Chapter 195

I wanted to call out to him, to demand a personal apology, but he started talking again.

“I am sorry to have failed you all so much and in such a little time. If you choose to withdraw from this war and retire to Lunae, I will understand and hold no grudge. You have stood with me thus far, and you will always be welcome under this full moon. If I manage to reclaim the lands of Full Moon and all of the other territories, you will still be welcome. I will still and always consider you all allies, friends, family….” He paused and looked toward a group of vampires. “Welcome and honored allies and equals.”

He looked up at the moon. He looked troubled and beautiful as the moonlight seemed to focus on him, bathing him in its light. I could almost see the hands of the Moong Goddess drifting over him. He closed his eyes, and the moment seemed to end. Then, he bent down and grabbed the shovel that was on the truck beside him.

“For now, we bury the dead, we honor them, and we get some rest.”

He got down from the truck and walked across the clearing. The rest of the crowd followed, and I followed them, unable to believe what he had said. Welcoming vampires? Calling them allies? That wasn’t the Candido I knew.

Vampires had killed his family! How could he even think to call them allies, friends, or family?

Estella had dug her claws into him more deeply than I thought.

I’d have to talk to him about this. There was no way I could be Luna and queen and allow people who would not see me that way into our territory. The Luna Queen was second only to the Alpha King in authority. They had to listen to me. There was no way that Candido could ask me to let people into my territory who did not and would not respect me. I know he was upset, but he clearly wasn’t thinking straight. My face throbbed even worse. I still tasted blood from where my teeth had cut my cheek, and Francia had split my lip.

There was no way he could say I wasn’t injured enough to not give me his blood, but he didn’t even look back at me as he walked away from the trucks. He stood at the very last hole in the ground. At least 50 of them were dug out in neat rectangles, seemingly with no order.

“If anyone would like to close the graves personally, please simply come up here, and I will give the shovel to you.”

No one moved, and the whole crowd watched as he covered each grave with dirt.

“Someone go and help him,” I hissed. “He’s the king. He shouldn’t be—”

I choked as someone slammed a fist into my gut. I doubled over, but I couldn’t hear my own cry of pain, and I had no idea who it could have been.

“Talk again, and I’ll cut your throat,” someone whispered in my ear, dark and threatening.

I felt something pressing against my throat, just sharp enough to know that it was a knife. Tears streamed down my face. Why was no one paying attention? Then, I caught sight of someone from New Moon looking at me plainly. Her eyes were cold and anticipating, and I thought about Francia’s speech.

I held still as tears streamed down my face. No one moved to help Candido. It was as if no one had heard me, or perhaps they simply didn’t care.

They were subjects. His subjects. I bet no other alpha king had ever buried anyone. I couldn’t understand why no one moved to at least help. He shouldn’t be doing manual labor like this. I looked over to where Francia was and watched her walk through the crowd. The members of New Moon followed her through the crowd, except for the one who was just watching me.

I wanted to speak, but the blade was still pressed against my throat. Since no one seemed to be paying attention, and they might not have been able to hear me, I couldn’t count on Candido getting to me before I bled out.

I set my jaw as Francia walked over to him. It was odd, considering she just said that she could never swear allegiance to me and thus, she would never be able to swear allegiance to Candido.

Why would she take the shovel from him when none of his subjects did? Candido stepped aside as she filled two graves. One of them had to be Francium’s. The other one might have been Claire’s, but it was likely that it was someone else’s.

When she was done, she returned the shovel to Candido and asked, “What about her parents?”

He shook his head. “There’s been no word of them. I don’t know if they are alive or dead.”

“If they are alive, I would like to meet them once,” Francia said.

“It will be done if I can make it happen.”

She nodded and walked away, joining the group of New Moon werewolves and the vampires who were with Ian. I saw Raven as well as Shiloh and Messiah. As Candido filled the last grave, someone else spoke.

“At this point, does it make sense to continue?” The man asked, his tone hopeless. “Full Moon is taken. Red Moon is fallen. We were ambushed on this mission. It seems as though we should simply give up taking back our territory. Would it be so bad to live…”

He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know where we would live. Some of the smaller packs are still intact, but how long will that last?”

“Perhaps this is punishment for banishing the vampires into the caves!”

“Or maybe this is punishment for accepting a vampire’s help in the first place,” someone turned towards Ian. “After all how else would those other vampires know what we planned if someone hadn’t spilled the information to them?”

I wanted to agree, but I wasn’t sure if I could move. Suddenly, I felt whoever it was stepping away. I turned around to see, but no one was there.

“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Candido sighed. “We have been compromised. This is true, but to assume that it is the fault of those who have to this point, truly done us no harm is to burn a bridge that we can’t afford to burn.”

“I think you’d be stronger if you didn’t accept help from vampires,” I said, drawing the attention of a few people nearby. “Ever since they came into the war efforts, we’ve been losing more and more.”

Ever since Estella had come into the picture with them, we’d been doing worse and worse.

“Could someone shut her up?” Falcon asked. “Honestly, are we going to listen to her? She can’t follow orders. She can’t fight. She can’t plan. All she’s done is make matters worse. And we’ve already figured out why we were ambushed. She had a phone when we all know that they’ve taken over our communication systems.”

Someone froze and turned to look back at me. “And… where is that phone now?”

They all turned to look at me with wide eyes.

“I don’t have it, I—”

Then, a loud bang echoed overhead.

“We’re being attacked!”

People started running this way and that. The whole camp seemed to break out into chaos. Candido climbed on top of a truck as it started to rev and started shouting orders. The rest of the injured were pushed back into the cave, and I noticed that no one seemed to care what happened to me. No one looked my way or tried to help. The members of New Moon swept past without a glance in my direction.

I stumbled and looked for Candido. “Candido!”

He paid me no attention as Estella and several other rifle holders climbed onto the trucks. He grabbed a rifle and started aiming, firing into the distance. Ian, Messiah, and Shiloh stood nearby, watching the battle. A large thick wall of gold and light spread out across the front of the trucks separating us from the gunfire. Each bullet sounded like a marble bouncing off a glass wall, but the wall didn’t crack.

“Can you make a passage to get the injured away from here?” Candido asked. “Francia, will you–”

She rolled her shoulders and shifted into the shape of a bird. She soared high above the battle as the other members of New Moon seemed to vanish. Some of them shifted into other forms. A few other large birds followed her into the sky. A few wolves and other large land creatures darted into the shadows of the forest. The rest seemed to just vanish.

“Traitors!” I cried, knowing they were leaving the battle.

“Shut up!” Falcon said, shoving me aside. “Get out of the way before you get killed.”