She would rather live as a traitor than bear witness to one more act of cruelty in silence.

A cool breeze brushed through the muddied courtyard where she stood. Rosa tugged her jacket closed and scanned the area for anyone who might question her morning excursion. Nothing seemed amiss, but she understood more than most that appearances and reality were often quite different.

Regardless, she mustn’t linger.

The shadow of Castell Avon darkened her path, her wedding gift from the Guardians, a sad comfort for a false marriage. As its name implied, her home was indeed a castle surrounded by rivers, built of stone, mortar and iron laced with gold; her gilded prison on a foundation of sorrow. The tallest turret heralded the Guardian banner, marking her husband’s realm like a medieval hound pissing on this modern age.

Math had not adjusted well to forced anonymity among humans, or to their proclivity for procreation. He had considered himself a god, after all, having walked this earth as both man and wolf for more than two thousand years. Obviously, he’d been wrong—given that the separated portions of his body lay rotting in a casket awaiting shipment to their homeland for burial.

Perhaps she was a tad pitiless, but Rosa felt no remorse over her husband’s death; Math had been a vile creature and his execution well deserved. It had, however, expedited her plan to join the very rebels who had so graciously made her a widow.

As Rosa skirted around outer buildings that housed generators, laundry facilities and other modern amenities kept outside the castle walls, she pretended to ignore a female servant hanging bedsheets on a clothesline. Without pause, Tesni pinned three white pillowcases in a row, signaling that all three Guardians who had come to escort Math’s body back to Wales were still abed. Not necessarily sleeping, just otherwise occupied.

A bibbed skirt made of wool purposely concealed Tesni’s feminine curves. She was of mixed blood, human and Guardian, and bore a combination of her father’s soft features and mother’s fair coloring. Sadly, Tesni was too human to call her wolf. She was also the most attractive of all the female servants and therefore the one who suffered most.

Tesni’s gaze flicked to Rosa with a wordless plea to make haste. Her usually straight posture remained hunched, pronouncing stiffness and misuse from the previous night.

Sorrow-ridden, Rosa knew that Cadan must be in a similar state, and was very likely the reason why the Guardians remained distracted. His room had been empty this morning. She knew because she had checked, even though Cadan had told her not to.

And with that thought in mind, Rosa quickened her pace without looking back.

The surrounding forest was quiet and empty of song. No birds or wildlife inhabited her island, as they recognized death and danger, and the musk of unholy wolves in human skin. Tall trees stood as withered sentries in her path, their roots eroded by water, time and secrets too vile to speak of openly.

Yet for the first time in centuries, Rosa felt exhilaration as she marched toward the only bridge that granted access to modern civilization. Winter’s thaw had just ended in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Melting snow had fed the rivers and cleansed the forest. She sensed vitality in the land beyond, of budding trees and the emergence of life; it called to her inner wolf like moonbeams to a night creature’s soul, luring her with promises of power.

On the opposite side of the river, a carriage house secured the entrance to the bridge, constructed of the same stone and iron as Castell Avon, watched at all times by Math’s guards. The heels of her boots echoed over wooden planks as she crossed, announcing her approach, even above the thunderous sound of rushing water below. If the guards did not allow her to pass, she would be forced to go upriver, but prudence had prompted her to attempt this route first.

There were six of them watching as she drew near. Four men and two women, with resentful eyes filled with lust—or hatred; Rosa preferred the latter. All but one were loyal to her late husband, but even Gareth shifted his stance as if uncomfortable in her presence. Normally only two guards tended the carriage house, but having their eldest Guardian beheaded within his own home had made the others in residence somewhat paranoid.

She stopped before the gated door, the barrier to her freedom, and nodded to each of the guards in turn. She must acknowledge them all equally but not with flirtation. Furthermore, she must never snub them, never encourage unwanted advances, and never dally—or the repercussions were quite unpleasant.

“Rosa.” Gareth greeted her with a slight bow, his voice deceivingly calm. As her secret ally against the Guardians, he had been informed of her plan last evening. Gareth had wanted to accompany her. Judging from his current stance, he still wasn’t pleased about her insistence to go alone.

He had yet to realize that her days of submission were over, even toward the precious few she considered her friends.

The morning sun did little to soften Gareth’s deformed features. Scars knotted his face and neck, weaving a tale of torture and unbendable will. Math had destroyed Gareth’s beauty in a fit of rage over an affair with a mortal. Her late husband had believed that mating with humans weakened their race.

Gareth’s favored jeweled patch covered a deadened left eye, burned to blindness with ice and rock salt. He kept his brown hair shorn to his scalp. Math had preferred it long.

“I’m feeling a bit weak,” Rosa announced as rehearsed, adding weariness to her voice that wasn’t altogether feigned. “I need to get off the island for a few hours. I need to go for a run.”

“I’ll escort you,” Gareth informed her, loud enough for the others to hear.

She had expected a different response but hid her surprise. Gareth, it seemed, had...