When the Moon Hatched (Moonfall, #1)

by Sarah A. Parker

“Spend your life alone, forever wondering why you scream in your sleep. Calling for that very Moonplume I’ve spent the past twenty-three phases piecing back together, hoping it would bring your spirit pe...

“I knew it would break you to know she was scattered all over the world after scavenger...

“Chase death, Moonbeam. And I pray your bloodlust brings you the same sense of peace I feel just knowing you exist.”

Kaan can’t contain a secret for long before it gnaws through his gut. Eventually, he’ll have to tell Elluin what Pah somehow accomplished that terrible slumber over an eon ago when her life came crumbling down. When she woke to find her entire family poisoned to death.

“What do you want, Elluin?”

“You.”

I turn my head, open my eyes. Get lost in Kaan’s ember gaze as a s...

“Fore...

The vision loosens its hold on me, and my knees buckle. I fall to the ground amongst a litter of feathers, gasping for breath that won’t come, hands gnarled into claws that drag at my chest. As I realize with soul-crushing finality the reason I’ve been drawn to this point since the moment I opened th...

But how could something so wrong feel so fucking right? He cupped my face with such tenderness it was like he was cradling a dragon’s egg, and I nuzzled his palm. Found so much comfort in it that I wanted to stay right there. Forever. Then he asked me what I wanted, and I told him my truth. One three-letter word that weighed too much, being promised to his kin. You.

It was the kiss of someone who wanted to give me everything. Take nothing. Yet I gave him my whole heart anyway. Realized it was rightfully his. That it had been for some time.

I’m just . . . baffled. Haunted. Maybe a little crazy. Maybe a lot crazy?

I’m living in the in-between. In the bubble of lust and buoyant hopes, drunk on the giddy feeling that flutters through my belly every time I see a flash of something so very . . . him and her. Elluin and Kaan.

As the cycles flip by, I’ve come to the slow, uncomfortable realization that Kaan fell in love with a distant, bygone version of me that was probably softer. Kinder. A version of me that was brave enough (or perhaps stupid enough) to love.

Somehow, I lost him. Lost myself. Lost a dragon who apparently loved me enough to sail me into the sky with her and calcify around me like a tombstone built for the both of us. It’s hard to grapple that into a shape that doesn’t make me choke.

“The last Great Flurrt we spent together was the last time I saw her alive.”

“We spent the slumber together, and the following dae I flew off to help rebuild a village. The next time I saw Elluin, her limp body was being carted into the sky by her mourning dragon,”

I slam the looking glass against my palm, closing it, considering the implications of ripping my own heart out and smashing it against the stone. Giving her a head start.

Either way, there’s no one else I’d willingly serve my heart on a platter to—over and over and over again—like a hopeless, lovesick stray begging for a treat.

I’m done living the life I’ve been told to live and not the one I want for myself.

“Please . . .”

“You don’t have to beg for me, Moonbeam.”

“If you want me”—he

“I’m fucking yours.”

“Forever,”

“I want you forever.”

He’s fire and brimstone. I’m shattered ice. Our collision is steam and destruction, destined to dissipate, but I’ll gladly burn beneath him until the world comes crumbling down.

Everything about him is immense, like a shadow that eclipses every light source, swaying my ability to see anything other than him.

“I was someone to you,”

“Someone important.”

“Corr...

“Un...

“You bound with another male,”

You don’t simply scratch an itch with Kaan Vaegor, then throw him away and move on to another. You peel back your skin and open your ribs to the male.

There is no way I gave him up for anyone else . . . willingly. And there’s only one answer to that particular riddle. Elluin had secrets just as barbed as my own.

“After all that,”

“you still saved my life.”

“...

“Tw...

“Hard to turn down an opportunity to gift you the severed head of a male who made you bleed.”

“I don’t understand how you still look at me like you want me.”

“Raeve, you could flay me down the middle and I’d still fucking love you.”

Love . . . The word is a quiet death that slips away without so much as a whispered goodbye—an abrupt shove into an eternal loneliness I’ll never deign myself to claw free of.

“Such a waste of that big, beautiful heart,”

“There are two options.”

“Which are?”

“I leave right now with this pile of gold,” I say, eyeing my impressive stack, “and hire a Moltenmaw from your carter hutch for the foreseeable future.”

“So you can hunt the one who turned your back ...

“Among other ...

“Or?”