Moon Child: A PNR Shifter Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 2) Read online

  Moon Child

  The Year Of The Wolf: Two

  Serena Akeroyd

  Copyright © 2020 by Serena Akeroyd

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Dedication

  To Xavier.

  The first Divo named after one of my characters from Theirs.

  May you have a happy and long life, and may you not poop as much as Knight. :P Although, that might be asking for miracles. ;)

  Playlist

  If you’d like to hear a curated soundtrack, with songs that are featured in the book, as well as songs that inspired it, then here’s the link:

  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6lOAKuEMiuxas6DkVnrguP

  Acknowledgments

  To my baby guru, PA par excellence, and time-keeper—Anne. Thank you for knowing allllll the things about babies and breastmilk. LOL.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Playlist

  Acknowledgments

  Lidai

  1. Sabina

  2. Austin

  3. Sabina

  4. Eli

  5. Sabina

  6. Austin

  7. Ethan

  8. Eli

  9. Lara

  10. Todd

  11. Lara

  12. Ethan

  13. Eli

  14. Lara

  15. Sabina

  16. Austin

  17. Lara

  18. Austin

  19. Lara

  Daniel

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  Also By Serena Akeroyd

  About the Author

  Lidai

  A year earlier

  “Child, what’s your name?”

  The boy bit his lip as he looked up at me. Of course, there was nothing to look at, just a spirit that was non-corporeal, but he still searched.

  I always appreciated that in the young; they looked. It was only when they grew older that they stopped.

  “D-Daniel, Mother,” he whispered, before he started gnawing on his lip again.

  His nerves were interesting, especially in the face of the truth—he’d shifted young. Far younger than I’d ever intended a child to know the difficulties that came from splitting one’s soul with a beast.

  It caused such a ruckus—far worse than puberty.

  Back in the beginning, a child shifted when they’d seen fifteen years or more. Now, everything was so much faster. Life, itself, seemed accelerated in a way that was beyond my control.

  I sighed. “Of course. Such trouble with your father, Daniel. I remember him.”

  His eyes rounded. “You do?”

  “I do. He was bad. Do you know that?”

  The child hung his head. “I do, Mother.”

  “You’re not like him.”

  He peeped up at me. “How do you know?”

  Amusement filtered through me. “I know all, do I not?”

  He gulped. “I don’t want to be bad.”

  “Maintain that desire, and you won’t be. You’ve a good soul, Daniel. Kingsley was wasted as an alpha. I sensed that when he was young. I hoped that by gifting him your mother, he would turn around, but he never did.” I hummed, which made a gentle wind whip around his legs. The sensation had him jerking in response, jumping off the ground as he peered around. “You, on the other hand, I can sense so much more about you.”

  “What like?” he asked shyly, and his desperation for approval made me glad I’d sent him to Sabina and her mates.

  She was a good girl. A loving mother. A nurturer. She’d give Daniel what few else could—a home. He was an orphan, unwanted, and even by his own parents, unloved. Sabina was too generous with her sense of self to deny a small boy her affection, especially with her past.

  “I sense that you’re strong and kind. You want to help. You’ll make a good enforcer one day.”

  His eyes lit up at that. “Not an alpha?”

  “No. You’re an alpha type, but you’re not made to be the alpha. That isn’t your path.” Well, that was a technical truth, but he wasn’t to know that. Was he?

  “What is, Mother?”

  “Can you imagine what it’s like to have a brother or a sister, Daniel?”

  He shook his head. “No, Mother. I can’t.”

  “Did you ever wish for one?”

  “Not really. You can’t wish for something that no one has.”

  “Austin and Ethan have each other,” I corrected.

  “I know. They were treated badly by the pack. I can see that now. The others only listen to them because of Eli.”

  “I’m working on that,” I told him, annoyed by his words, even though I knew that to be the truth.

  “You are?” His brows rose, but he shrugged. “I’m glad. I like them. They’re cool.”

  Cool.

  This human vernacular was beyond bizarre.

  As was using the word ‘sick’ to mean something that was good.

  Inimitably strange.

  “I’m glad you think so. Would you like to know your path?”

  “You’ve decided it?”

  “I have. Enforcer, to be sure. A mate, yes. She will find you when you least expect it. But your biggest task will start when a brother and a sister go to war.”

  “Go to war?” His mouth formed a perfect circle.

  “Yes. The brother—he will be tainted. It isn’t his fault. No one, except for you, will ever know that. You will be his sole defender. His only friend.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re strong enough.”

  “Strong enough for what?”

  “To keep him from killing his sister.”

  A gasp escaped him. “Why would he do something like that?”

  “Because children often bear the sins of their fathers, don’t they, Daniel?” I asked him softly, reminding him of his own situation.

  “Yes,” he said miserably. “We do.”

  “Well, then, you understand.”

  “Do I?” was his wary reply.

  “Yes. You do. Or you will when your time comes. Keep them both safe, especially from each other.”

  “Yes, Mother,” he said simply.

  “Now, child, before I let you go and celebrate your covenant… You may tell them your fate as an enforcer. You may tell them you are to be mated. But do not speak of your other task.

  “Finally, when the time comes and Eli is upset with Berry, explain to him that she is unable to shift now. There is no malice to her actions. She serves Sabina, and is my means of protecting her. Nothing more, nothing less. She serves out of love for him, for all her sons, and out of a desire to seek forgiveness.

  “Do you think you can remember that, Daniel?”

  He was back to biting his bottom lip. “I think I can, Mother.”

  “Good.” I smiled, and instantly, the temperature in the clearing where he stood, a sea of mist around him, shadowed trees that loomed high overhead, surged so that he was no longer shivering. “Go, with my blessing, Daniel, son of Kingsley Rainford, adopted son of Eli, Ethan, Austin, and Sabina Highbanks and child of their heart.”

  And with that, I sent him back, leaving him gawping at what I officially recognized far earlier than anyone else would.

  He was a child of the Highbanks. That was as much his destiny as the other tasks I’d set him.

  Now,
I just had to pray that he’d live up to the potential I saw in him.

  One

  Sabina

  I sighed when the moonlight slipped over my body, recharging me with its healing rays.

  I wasn’t sure why, when I’d once been a sun baby, spending every minute I could with my face tilted toward the sky to ease the nagging ache in my bones, but now? I loved the moon.

  The sun drained, it didn’t recharge.

  The moon soothed, even as it energized.

  Maybe it was my lifestyle from before that hadn’t helped. Up at the asscrack of dawn, down toward midnight on dates when the carnival was open. I’d always been dog tired by the time the sun set, and had been dragging through my job as a tarot card reader-slash-faux psychic in my booth.

  Thankfully, my clients weren’t annoyed by the sound of me slurring from tiredness. They just thought I was in the zone, and because I was pretty good with my predictions, thanks to my abilities with auras, I’d never had any complaints about sounding zombie-esque.

  During those dark days, if I could have, I’d have spent every moment the sun was down in bed, snoring away.

  Now? It was the opposite. I wanted to be awake through the moonlit hours, wanted to be here, at the circle, with the totem looming over me, the totem that was the… Hell, I didn’t even know what it was.

  What I did know was that a kind of conduit, a voice, for the Mother embodied the totem, and she called herself Lidai.

  The notion didn’t disturb me. Not when, in my previous life, in my family’s religion, we had a ‘channel’ to god too. Kali Sara was our saint. She whispered our prayers in His ears, or so we believed in the Romany culture.

  The totem was an impressive obelisk that had loomed over the pack for centuries, a silent sentinel overseeing all generations, playing witness to our weaknesses, our strengths, our downfalls, and our successes. Through it all, it was there.

  She was there.

  Which was probably why it was weird that I enjoyed fucking my men here.

  If Lidai was a dirty bitch like me, she probably got off on seeing us doing the nasty—well, if anything I did with Ethan, Eli, and Austin could ever be considered nasty, that is.

  Of course, that was when Austin decided to bring my attention back to where it needed to be.

  I bit back a moan as he nibbled my ear, his dick running through the folds of my sex.

  The move had me arching my back, the crown of my head digging deep into the soil beneath me as I used it as a fulcrum to arch even further. I didn’t want him to go anywhere, loved him exactly where he was, but my body was hyper-sensitized.

  Had been ever since I’d gotten pregnant.

  I shuddered as he let his lips drift down over the curve of my throat and whispered, “Austin, baby, please.”

  If there was a plea in those words, then so be it. I wasn’t ashamed to beg for what I wanted from him, what I needed.

  His chuckle set a wave of reaction whispering through me, down my nerve endings, until it felt like each one was on fire.

  Once upon a time, I’d had fibromyalgia, so I knew what it felt like for my nerves to be backfiring on me, but that was an acute kind of torture that was nowhere near pleasurable.

  His lips curved down over the ripe swell of my breasts—they’d always been the first ‘asset’ a guy noticed, but since I’d gotten pregnant, they were getting bigger and the guys loved them.

  I swear, I could just sit there, jiggle my tits a little, and Austin would get a boner.

  Thinking I’d test that in the morning, I grinned to the sky, cosseted by the rays of the moon as it seeped into my skin, loving how the earth itself seemed to embrace me as one hand speared into the dirt beneath me, while the other dug into his back. Immediately, the magic of the circle, the protected place where the pack gathered and the totem guarded, turbocharged everything.

  His dick ground into me, and I moaned louder as he rocked his hips harder, faster. A shudder whispered through me every time he nudged my clit.

  “Fuck!” I hissed, my hand dropping down to spear my nails into his butt, hoping to make him grind into me exactly where I needed him.

  Damn that man, it didn’t work.

  His lips tugged at my nipple, settling there to suck down harder. I was half-terrified that one day, he’d do that and milk would spurt out, but so far, so good…

  I groaned as his mouth traced over to the other one, making gooseflesh surge and fall along my skin, heightening the pleasure, making it rebound around my being as if it was a stray bullet ricocheting inside me.

  Then, something in me snapped. “Enough!” I rasped, and with a strength that stunned me, so it sure as hell had to stun him, I flipped him over.

  Around me, the pack of natural and not-so-natural wolves howled and weaved around the circle, making me feel like this was a pagan display of joy at our union.

  When I flipped us so he was on his back and I was straddling him, I didn’t even grin down at him, smug with success. Instead, I ground myself harder into him then slipped his cock where it needed to be—inside me.

  My head tipped back, my long hair trailing down my spine, tickling the upper curve of my butt as I felt his dick fill me fully.

  His hands grabbed my hips, and he urged me into moving at a pace that was definitely for him.

  Not for me.

  Instead of doing as he asked, I grabbed one of his hands and encouraged him to rub my clit. As he did, I blew out a breath as sparks danced behind my eyes, but that was nothing to when he surged up, his mouth back on my tits, the angle changing and shifting with his new position.

  A shriek escaped me when he bit down on my nipple, and I groaned as I dug my nails into his shoulders, unable to stop myself from bowing my head, scenting his throat, and digging my teeth into him there.

  He chuckled at the fierceness of my bite, but he didn’t say anything as I carried on, hard, grinding my teeth into him so I knew I’d leave bruises.

  The scent of him, his pheromones, flooded my mouth. He tasted better than an ice cream sandwich made with Phish Food, and as I enjoyed the smorgasbord, he began to jerk his hips up so that he could fuck me while I contented myself with his taste.

  When I came, our bodies were twisted together, so close there wasn’t an inch between us, so close that we were a tangled knot in the moonlit spot before the totem, in a magical circle that had remained hidden for centuries and would remain so for a million years.

  When the fire stopped simply burning my nerve endings and blazed into an inferno I couldn’t control, I groaned long and low around his throat, enjoying the way the pleasure whipped at me, firing me up, never letting me down…not until he came.

  I could feel his cum pelting me, every spurt coating my womb. I knew that sounded crazy, knew it should have been impossible to feel that, but I was hypersensitive, just awaiting the moment when his knot would appear, when it would burrow into me and take root.

  A sharp cry escaped me when it did, lodging in deep, fast, and hard, and I let go of him, feeling like I was being pelted with more bullets as the exquisite agony of his knot sent me soaring higher, until I wasn’t simply dancing in the moon’s rays, but was up there flying among the stars, him at my side. Forever at my side.

  I groaned when I came down, but his knot kept throbbing, like a damn vibrator that sent every part of me twitching as the pleasure didn’t abate.

  When he rolled us over, I still felt sensitive and overwhelmed, so I clung to him, my knees burrowing into his hips as I kept us tied together, even as he took some of the weight off me and my belly.

  “I swear, I love being with you in bed, mate, but here? Fuck.”

  A weary, shaky laugh escaped me, and I hid my smile where I burrowed away, still loving his scent, needing it close to me. Where I’d bitten, the blood rushed to the surface, and I could feel the throb of his heart, not only where our chests touched, but where our sexes were joined, and at his throat where I’d injured him.

  I slumped a litt
le, exhausted and fatigued, but overwrought with energy too.

  It was always weird having sex here.

  Regenerative but strenuous.

  The best caffeine drink in the world as well as the best Valium for the most delicious night’s sleep ever.

  Of course, that had been before I was pregnant.

  I knew it sounded crazy, but I was pretty sure my mates’ dicks had minds of their own. With one of their seed having taken root, the knots never lasted as long as they usually did, and forty minutes later, I pouted when the throbbing deep inside me began to lessen and we eventually broke apart.

  When he slipped out of me with a gush of our mutual arousal, I felt the slick fluid drip between my asscrack—the wet spot sucked—and felt the circle accept it like an offering.

  No, I didn’t know that it was an offering, I just knew that every time this happened, I felt stronger. The whispers in the circle, hushed sounds that were audible only to me, the mental voices of each pack brother and sister, were clearer in my mind. Sex here deepened my ties with my pack. Made me more aware of all the nuances that Eli, Ethan, and Austin needed to run it smoothly.

  When he pushed his forehead into mine, yawning, he whispered, “We shouldn’t sleep out here tonight.”

  I yawned back. “Why not? I don’t want to move,” I said with a pout, enjoying his laughter.

  Each chuckle of Austin’s wasn’t hard won like it was with Eli and Ethan, who were my more somber mates, but equally, the sound of his joy always lit me up inside like a Fourth of July fireworks show.