Le wild Vol. 2 appears!

No, I don't know why I'm referencing ancient memes.

Thanks go to J. Ace for beta reading, and credit goes to the band Hammock for the title of this series and the titles of individual acts. Volume titles drawn for the German nursery rhyme "The Moon Has Risen".

PROLOGUE

In the Nothing of a Night

Nine years ago …

The man was High Fae with dark skin and angular cheekbones and long hair matted with blood. He was stretched between two pillars, bound with ropes laced with fae bane. For all the blood and bruises marring his skin he did not falter, did not slip as he stood proudly on both feet and stared down his tormentor.

"Tyron here has a secret," said Amarantha, staring right back at her prisoner. She was dressed in a blue lace nightgown, her red hair tousled, but Aeron knew she hadn't been sleeping. She smelt like night, like a man he'd never seen, only ever scented on her. "It's a particularly juicy secret," she went on, "and he's rather determined not to tell me anything. But then, he doesn't have to say anything, does he, my Aeron?"

Aeron kept his gaze on the prisoner, on the scattered wounds over his chest and arms. From the blood pooling at the back of him Aeron could only assume he'd been whipped, likely by the same whip so often used on Aeron himself when he disappointed his mother.

Amarantha gripped Aeron by the arm, her fingernails digging into his flesh like talons. "Does he, my Aeron?"

My Aeron. Never my son or my child.

"No, my lady," said Aeron, his voice trembling.

Releasing her grip, Amarantha trailed her fingers up over Aeron's shoulder to cup the back of his neck as she leant in to whisper in his ear. "Do what you do best, pet."

Aeron knew what happened next. He knew what came after, what decision he made. Part of him was conscious of that, of the inevitability of it all.

But he didn't want to.

"No."

The grip on the back of his neck turned painful. "What?"

"I won't do it. I won't go into his head," Aeron told his mother. "I refuse."

Amarantha released him, pulling him around to face her. "Do you imagine," she hissed, "that refusing me will get you anywhere but in his place?"

"I don't care," said Aeron. "I'm not doing it. I won't hurt him for you."

The world flashed and the prisoner was gone, Aeron bound in his place. Amarantha circled him, the whip now clutched in his hands. When she finally made her way around in front of him again she looked almost sympathetic. "Poor boy," she simpered. "My poor, poor baby."

And then the whip fell across his face.

Aeron woke with a start, his arms outstretched on the bed as though still bound either side of him. He pulled them in close to himself, wrapping them around his knees as he curled up into a ball, closing his eyes and trying desperately to center himself.

When his breathing finally calmed enough for rational thought, Aeron was left with a terrible knowledge:

The dreams were getting worse.

Now …

Hope would have killed to dream that night.

She was exhausted, in desperate need of sleep, but her mind refused to stop whirring as she lay in her makeshift home, back to the hard stone.

Pregnant.

It had been three days since the full moon, and she had hardly slept a wink. Eating had become a nightmare as she vomited at the sight of the blood of the animals she hunted. She also vomited upon waking, and when she ate berries, and sometimes when she stood up too fast. She was quickly approaching the point where the amount of acidic bile she was producing would strip her teeth of enamel. Her throat already burned with every breath.

She needed crackers, or something with ginger. She remembered when Aunt Keelin was pregnant, how Aunt Freya had run back and forth from the kitchens with crackers and ginger ale and anything her wife desired. Keelin had confided that morning sickness was difficult with wolves. At the time, Hope hadn't really absorbed the fact that this meant that her own pregnancy would be just as difficult if not worse.

Granted, she'd only been ten at the time, but still. It would've been nice to prepare herself a little more.

She knew she wouldn't last long out here by herself. She was starving, not just because her magic was scattered and she could hardly hunt without vomiting, but because everything she ate inevitably came back up again. Her tights were getting loose, and though she may not have known much about pregnancy she knew she wasn't supposed to have lost weight.

She needed help, and she needed it badly.

She just had no idea where to get it.

Yell at me on Tumblr flo-lore-writes.