Luna Lola: The Moon Wolf novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Nine Sheep

Ilsa came back to Highmoor the day before the full moon, and the sheep came with her.

There were nine of them, laid out on a tarp in the middle of the council ring.

Their throats were torn open, and in every wound a grey slug of metal glinted in the lamplight.

Silver.

The shepherd who had found them held his cap in both hands and wouldn't look at me.

"White hairs on the fence wire," he told the council. "And tracks in the mud by the water trough. Big ones. Bigger than a horse's."

The elders murmured along the benches.

I sat in the chair they had given me, on the moonglass side of the ring, and I felt every eye in the hall come to rest on my shoulders.

Caelen sat beside me.

He did not touch me, and he did not take his eyes off the tarp.

The old woman in the center chair rapped her gavel.

"Does anyone speak to this?"

"I do."

Ilsa stood up from the benches on the western side, in her camel coat, with her green notebook on her hip where everyone could see it.

My stomach dropped.

She looked pale and tired, and she looked honest.

"I wasn't going to say anything," she said. "I begged my father to let it lie."

"But I saw her."

"Saw whom?" said the old woman.

"The white wolf. Two nights ago I couldn't sleep, and I was at the window of the orchard cottage, and she crossed the pasture."

Ilsa's voice cracked.

"She stopped at the fold and looked straight at me. Then she went in."

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