AN; Holly cow! 104 votes!? Wowser, you really know how to impress a lady! So the next goal is 150 votes. I have not met my goal of 500 reads yet but hey 461 votes is pretty dang good! If you really want to spoil me, pleasssse comment. I love to hear your voices! Anyways enjoy the book! Thanks for reading. -Sam

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT; The name of this book is going to change to Moonless and going through a little rebranding by tomorrow. It's a struggle to get reads and I think it may help what I have in mind. Anyways enjoy!!!
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The room was quiet, except for the soft breathes that escaped Beatrice's lips while her chest rose and fell.

I grabbed Caesar's face and pulled it to mine. I kept my voice to a whisper. "Caesar listen carefully to me. None of us have a mother, so never say that again or Beatrice will really be in trouble. It did snow heavily last night, Beatrice probably did forget where the edge of the riverbank was. When she wakes up, we'll tell her it's a dream which it is. I'm going to get the first aid kit from the bathroom."

I let go of him, and hurried to our bathroom and retrieved the old green and white tackle box we had tucked in the cabinet under our sink. I also retrieved a clean washcloth and wet it in our dingy sink and returned to Beatrice.

I knelt down beside her bed, the floorboards creaked ever so slightly under my weight. Caesar sat on the ground on the other side of the bed, against the wall, opposite from me.

I set the tackle box beside me and opened it. I dug through the old bandaids until I found a roll of gauze and a bandage pad. I did my best to gently peel back the green, blood-stained fabric of her pant legs. The fabric stuck to her like a second skin and made a wet, sucking sound with each attempt I made to remove it.

When I finally exposed the skin underneath, I was greeted by what looked like, jagged, red, angry teeth marks. Teeth marks made by very sharp teeth, a wolf's teeth. How had she gotten that from falling off a riverbank?

"She didn't tell me she met her mom in the woods, I saw it for myself."

I placed the bandage pad over the wound without a word.

"Aurelia I don't think we can pretend nothing happened. Based on what I saw, her mom will come back for her.  We can't let her take Beatrice."

I began to wrap the gauze around the bandage pad. Over and over again, until I had no more gauzes to wrap.

"Aurelia... do you realize how bad this all is? You aren't saying anything. Luneras have been killed for lesser things."

"I know how bad it is!" I snapped.

I got up and began to pace back and forth along the width of our room. "Tell me what happened, in the woods with Beatrice. Exactly what happened. What makes you think she saw her mother?"

"Only if you tell me what happened to you in the Alpha's mansion..."

"Nothing happened..." I stopped pacing.

"Liar!" Caesar spat.

"Fine," I crossed the room to stand in front of Caesar. I stared down at him. "Grayson, the son of the Alpha, I'm his mate."

Caesar glared at me, "Come on Aurelia be serious."

"I am Caesar. Does it sound like I'm lying to you?"

Caesar furled his eyebrows. "Come on that can't be what happened."

I stared back at him silently.

A look of realization followed but a look of pure horror spread across Caesar's face. "No, something like that isn't supposed to happen."

Tears began to roll down my cheeks. I pressed my back into the wall and let my body slide to the ground. He stared blankly at the room in front of him, while I took his hand in mine. His warmth from his hand was comforting, familiar.

He took his arms and wrapped them around me and pulled me against his chest while I sobbed until I had no tears left to cry. And only did, did I pull away from Caesar.

"How did this happen ?" he asked.

I wiped my remaining tears on the back of my sleeve. "I don't know. It just did."

"Did he come here today for you?"

I nodded. "He sensed I was in danger and wanted to make sure I was safe. Grayson promised to stay away though for now, and we haven't you know...mated. So I'm hoping he will find another mate. But he doesn't want to, he said he could protect me"

"And do you believe that he will protect you?"

"I don't know."

"Something else happened too."

I recounted what happen at the door with the boy from the Red Crescent pack.

"Well you know what they say, bad things come in threes."

I nodded. "Hopefully that doesn't also come in fours."

Caesar stood and walked across the room to the door. He pushed it shut and returned to sit beside me.

"As you know, I'm not the best storyteller but I'll do my best to tell you what happened. "So we were head to the lake. Bert already had our spot picked out for us. We we had just gotten past the old fence posts, when Gilbert appeared out of nowhere, alone . Apparently, he was having trouble setting up the traps. Bert freaked out that he didn't have anyone with him, so Bert told him he would go with him to fix it and find the rest of his group."

"So he told me and Beatrice to take the auger and go-ahead to the lake, he would meet us there. He gave the auger to me. So me and Beatrice went on ahead and it couldn't have been more than five minutes when this black wolf appeared in front of us out of nowhere. It lunged at us and both me and Beatrice ran in opposite directions from each other."

"It went after Beatrice, so I stopped and chased after them. And I couldn't find them at first. And so I just kept looking and looking. It felt like hours, but it couldn't have been more than 15 minutes. Then I heard voices. I followed the voices to the river bank.

"And that's where I found Beatrice, but she wasn't alone. She with a beautiful dark hair, naked women, a women I had never seen before, and she wasn't from our pack. They were standing behind the rock pile and  they were both crying and hugging each other."

"I didn't know what was going on, and it didn't seem like Beatrice was being hurt. I decided to hide and see what happened next before I made a move."

Then I heard the women say to Beatrice "Nothing will stop us from being together." And then Beatrice said something along the lines of she was so happy that she finally got to meet her mom. And the women said something else, but I couldn't hear it. But whatever it was, it wasn't good, because Beatrice let her go and began backing away, and that's when the women shifted into the black wolf and she grabbed onto Beatrice's leg with her teeth. And Beatrice tried to get away but she wouldn't let her go."

"And I panicked, and started running towards them yelling to let her go, and the wolf came at me,but I managed to hold her off with the auger. Beatrice got up to run but she was very disoriented ...so she ran right off the river bank... And then Beet showed up wolf suddenly took off, because she must of heard Him. But you should of see the look in it's eyes before  she left, the way she gazed down the river bank at Beatrice..."

The door to my roll blew open without warning and banged hard against the wall. Benedict flew into the room, his dark eyes were wide and wild. He was leaning over Beatrice the next second, his head moved back and forth while he gave her a full-body scan.

"Please tell me she's okay! I ran into Ron and Sawyer collecting firewood, and they said they saw Beatrice begin half-carried inside. I ran the whole way back, I couldn't wait for a second more to see if she was okay."

"Yeah, she's going to be just fine..."

"What even happened!? Why is her leg wrapped up like that!?"

Me and Caesar exchanged looks.

He patted the floor beside him. "You may want to sit down."
I have something to tell you."

"Yeah me too," I added

Caesar repeated the story again and I told him about Grayson.

When we were done, Benedict looked like he was about to puke for a second. Then a smile spread across his face. "You know what, we are all going to get through this. We have each other. We just need to survive the human  high school and then we are out of here."

There was a soft knock at the door. We grew silent and watched while the door swung quietly open. One of the twins peeked inside the room. I couldn't see the rest of her body, only her head.

"Marmee wanted to see if you wanted any dinner and come watch me and sissy pick our names."

Benedick looked between Caesar and I, before returning his gaze to Beatrice.

"Stay with her, I can bring you dinner," Caesar said.

Benedick clapped his hands together and gave us a bow. "Thank you."

He looked towards the twins. "Sorry, fair maidens, but I can not attend your naming ceremony, I must look after the sleeping princess!"

A small spread across her face. "That's okay." The twin answered, and looked over at me. I noticed that unlike her sister, she had a small mole above her eyebrow. Can you come?" she asked and the door opened a little bit more and I saw she had my coat on.

"Yeah, I'll come," I said and stood from the floor, I heard Caesar get off the floor too. We followed both girls into the hallway and all the way down the spiraling staircase.

Grayson was no longer there when we stepped into the kitchen, although, somehow I knew he was already gone. What was waiting for us though was four dishes of stew and a bowl with four pieces of bread. The rabbit stew was cold, and the pieces of bread that had been saved for us were slightly burnt, but it all still tasted delicious sliding down my throat. While I ate,  Caesar brought Benedick's plate up to him along with the plate for Beatrice. We both drifted into the living room where everyone sat patiently waiting, with the books they had selected from the bookshelf in hand.

Together, Caesar and I walked towards the nearly empty bookshelf.

"You see any good ones?" he asked.

"I do," I said and held up a thick red book. On the front of it was the picture of a cluster of stone ruins against a bright blue sky. Written above the picture, in gold sprawling letters The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. "Look it's the book where you got your name from!"

Caesar rolled his eyes "You mean where you got YOUR name from. I got my name from Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. You got your name from that book after you rejected all the other names that everyone gave you. But you wanted to know more about my name for whatever reason, so you had Marmeelook Caesar up in the book."

"And you were so mad when she did, and I picked the name of his mom."

"Yes I was so mad," he grinned and his face grew serious.. "Because-"

"Is Beatrice okay!?"' I looked over my shoulder to see Hucks peering at me with his large brown eyes.

"She's just resting right now, but she should be fine," Caesar replied.

"Good, we were all concerned."

I looked over my shoulder to see twelve pairs of eyes staring at us from their seats.

Knowing what was coming next, but knowing that there was no way to avoid it, I reluctantly joined the others around the fire. And was instantly bombarded with a million questions about Beatrice from everyone around the fire.

I was relieved when Marmee appeared at the top of the stairs along with Bert.

"Everyone listens up!" she yelled and the room fell silent.

Everyone stopped their chatter and turned towards the stairs. From the stairs behind Marmee, the two girls emerged. One of them was dress in a Lavender dress and the other was dressed in a pair of black pants with a sparkly blue top.

"Alright," Marmee said. "Open your books, and let the naming ceremony commence!"