Luna
I race through the trees around the triplet’s house, my head spinning with confusion. I don’t remember coming here, and I haven’t left since waking in their bed. I don’t know where I am or how to get home. Nothing smells familiar. Nowhere feels safe. My shredded heart can’t take the pain of life anymore.
I hear a snap of a twig and spin around. A huge, dark shape rockets across the carpet of pine needles, straight for me. I scream and start to shift into a wolf, but the shape blurs into a man and catches me before I can. He wraps his arms around me, the shock of his huge, hot body against mine knocking the breath from me and replacing it with pure panic. I writhe in his arms, screams tearing from me.
“Luna, stop,” he commands fiercely. “It’s just me.”
I stop screaming when his words cut through my haze of panic, and I realize it’s just Callan.
“Let me go!” I shove at his chest to no effect. He’s as strong as he looks, like a tree has imprisoned me in its unbreakable limbs.
“Are you going to run?” His golden eyes captivate me.
“Of course I’m going to run!” I bite his shoulder, kicking my legs.
“Fucking stop, Luna,” he snaps, his arms still wrapped tightly around me. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You’ve already hurt me,” I snap back.
His grip loosens instantly, but he doesn’t release me. “We didn’t know, pet,” he says quietly. “I just need you to listen to me for a second. If you don’t like what I have to say, you can run.”
There’s a warmth emanating from his eyes that does strange things to my insides, and being pressed up against him while neither of us are dressed makes a strange ache grow in my lower belly, like it did when Axel touched me in the shower.
I nod my head, and he releases his embrace and steps back, palms out, his feet making soft noises in the pine needles. He’s huge like a giant, his thighs as powerful as top half of his body, and he has the same meat stick as Axel, but his hangs down instead of standing up. He’s still close enough that his warmth touches me while the early morning sunlight filtering through the boughs softly lights his rugged features.
“Go on,” I say, swallowing past a quivery feeling in my throat.
“We moved out here when the pack banished us, too,” he says. “We got each other, and that’s about it. Truth be told, we weren’t looking to
change that. But having you here for just a few days… Well, it shook us up, that’s all.”
I cross my arms across my chest, trying to hold back the tears that want to come again. “I don’t want to cause problems. Not between the three of you. I know what it’s like to have only one person you can count on. I wouldn’t have liked anyone coming in and getting between me and Mama, either.”
Callan shakes his head, his shaggy hair swaying in the breeze. “That won’t happen,” he says. “No one could ever come between us. Now Warrick, he don’t trust easy, but I bet the two of you are more alike than either of you is willing to let on. He wasn’t expecting you to turn our universe upside down, but that don’t mean he doesn’t need it the same as the rest of us.”
“Need what?” I ask. “Shaking up?” He gives me a crooked grin. “Yeah.” “What if I don’t need it?” I ask.
“Well, pet, I think your world’s already been shaken up,” he says. “And we’d like to be the shelter from the storm for a while, if you’ll have us. Thing is… We may not have realized it, but I think we needed someone like you to come along and remind us there’s something in the world besides what we were used to getting.”
“Like what?” I ask, utterly confused.
“Like you,” he says softly, stepping closer.
My heart is suddenly doing its rabbit-run again. I swallow and lower my gaze to the bite mark I left on his shoulder, which seeps blood.
“But Warrick hates me,” I whisper. “He doesn’t want me here.” “He don’t hate you,” Callan says. “He needs you most.”
I gulp, confused by all the funny sensations running through me, the thoughts and fears and hopes and desires in my head banging up against the way my body feels warm and languid when he’s near, like I need to lie down and sun myself and have a dream I can’t remember afterwards.
“You can’t blame us for going a little nuts when you showed up,” Callan says. “I mean…you’re a fucking gorgeous woman. Of course it takes some adjusting to having you living under our roof, walking around like that…” His eyes roam over my body, and my nipples stiffen like they want some attention.
“What does that matter?” I say, inching toward him.
He places his palms on my shoulders and rubs them up and down. I want to lean into him, to have his strong arms around me again, holding me like he did before. This time, I wouldn’t fight. I’d pay attention and really feel his huge body wrapped around my small one, all our skin pressed together.
“It doesn’t matter what you look like,” Callan says, and I see that funny lump on his neck bob up and down, like he’s trying to swallow something that’s stuck there. “Listen, Luna… We’ve had our share of hardships, but none of us can imagine what it’s like to be severed from a True Mate. Most wolves don’t have one, so we can’t know. It’s a rare and precious thing, and usually the only separation is if one of the pair dies. No one in his right mind would sever the bond intentionally.”
My voice cracks when I speak. “Then why did Axel?”
Callan’s hands curl into fists. “Because he’s a fucking bastard, that’s why.”
No one has ever defended me before. Mama would’ve if she’d had
the wits about her to do it, but she just didn’t understand things the same way I did. If there was a storm coming or a gator on our hillock, I was the one who prepared our home or chased off the predators. I protected us and fought for survival for the both of us.
But this man standing in front of me seems to want to protect me, even though I don’t understand why. Something flutters down in my belly like the wings of a swarm of bats catching skeeters over the swamp. I don’t understand that, either.
“So, what do you say, pet?” Callan asks. “Let us take care of you for a while, at least? I already admitted we need it, and I think you need us,
too.”
I feel a smile tugging at my mouth, and I can’t get it to go away
even when I bite on the corner of my lip. “Okay,” I say at last, nodding my head.
Callan lets out a whoop and dives at me, scooping me up over his shoulder and pumping a fist in the air. A giggle bursts from me, and I clap my hand over my mouth, feeling like I shouldn’t laugh so soon after Mama died. But he took me by surprise, and he’s laughing, too. He turns and runs back toward their house, carrying me over his shoulder. I must have made a good choice, because I feel just about as happy as he is about it.
Maybe there’s hope after all. Maybe there can be life after Mama. When Axel banished me, I felt like I wasn’t worth being his mate, but now I know I was wrong. And he was wrong. There are other people in the world who want me even if he doesn’t.