Page 71 of Moon Claimed
“Yes, you’ll need to. You can shift whenever you like, but I suggest waiting until you’re fully healed before a second shift.”
My stomach churned. “Will every time be as bad as the first?”
He paused. “How long did it last?”
I frowned. “It started somewhere around seven, I think. You found me at midnight? Five hours?”
Sascha jerked, fingers twitching on his thighs. “If you shift in the presence of the pack, the first shift should take no more than twenty minutes.”
Minutes.My gaze flew to his. “Really?”
His expression was grave. “The longest first shift I’ve heard of is one hour.”
I shivered. Right. Sounds like I brushed a little close to death.Yikes.“What if I shifted by myself again?”
“Not as long. Considering the length of your first, I can’t guess.” Sascha’s chest rose. “Please don’t shift without me near, little bird. I can help you.”
No deal.I nodded, and he glared.
He leaned in. “I’ll need to keep an eye on you.”
“That’s not creepy.”
Sascha’s lips twitched. “Not creepy if you know I’m there.”
That.“I’m… not sure I can feel you anymore.”
His face smoothed. “You can’t feel me sitting here?”
“Maybe it will work when you’re farther away?”Thatwould be handy as shit. A Sascha beacon.
“Perhaps,” he replied after a beat.
I inhaled again.Unhappy.
“There’s one more thing,” he said. “But I must ask that you keep to yourself at all costs. Telling you this could endanger my pack, and it’s not a decision I take lightly. If ignorance of this didn’t endanger your life… I’m asking you not to betray my trust.”
Dang. This had to be good. “I promise.”
Sascha took another sip of his drink.
Definitely didn’t like Earl Grey tea. Cataloguing his scents was kind of like collecting Pokémon cards or something. I could see the fascination with it.
I watched him closely, hands still wrapped around my warm mug.
He rested back, closing his eyes. “Our pack travelled across the seas over two hundred and sixty years ago, before my birth. We were a much larger pack then. Ten times the size. My father had a disagreement with the alpha in our homeland, his brother, and the pack split in two. The responsibility landed on my father to find new territory for those who’d chosen to follow him. We landed in what’s now known as Bluff City and were almost immediately set upon by Vissimo—or vampires as they’re known to some humans. We ran, fighting a battle at our backs that took thousands of Luther lives—Vissimo being the stronger adversaries. We only escaped because of sheer numbers.”
That didn’t really tell me anything except that I should hire three hundred vampires as mercenaries to fight for us in Grids, which was probably against the rules anyway.
He shot me a look. “The Vissimo ceased the attack when we reached the area now known as Frankton Gorge, but the way forward was treacherous. The battle had weakened us, and our elderly and young couldn’t face such dangerous terrain. To his error, my father turned north. There, our pack encountered the largest demon kingdom in the world and lost thousands more. Those who could, fled injured back to Frankton Gorge. We had only fifteen hundred pack members often thousandleft. There was mass dissent. Those who’d followed my father across an ocean now struggled to be loyal to him through their despair. We hung by a thread, and my father knew we could not face another battle. We could go east or south, but what if those territories were claimed by another supernatural race? In the end, he chose the route no one in their right mind would take—the treacherous, rocky cliffs leading east that he’d turned from before. If Luthers, the most endurable of all supernatural races, shied away from entering this place, no other supernatural race would have sought to enter it before. He hoped.”
I found myself leaning forward. “And he was right.”
But fifteen hundred Luthers were left after the demon war, and yet the pack now numbered just over seven hundred and fifty.
What happened?
Sascha shifted in the seat, widening his thighs, and I swallowed. Why did he do hot stuff like that? It hardly helped.