Page 6 of The Barren Luna

My stomach was tense with anxiety and elation, and some part of me still couldn’t believe I was doing this, that I was running away from everything I’d ever known to start over in the completely unfamiliar human world.

Yet I was happy, and my wolf was proud of me, although I could feel her sadness at abandoning her mate. The wolf side of our mate hadn’t done anything to harm us, and we were both sorry that we were leaving him behind. When I approached the border, I saw a gray mass of fur in my peripheral vision and it knocked me to my side. I dropped the bag and snarled at the wolf, who was soon joined by three others, all equally menacing in demeanor. I recognized their scents, they were pack enforcers, but what were they doing here?

“Shift, Regina,” Henry ordered from somewhere behind me and I closed my eyes but had no choice but to obey.

“I knew you would pull something like this. I was notified by your guard as soon as you left the house. You forget that I know who you are deep inside,” he whispered in my ear while I stood there completely naked. The enforcers had all disappeared somewhere as soon as I shifted back. I didn’t think he’d care enough to have me followed, but I’d underestimated his ego.

“I told you what would happen if you continued to disobey me,” he said, clutching my wrist angrily, and I felt panic grip me like never before.

“Henry, no, please, just let me leave and you can have all the pups you want with whoever you want, just, please - ”

“Don’t leave pack territory,” he commanded in his unmistakable Alpha voice and I felt the command painfully take root in my bones.

I fell to my knees on the cold forest ground, and I wept for what felt like hours before getting up and going back home.

3 – Ginny

It was early and the pack streets were still quiet while I walked to my office to catch up on work. Luna duties were no joke – there were supplies to be ordered for the school, the pack hospital, and the kitchens; there were countless vendors to be dealt with, endless invoices to be checked, and accounts to be balanced. On top of that, I had to plan weekly menus for the pack kitchen, organize and be on the roster for visiting old and/or sick pack members, accompany Henry on official visits and photo ops, as well as keep correspondence and diplomatic relationships with the Lunas of our ally packs.

I was almost afraid of the mountain of work that I’d been neglecting this past week. Not that I didn’t have a good reason for it. I didn’t want to think about that reason though, I wanted to focus on the mind-numbing paperwork and just go through the motions until I recovered enough emotionally to find another solution to my problems.?

I never really grew to love the Spruce Mountain pack center. Despite the breathtaking nature surrounding it, the buildings were drab and utilitarian. The central pack house was reminiscent of military barracks, which was in line with the reputation the pack prided itself on – conservative, isolated,fierce. It housed the communal dining hall and pack kitchen (ground floor), pack leadership offices (me and the Gamma on the first floor, Henry and Calum on the second floor), dorm-style rooms for unmated pack warriors and enforcers (top floor), and big conference rooms and pack halls on both the first and second floors. The basement was divided between the pantry and several large storage units.

The central pack house was surrounded by smaller buildings that were used as guest housing and temporary solutions for newly mated couples while they waited for their family home to be built, and directly behind it was the gloomy dungeon. It was truly a dungeon and not a prison. Full-scale pack wars were mostly a thing of the past, but trespassing rogue wolves, captured human hunters, and the occasional vampire who broke the treaty between our kinds would be detained and, more often than not, tortured there.

I had just finished checking another invoice when I heard a knock on the door, and the pack Gamma’s scent reached me.

“Come in, Liam.”

“Hello, Luna,” he smiled at me in that boyish way of his. He was only 20 and new to the role, but both Henry and I had high hopes for him. “I’ve come to check on you after, you know, everything,” he made a face but seemed determined to get through the uncomfortable parts of the situation for my sake, and I found it admirable. Gammas were traditionally the protectors of the Luna, and I could see, through many of his actions, that Liam took that duty seriously.

“To be honest, I could be better,” I admitted and he nodded thoughtfully at my words. “Were you there for the selection yesterday?” I asked, indicating a chair he could sit on that wasn’t full of binders and files.

“I was,” he said while sitting down. “There were only two candidates, so it went quickly.”

I didn’t know why that made me feel better. Why was the fact that only two of my pack mates were willing to come between me and my mate, or rather get under my mate, a comforting thing?

“Who is she?”

“Hannah Roger’s, former Beta Zeke’s daughter.”

“I don’t know her very well, we’ve never interacted much. I guess that makes it easier for her,” I said bitterly and Liam grimaced.

“Who was the other one?”

“Amelia Dawson.”

“The teacher?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, wow. But her I can understand, she’s 26 and was widowed at, what, 19?” He nodded. “This might be her only chance for a pup.”

“And that is precisely why she was rejected. The Council didn’t think she’d be ready to give up the pup when the time came.”

“It is all so awful, and we’re sitting here talking about it as if we were discussing the weather. Can you believe that this is my life now, Liam?”

“I can’t even imagine, Luna. This whole thing is a mess. But the Council seems confident that this is all by the book.”

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