When the Moon Hatched (Moonfall, #1)

by Sarah A. Parker

The Creators did not expect their beloved beasts to sail skyward upon their end. For many of them to plant themselves just beyond gravity’s grip, curl into balls and calcify, littering the sky with tombstones. With moons.

Until one aurora rise, for the first time in more than five million phases . . . Another moon fell.

The harder you care, the more fragile everything seems. Easier to just . . . Not.

Survival’s funny. Some wear it like a whisper, others like a scream. Mine’s a scorched skeleton of flame-forged rage that keeps me upright. Keeps me moving forward.

My heart plummets, breath loosens. For the first time since Fallon taught me speech, I’m lost for words. He’s harshly chiseled, raw . . . fiercely beautiful. My lungs pull full of his scent, so deep and drugging, like smelted stone topped with a ladle of cream.

You can reshape a turd an infinite number of times, but it’s still a turd. It still stinks.

“You’re joking.” Her brows crush together. “For the first time in my life?” All the warmth drains from my face, my hand whipping out to steady myself against the table. “That’s what you used to bind the other activation cap to my tooth?” She nods. “Spangle shit?” “I rinsed the actual feces off, then sterilized the ore. But yes. It had been . . . shat.”

“Your Moonplume isn’t in the imperial hutch I purposely inspected before meeting you here, and we both know you wouldn’t trust her with some loose-lipped city wrangler.”

But there’s a bigger part of me that’s still lying on that seater inside, tucked around my young, miraculous, beautiful friend who just lost her life because I loved her. A bigger part of me that’s burning right alongside her. And that part . . . It’s tired. Lonely. Lost. Sad.

The Other does not pay them heed. She holds no ill blood over those who kill to survive, to feed, or to protect their young. But those who kill to hurt the one she loves? The one she nests within?

“Revenge is the loneliest deity of them all, Moonbeam. Take it from someone who knows.”

It’s a humble moment of peace despite the pain lancing through me. A quiet moment destined to scream.

I bat the thoughts away, but just like Nee used to, they keep bumping against me. Nuzzling me. Loved that. Hate this.

“Then why a moon?” I cast my gaze forward again, tap-tap-tapping my foot to the soothing tune in my head. “Because they fall.” Even when we don’t want them to.

This huge hurt . . . It fills every bit of my chest and makes it hard to breathe. Makes me so heavy I don’t think I’ll ever be able to move again. Nor do I think I want to. How can someone you love so much be here one moment, gone the next? Just . . . gone?

“Kaan, no. I did not agree to this!” His body stiffens, steps slowing, a low, grating sound coming from him. “Say it again . . .” “What?” “My name, Moonbeam. Say it again.”

“Follow me.” Ahh . . . “How?” “Tether yourself to the alluring tone of my voice,” he drawls, and I roll my eyes, tentatively following the sound of his steps instead—sliding my bare feet through the fluffy grass at a slow and steady pace in the effort not to trip.

A simple request for my help doesn’t make you weak. It makes you real.”

The air between us hollows, hungry for something I certainly don’t have the substance to fill, and I realize I might’ve been wrong about him. That he doesn’t want me for my affinity with Clode or Bulder or the ease with which I slay. That he wants something much, much worse . . . Me. Just me.

Gripping hard. The other settles around the side of my face, cupping it in a way that feels so jarringly familiar. So right it makes me want to crack my aching heart into shards because it’s obviously confused. “I see you, Raeve . . .”

“You,” he growls, tightening his hand around the side of my face with a tender jerk, eyes lit with a soul-crushing blaze. “I fucking see you.”

when I catch him looking at me with the intensity of a chapped wasteland desperate for even a drop of rain. The sort of look that consumes. That clutches heartstrings and braids them together for eternity . . .

“I understand, Kholu. We cradle different values. I apologize for overstepping.”

“She’s so much more than a power play. So much more than the love of my existence. There’s someone out there who needs her more than any of us do, and it’s not our fucking brother,” I growl, looking straight into Veya’s glazed eyes.

Regret is the heaviest burden to bear.”

To draw breath and scream. I barely get a chance to brace before it erupts—Rayne’s devastating song spewing through me like iron-tipped lashes to my unguarded eardrums. My unguarded heart. A sob dredges up my throat—an ugly splat of unwelcome sound.

This place isn’t the relic of somebody else’s love . . . It’s ours.

Time works differently in this place. It folds into itself like a parchment lark, hiding scrawled secrets I keep tucking away.

Either way, there’s no one else I’d willingly serve my heart on a platter to—over and over and over again—like

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.

I open my mouth, close it. My next words are rasped past a dry throat. “I don’t understand how you still look at me like you want me.” Silence prevails, tension thickens, his eyes burning embers when he finally says, “Raeve, you could flay me down the middle and I’d still fucking love you.”

She looks at me over her shoulder, eyes like glaciers, her soft smile the gleaming slash of a blade that strikes home, bleeding the vulnerable organ that so eagerly pumps for her. Only her. The only beam of light I’ll ever need or want in this world, my love for her sitting like a moon in my chest. Only this moon will never fall, no matter how hard she tugs on it.

I don’t want the perfect goodbye. I want to say hello to Raeve—whoever that is. Whoever’s tucked beneath that hardened exterior, I want to know her. Be around her. Love her.

Keeping her tucked close, I move with her, breath stilling when she settles her head on my chest like she means to stay, braiding my heartstrings into a perfect rope she tugs.

A pained groan grates up my throat, and I take her mouth in a crushing kiss, tasting tears on her lips as I finally jump off the cliff she sang me to the edge of.

“I’m a horrible male that loves you, Raeve. That wants the best for you, even if it’s not the best for me.” The smile falls, his eyes darkening as he pauses—like he’s grappling with the words on his tongue. “There are . . . others who would be affected by your sudden return. One in particular.

“I’m not your secret. I’m your truth.”

“I hate you,” I whimper, lifting my hips to meet the next heavy thump. “No, you don’t, Moonbeam. You love me. You’re just too busy feasting on my heart to notice.”

All I see is molten adoration. A fierce, untamable love so heavy it stomps me breathless. All I feel is him.

“This is so much bigger than us, and you need to soften that heart or you’re going to break someone who’s not attuned to being stabbed through the chest by your reluctance to build connections.”