Moon Calls Twice

"Do you recall the night I murdered you?" Her voice carried the velvet caress of a practiced courtesan, breathed into his ear, all softness meant to distract before the hidden blade found the unwary lover. Not that she required a weapon for those nightly hunts. Weapons were for the weak. Darkness veiled her, and though he couldn't make her out clearly through the tangle of branches where she crouched high overhead, her sneer still raised his fur. Fangs bared, huge eyes above sharp cheekbones, legs long and powerful, she ran and sprang from tree to tree with ease, seeking the next victim whose flesh she could tear with her teeth. He stared into the treetops, lips peeling back in a snarl that bared razor-edged teeth. She kept needling him. Kept working beneath his fur. Her voice stayed casual, as though talking over the dead were no stranger than remarking on the weather. "I recall it perfectly. As if it happened yesterday. How many years has it been now? A hundred at least, unless I'm mistaken." He had not forgotten. How could he forget? Blood everywhere. The butchered heads of his mate and eldest son. Something inside him died that day. The whole pack had felt the blow. His mate had been their Luna, the pack's heart. No pack could survive without both Luna and Alpha. It maimed them all and almost ruined them. He had never truly recovered. "Talk to me, Flint," she purred while her bare feet glided without a sound along a thick branch. It groaned beneath her. "Tell me what it feels like. Tell me how your soul burns for hers. Tell me what it is to lose your own kin because you could not save them."