Page 12 of The Barren Luna

Maybe now he’d let me go? What was the point of keeping me around? He now had her, for sex, for breeding, for beingparents together. I would gladly teach her how to perform all the Luna duties, if only he would let me remove myself from this grotesque picture.

As if he'd heard my thoughts, he turned to me with an elated expression, but upon noticing my tear-stained face, he frowned.

“Aren’t you happy, Ginny? We’re going to have a pup,” he said and took my hand in his, as if we were the ones receiving the good news without Miss Rogers.

When I said nothing, he let go of my hand, offended. Of course. He put all this work into making the pup, and now he wasn’t being appreciated. I wanted to laugh. But I also wanted to die because the Doctor turned to me and said:

“Towards the end of the pregnancy, we need to start inducing lactation in the Luna. It's a fairly straightforward process, don’t worry,” he was quick to reassure me, having misinterpreted the look of horror on my face. “We'll meet up here in about three months and we’ll get started, how does that sound?”

I simply nodded, not wanting Henry to command me into lactating, but there was no way in hell I would be breastfeeding that female’s pup. I needed to find a way out of this, and fast.

When we were done, Henry opened the door for her and escorted her out with a hand on the small of her back while she looked up at him, her face beaming with adoration and happiness - a pose they would mirror during the pack announcement later that night. Unlike at the concubine announcement, during which I stood by him and she stood alone on the sidelines, this time I was the outsider, the odd one out.

I only heard parts of the speech, “Hannah carries the future of this pack”, and the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd, because I was too busy observing the two love birds. They moved in sync, like two people very familiar with each other’s bodies.Meanwhile, my poor wolf was battered from the infidelity and the drugs, and I couldn’t help but wonder how Henry’s wolf was coping with all of this. He had to be sedating him with wolfsbane constantly.

Her parents and who I guessed was her step-brother were hugging both her and Henry, and they really seemed like a big, happy family. When I saw Henry’s mother approaching the group, I turned around and left.

???

In the middle of one of the following weeks (I’d almost completely lost track of time at this point), Catherine waltzed into my home uninvited and frowned upon seeing me passed out on the couch in my pajamas at 3 pm.

She talked at me for a while, urging me to pull my shit together (my translation of her polished speech), to go back to performing my Luna duties (which I’d started ignoring because, what was the point?), to be more understanding about the fact that Hannah was now a pregnant female and Henry had to be by her side to help with the sexual cravings that she was experiencing (that one had me throwing up in my mouth a little), and finally, how at the end of all this I would be getting a pup to raise with my mate.

It took all my self-control not to punch her. After not getting a response from me for the first time since she'd known me, she simply left and I went back to sleep.

If it hadn't been for Dorothy, who came over to feed me, bathe me, and take care of me like a pup, I don’t know whether I would have survived those days. I stopped cooking completely. Unless Dorothy brought me something and forced me to eat it, Isurvived on peanut butter and fruit once a day. Among the rare lucid moments I could remember was when she informed me that Lucy had given birth to her male, Declan.

Henry and I arrived at the hospital separately to go in and bless him. He tried talking to me but I just ignored him and made my way upstairs. Declan was the sweetest pup in the world, and Lucy was a beautiful, radiant new mother. The tiny part of my heart that wasn’t dead and rotten was so happy for her. While Henry and Calum stepped outside to discuss some patrol issues, she quietly asked me how I was doing.

“Why is he keeping me here, Lucy? I just want to leave, I just want to not be here,” I whispered with snot bubbling up from my nose and ugly tears pouring down my face.

One night, Henry found me passed out from the pain, and he held me, rocked me, gently kissed my temples and my forehead as if he was still my lover, and whispered apologies and sweet words in my ear when I woke up.

“It’s her hormones, Ginny; the pregnancy is driving them through the roof. I can’t say no to her now, just be patient for a little while longer, I’ll get you more drugs. I’m really sorry, Ginny, please look at me.”

My eyes remained closed.

6 - Ginny

1 month later

Apersistent knocking on the door woke me up from my poppy-assisted afternoon nap and I stumbled to the door angrily. One of the pack enforcers (Jack? Jules?) stood there, looking apologetic.

“Luna, they’re waiting for you in the Alpha’s office.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but these days that was no surprise. I looked down at myself – black sweatpants and a clean-ish T-shirt, good enough. We walked towards the pack house in silence.

I hadn’t left my house in a month at that point, so I looked around and chuckled to myself at the state of disarray that the pack was falling into now that I was ignoring my duties. I remembered Lucy telling me that Henry, Calum, and Liam had pooled their efforts together and still couldn’t get it all done.

The wolf I was now was happy about it. Why should I continue working myself to the bone for a pack that cheered when my mate announced he would be fucking another female? A pack in which not a single wolf aside from my four friends had come andsaid anything comforting or apologetic to me this whole time? They could all go to hell, together with their precious unborn heir, for who they threw me and my relationship under the bus.

Before I knew it, we were at the pack house. The guard turned to me with a small smile and said:

“Goodbye, Luna.”

I nodded at him and made my way to Henry’s office. Months of wilting away on the couch were causing my thighs to burn from climbing up the stairs. And to think that I used to be a strong she-wolf. Her disgusting vanilla fragrance would have hit me upon entering the pack house if my wolf had been at full strength, but since she wasn’t, I was startled to see Hannah at the top of the stairs. Before I could say anything, she started screaming:

“No! Let go of me! Luna! No! Henry!!!!”

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