Miracle of the Moon Goddess

11: Busted

Celeste’s POV, the day after the first acceptance:

I wake up snuggled against Bjørnar, tickled by his chest hair. I’ve never slept this well before. No matter how soft my bed is, it has nothing compared to the warm chest I’ve slept on all night. I’m pretty sure the man is full of my drool; I slept that deep!

The memory from last night runs through my mind, and that’s enough for my arousal to build up again. My body isn’t satisfied and might never be, knowing now why Bjørnar wouldn’t let me mark him. If I give him my mark, I’ll never find the rest of my mates, our mates.

I don’t mind it being only us two, to be honest, but Bjørnar insists on looking for the other mates first. He wanted to explain more, but he had awoken something in me, so before he had time to finish his explanation, we had f****d again and fallen asleep, exhausted.

He is playing with my hair, and I love the feeling. I dread the moment he realizes I’m already awake. We have to leave this bed when he does; I do not want this day to start. Outside of this room, we have to pretend that we do not love each other, that I don’t even recognize him as something other than a slave. He cannot touch me when we are out there among people, and I desperately want him close to me all the time.

“I cannot linger any longer, Celeste. I need to start my day. If anyone…” Bjørnar whispers into my hair, aware I’ve been awake for some time. He doesn’t finish his sentence before someone comes in the door.

“If anyone finds you here, with her, you will die,” Mother Brown hisses, and we both sit up in bed, shocked. She’s standing over us, not in the open door as we assumed, and we noticed nothing. We’ve been too immersed in each other to even care about the consequences. Not only that, but this is his mom! Like his true mom, to use an elven term.

Embarrassment mingles with the shock, and I imagine the same feelings run through Bjørnar as he tries to hide us under the cover again, which is a moot point. The woman has seen us both naked several times, just not in such compromising circumstances. I turn my face to him, and I cannot help but lean in for a kiss with the way he blushes.

“Bjørnar!” Mother Brown scolds as he responds to me.

“Sorry,” he whispers and sneaks out of my bed as well as his lumbering body can. He shields himself from his mom’s gaze as he re-dresses with yesterday’s dirty clothes. At the same time, Mother Brown and I stare at each other. When he has put his pants and shirt on, he walks over to her and touches her shoulder. She leans her head down to his hand, hugging it.

“I’m sorry, mom. I’ll be careful,” he whispers to her, and a single tear falls from the nook in her eye.

“Don’t lie to me, Bjørnar. We both know what this means,” she whispers back. I want to ask what she’s talking about, but I let them have their moment. When he closes the door behind him, Mother Brown steps closer.

“I’m sorry, Mother Brown,” I start. “The bond hit us so strongly, and suddenly it was too late to turn, and….” I try to explain away, but she stops me.

“Did you mark him?” she asks.

“No, he told me not to. I want to, but not without him..”

“He will not agree to it,” she interrupts again, and I gape at her. “He knows there is too much at stake. You two must find the rest of your mates and accept them like you accepted my son.”

My eyes bulge. I’m ready to explode with the many questions popping up in my brain. Why the hell is she telling me this? Why does she care about the other mates me and Bjørnar have?

“Celeste, it’s time for you to learn some of the truth,” she sighs. I’m about to ask what she means, but she glares at me. “The White Witch foretold your birth long before you came to be. I don’t know how or why, but you are a blessing sent from the gods. You are here to save us all.”

At first, my jaw opens up, almost falling to the floor, but then the absurdity hits me, and I laugh. Gulping in the air after losing my breath to laughter, I ask: “What in the worlds are you talking about? It’s absurd!”

“Blessed by the Moonlight, her soul will be forged from two halves, and her journey begins,” Mother Brown repeats the words Mother Green said yesterday.

That stops me in my tracks, but she drags me up from my bed. “Let me help you in the bath while we talk. We need to clean this room before Terra discovers you’ve had a visitor in here,” she says bluntly, and we proceed to my bathroom. I’m already naked, so she doesn’t need to help me with my under-shift. Instead, I step into the water at once. Mother Brown follows me in as usual, still wearing her gray shift.

The bathing pool is filled with naturally heated water, as most baths are. The water is heated in the lava chasms closer to the core of this world. From there, it’s piped up to every home in the mountain, including our cave. A little waterfall on the wall keeps the little pool filled with heated water at all times, and the overflow spills over the sides and into drains.

“Slaves teach their children about your coming. We teach them about the prophecy and what signs to keep an eye out for, and we do it all in secret,” Mother Brown explains as we start the morning ritual of her washing me. Usually, I love this time of day since it’s the only place a slave may be close to me, but today, I wish someone else was in here with me.

“The first part of the prophecy concerns your mother and her homeworld. It’s not usual for werewolves to have more than one mate. It happens, but it’s not usually. Her mates, the two kings, were aware of this possibility as they grew up. They felt a mate bond connecting them, but waited for the right time to mark each other. They had learned about a mate that would connect them, your mother.”

“So Bjørnar and I have to wait for a third one?” I ask her, but she shakes her head.

“No, it’s not that easy. I will come to it, but first, let me summarize your mother’s part in this,” she smiles. Then she soaps in my hair, making me lean back. “There were two royal families who had wanted to join in marriage, but the elves cursed them only to have male children. To work against this curse, the goddess of your race, the Moon Goddess, made it possible for the two kings to join families by sharing a mate.”

While she rinses my hair, I think about it. Mom has told me a little about why she had two mates. She had kept her stories only be about the love she shared with them and how the one called Rory had to wait years for her because he saw her when she was only a baby.

“Wait, won’t Bjørnar and I get sick as one of mom’s mates did?” I ask. “She told me about him being very frail when she first met him.”

“As long as you either accept the mate or there is a rejection of the bond….” My heart breaks slightly from the word ‘rejection,’ but I let her continue. “... you will be fine enough. The two kings had unknowingly accepted each other years before either met your mother.”

“So there are no consequences of not marking each other if we accept the bond?” I ask, finding it unbelievable. Why mark at all if acceptance is enough?

“There are problems, but you will not slowly wither and die as long as you maintain the bond. I know you have many questions, Celeste, but I need to continue while there is time,” she smiles before she starts from where I had interrupted. “The three mates had obstacles in their way, but they found each other in the end. Through their union, they made a child together—a child merged from three people.”

“What?!” I turn around to meet Mother Brown’s gaze, and she smiles softly back. “I have a brother or sister in mom’s homeworld?” I ask, and again, she shakes her head.

“Your mom kept you a secret. She had already been expecting before she came here. Terra just assumed you were his because of the curse cast on the kings. You are, after all, a girl.”

My eyes widen as Mother Brown’s words sink in. Terra is not my sire, and I’m not a half-elf.

‘I told you we are full werewolves, dummy!’ my wolf chimes in. ‘Maybe you should listen to me more, Celeste?’

I admit to my wolf that I might have to do that.

“Is that why Damien hasn’t found a wolf like me? He was there when I saw the moon. He saw it too, did he not?” I ask my wolf, and she gives me a mental shrug back.

‘I don’t know. I just knew you weren’t a half-wolf.’