Daughter of the Moon (The Moon People, Book Two) Read Online Free PDF

she took the shape of her animal she felt it squirming and writhing beneath her skin, desperate to unfurl the full span of its senses, tasting scents that she had never before known and picking out sounds so minute as to be inaudible to the ears of a normal woman. She wanted to be guided by these things, to follow her heart as it tugged her along the invisible trails that she somehow knew would lead her to fresh prey and safe paths through the forest.
    All these things and more she longed to embrace, but she had quickly learned that letting her focus slip was a mistake, especially when she was alone. Scouting by herself, she could let herself become captivated by phantom scents for hours on end, straying far away from the others until her good senses finally snapped back into focus and gave her the forethought to panic. She had not been alone in unfamiliar lands often, and despite the confidence of her wolf's impulses, she was no experienced traveller. She could not track properly, she was a novice of a hunter at best, and she possessed only the barest minimum of skills necessary to keep herself alive in the wilderness. Surfacing from the depths of her wolf to realise that she was alone and distant from the rest of her pack was a frightening enough experience to crush the will of her feral side back to the bottom of her mind.
    Thankfully, the skill of her sensitive nose had been enough to lead her back along her own trail every time she became lost, but it had resulted in many wasted hours of exhausting panic as she struggled to catch back up with the rest of the group. She needed to learn to control the impulses of her animal, before it led her down a path from which she might not so easily return.
     
    The pack awoke one morning to find that the clouds had parted, and a rare kiss of the sun's warmth had broken through to bless the cold months with a reminder of summer. Adel allowed her weary group a few extra hours of rest to enjoy the good weather, and Netya and Caspian took the opportunity to slip away, their paws crunching through the dappled carpet of pine needles as they followed a sparkling stream away to the west. It was a good time for her to practise mastering control of her wolf, and one of the few excuses to spend time with Caspian when they were not exhausted from the day's travel. With him carrying supplies with the main group, and Netya abroad hunting or scouting, it had been days since they got to spend time together so freely, and her heart soared at the prospect of spending several hours alone with him.
    They came to a stop in earshot of the tinkling sounds of a small waterfall, where the stream trickled over a lip of moss-covered rocks before continuing its journey down below. The land they now walked in was an eerily beautiful place, quiet and close-knit, quite different from the forests Netya had grown up in and the open plains where Khelt's pack had made their home. It filled her with wonder to look out beyond the tips of the pine trees in front of them, only to see the land rolling onward again through hills and valleys, until it finally blurred into the shapes of what she could only assume were more mountains. The rich woodland scents filling her muzzle were musty and ancient, untouched by woodsmoke or the odours of sweat and leather. The smells of people were comforting, but that was all they were. Even before Khelt's bite had seeded the wolf inside her, Netya had always been possessed of an inquisitive curiosity that tugged her away from such comforts. It was what had drawn her to embrace the Moon People's way of life when they first took her from her home. How many other girls of her kind would have responded in the same way?
    A low bark from Caspian snapped her out of her wandering thoughts, a sharp reminder of how easily she had allowed the sights and scents of the woodland to distract her from the here and now. Inhabiting the body of her wolf was almost like stepping into the spirit world, that