The Pact of the Raven: The Somber Wolves Saga, #4

By Matt Honorato

The desert was a cruel mistress. 

It beat us. It made us cry. It made us suffer. 

But, at the same time, the desert was what gave our lives meaning, what gave us a life to live at the end of the day.

Ronni lived his entire life in the waste of Yaeli's desert. The golden sand dunes and boiling sun were the harsh and cruel reality he knew. His parents' love and his little sister were what kept him going, waking up in the morning to search the dunes for the fruit that saved them from death. 

He did his duty until everything is taken away from him. All of it, except one little thing. 

Now Ronni will have to face the desert like he never had before, in a quest to protect his loved ones and save them from an army of bandits that terrorizes the Yaeli desert. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matt Honorato
• Release date: May 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533776174

Book preview

More titles by Matt Honorato:

The Somber Wolves Saga

The Lone Ranger:

US: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BULDAF4?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01BULDAF4?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

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The Wolf’s Den:

US: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C9MGRSA?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01C9MGRSA?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

A Breeze of Summer:

US: http://www.amazon.com/Breeze-Summer-Three-Somber-Wolves-ebook/dp/B01ERTYLMC?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Breeze-Summer-Three-Somber-Wolves-ebook/dp/B01ERTYLMC?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

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FREEBIE: Sign Up to Matt’s Newsletter and get an exclusive look at Book Three of The Somber Wolves Saga:

A Breeze of Summer

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The Arms of Justice

Episode One:

US: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DCGN1OA?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01DCGN1OA?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Epilogue

My father liked telling me that the desert was a cruel mistress.

It beat us. It made us cry. It made us suffer. But, at the same time, the desert was what gave our lives meaning, what gave us a life to live at the end of the day. Maybe he thought I was too young to understand how we managed to live in the desert. How those little seeds we buried in the sandy dunes soon turned out to become large, orange and red fruits.

But I knew it. I never understood how they grew with no water to nurture them, with no real solid ground to let them take root, or without us tending to them much either. And yet, those little seeds always became the large orange and red fruit that my father sold in the town to buy food and water for us.

Thinking about my life is weird. It was all such a long time ago it almost seems like a dream. You probably don't even know who I was or even care for that matter. But don't worry, I'll make this quick. It won't take many pages to tell the brief tale that was my life. You can call me Ronni, and this is my story.

Ronni

––––––––

Do you remember the fruit I told you about? The big orange and red one?

Yes, remember that fruit, because it was both the reason why my family managed to survive and it was also the reason why my family came to an end.

It all started on a day like any other, a dry, boiling afternoon in our family's farm. When you live in the southern part of the Yaeli country, you expect ninety-nine out of one hundred days to be unbearably hot.

Yaeli wasn't much of a country back in those days. It was more of a band of towns and poor people banded together, trading whatever they had for food and water to survive.

Me talking about living on a farm might be weird to some of you since we lived in the desert. When you think of farms, you think of pigs, crops, green, and a lot of water. Well, at least that was what the rich men told me when I went to town with my father to sell our crops. Their tales of the ocean and the fruitful forests and jungles in other countries seemed a lot more like fairy tales than the truth if you ask me.

I had lived my whole life in the desert. Not that eighteen years were too long, but it was enough that I'd call myself an adult without thinking much about it.

But let's get back to the family farm.

Like any other day, I was spending my afternoon roaming the dunes, looking for wherever the seeds I planted a few weeks ago had flown. With every step, my feet sank into the sand almost ankle deep. The shift in the dunes and their height was what made this job at least a little bit exciting.

I took a few steps up another dune, and my right foot hit something solid. It didn't sink. I was on top of something. I was on top of the thing I was looking for. Finally, I sighed.

I had been looking for this final fruit for almost an hour. I took a step back, keeping my eyes on the place where my foot didn't sink. I took a deep breath and opened my arms wide before burying them in the sand.

Picture a grown man hugging a patch of sand, weird right? But that was usually what it took to take one of those off the ground. Once I had my arms around that thing buried in the sand, I arched my back and yanked it off the dune.

It was a light orange fruit with several red dots spread across its crust, almost as wide as my torso, but just big enough that I could still hold it with some ease. That was an Uvucan fruit, the most, and only, valuable thing you can take from the desert.

I turned back and walked down the dune to where I had my sled waiting for me. On it, there were two more Uvucan fruits, both around the same size as the one I had just picked up. Those three should be enough to see my family through the month. Happy with the haul and with an air of confident self-importance, I put the fruit down on