Nocturne (Claire de Lune #2)
Christine Johnson
NOCTURNE
Chapter One
CLAIRE'S HUMAN FORM offered no protection from the chill in the moonlit clearing. She shivered as the early-October breeze licked at her arms and cheeks. Wrapping her arms around herself, she stared across the circle, wishing her mother would hurry up and start the ceremony.
A tangled pile of branches waited in the center of the pack. Marie kneeled down in front of it and leaned in, the mist of her breath kissing the outermost tips of the twigs.
Claire's mother closed her eyes, focusing. The graceful lines of her body tensed for an instant, and then it was over. The fire ignited with a roar, pulled into existence by the force of Marie's will.
The light and heat spread through the clearing, changing the texture of the air. The forest crackled with power—it was as though the fire had woven threads of lightning, tying the members of the pack together, linking them to something larger than themselves. As the flames grew, the feeling intensified, humming along Claire's skin, whispering to her about the things she could do.
Begging her to become a wolf.
The pack stood in a circle around the fire, all of them silent. Waiting. The flames leapt before them, the trees towered behind them, and the full moon shone down from above. Everything was ready for their transformation. Marie raised her arms, and with her voice full of the authority that came with being the pack's Alpha, she began to chant.
She called each of their names, and Claire shifted from foot to foot, aching for the warmth of her fur. As she edged closer to the fire, Claire noticed Judith staring at her. She quickly turned her attention back to her mother but kept Judith in her peripheral vision. From her spot next to Marie, Judith regarded Claire with narrowed, judging eyes.
Claire forced herself not to raise a what's-your-problem eyebrow and kept her attention trained on her mother. The chant was almost over, anyway. Anticipation tugged at Claire as Marie called her name. This was only her second full moon ceremony since she'd completed her transformation, but every second she spent in the woods—every time she looked at themoon hanging in the sky like an ever-changing jewel—she loved it more.
There were no secrets in the woods the way there were in her human life. There was just the pack. And the ceremonies.
And the hunt.
Marie lowered her arms.
"And now it is time. You may transform."
The words hung in the air, tantalizing as a ripe apple. Claire forgot about Judith. She forgot about everything but the unbelievable joy of slipping out of her human form and changing into her wolf self. Paws appeared where her hands and feet had been, and her skin gave way to thick gray fur. Claire's teeth grew sharp, and she felt the sudden, familiar heaviness of her tail.
The instant she changed, her senses sharpened. She could see the individual twigs high up in the trees. Could hear the rustling of something small—a mouse, maybe, or a chipmunk—in the undergrowth. And the smells . . . It was almost painful at first, how many things she could smell when she transformed. In her wolf form she could tell that there were four kinds of wood in the ceremonial fire tonight and she could smell the sweet, sighing scent of the autumn leaves dying on the trees above her.
And she could smell pain—the sharp, unbearable scent of pain. It startled Claire, and when she heard a worried whimper coming from Katherine, one of the other Beta wolves, she knew she wasn't the only one caught off guard by the odor. The scent was coming from Victoria, who sat on the forest floor, paws splayed awkwardly, panting hard. After Claire, she was the youngest wolf in the pack, but she was groaning like an old woman.
Sorry, she huffed, in the nonverbal language they shared in their true forms. The more pregnant I get, the harder it is to change. I'll be okay in a second.
She hadn't been pregnant that long, and Claire was horrified by how fast her belly had grown. Werewolf pregnancies didn't last as long as human ones, which made having a baby especially difficult, because it was so hard on the human part of the woman. Claire had seen it—the terrible way Victoria's skin had stretched, how the sudden change in her shape and weight had made her hips hurt so much that she could barely walk.
Beatrice, Victoria's mother, walked over and sat next to her, leaning against her flank like she was propping Victoria up.
Marie, can you hunt without us?
Victoria staggered to her feet, her belly swaying underneath her, dragging her spine into a bowl-shaped curve.
No, no, no! I'm okay. I can go. She licked at her muzzle anxiously.