Mated by Moonlight

The pants were far too small since they fit Orson in his human incarnation, not his verita luna shape. Where the old man packed away all the pounds he added to his grizzly form was one of the mysteries discussed at length—in the proper company—over beers at the bar. Most of the townsfolk werelings had decided he kept it in his voice.

But Beck was relieved there was still considerable strength in the old man. And he was glad enough for the pants too.

Avoiding the squirts of green goo, Beck approached the thing impaled on the lawn. “What is an imp?”

“Phae.” Orson spat the word as if he too tasted the fetid, greasy char.

Beck frowned. “We haven’t had trouble with their kind in...” He shook his head. “Since before my time.”

Orson huffed out a breath. “Not before mine. I was a boy last time I saw one. Cocky bastard, walking through town just as dusk settled, all wrapped up in his glamour. Lying through those smiling teeth. Probably fanged, though no one could see.”

Pursing his lips, Beck decided not to remind Orson that they had fangs of their own. Though he’d never dealt with phae himself, he knew all the old stories. Werelings had always hated the phae. Phae glamour was an affront to the verita luna, where the shape was the truth.

Not that it was always a truth they could share.

But werelings had not abandoned the sunlit world as the phae had. They’d kept to themselves, kept quiet, and kept their ways while the phae had skulked away, driven by changes in a world to which they would not—or could not—adapt.