Luna
The tempest is on its way, and I think it’s going to tear me from everyone and everything, just like in my dream. The winds are howling, screaming through the rafters, whistling through the telephone poles. Axel hasn’t stopped by to make sure we’re safe, even though I put my name on his list like he asked. He’s supposed to tell us where to go if things get worse. We’re not safe-we never even got the shutters on. The triplets are frantically trying to get them up before the worst of it hits.
While they’re busy, I decide to run back to Axel’s and get the emergency plan myself, since he was too mad to bring it to me. Head down, raincoat wrapped around my body and tied securely at the waist, I power through the wind that nearly takes me off my feet. When I get to his porch, I have to pry open the screen door with both hands. I don’t bother knocking, just hurl myself inside and release the door, afraid it’ll knock me out if it hits me.
“Axel? That you?” comes a dreaded, familiar voice. Then Ama saunters down the hall, her arms full of clothes.
“Not Axel,” I say, eyeing her.
“Oh,” she says, wrinkling her nose like I still smell the way I did the day she found me in the swamp. “Just you. Want to help me fold this laundry?”
The smug smile on her face puts me on guard. “Why are you doing your laundry here?”
She grins. “Not mine. Ours. He’s out making sure everyone’s house is storm proof and they know where to go if things get dicey. He’s so considerate that way.” She drops the armload of clothes onto the sofa, revealing that she’s not wearing anything. “He and I will ride out the storm together.”
My irritation kicks up a notch. “I just came for the emergency plan.”
“Sure you don’t want to help?” She plucks a pair of boxers out of the pile and holds them up for inspection, and a secretive smile flashes across her face. “Wait, never mind. You’ve helped enough.”
“What does that mean?” I realize my fingers have curled into fists, so I shake them out.
“Well,” Ama says, folding the boxers and setting them on the back of the sofa. Next, she plucks a lacy bra from the pile and again makes that sly smile. “Thanks to your stupidity-he would have given you the world, you know… Anyway, you did the job I couldn’t figure out how to do. I guess I should actually thank you.”
She grins and arches her eyebrows.
“What job?” I ask, confusion and a bad feeling welling up inside. My heart pounds as loud as the wind outside, and my mouth is suddenly parched. “Being his Second?”
Ama titters and places the bra beside the boxers, giving it a little pat. “I’ve been doing plenty of jobs, if you catch my drift. Mmm…he’s yummy. So big.”
Her tone makes wires inside me start to fray even though I don’t entirely know what she’s talking about. “What job did I do?” I demand, more loudly this time.
“You sent him straight into my arms, of course,” she says, her voice matter-of-fact as she continues folding their mixed laundry. “Before, he was always resistant, giving a hundred reasons why we shouldn’t be together. But a man with a wounded pride, he’s vulnerable, isn’t he? And I have you to thank for that. I got everything I ever wanted thanks to you. When he was too hurt to know what to do with himself, I was there to lick his wounds, to make him feel like a big man again.”
“He is a big man,” I manage, my voice small. She isn’t saying what I think she’s saying… Is she?
“I know. And seeing him so beaten down and despondent, it just broke my heart.” She picks up a pair of satiny panties that match the bra, folds
them and places them on her growing stack of clothes. “Good thing I was there to comfort him and prove to him I was exactly what he needed all along. A strong, capable, experienced woman, not a dumb little puppy who doesn’t know what a blowjob is.”
Each item of co-mingled underwear slices the frayed nerves inside until I’m one giant nerve ending. “What is it?”
“Something you’ll probably never do, pillow princess,” she says with a sneer. “It’s part of sex, in case you still hadn’t figured it out. We’re together now. The whole pack approves, since I’m already his Second. And since he needs a mate, as soon as I go into heat, he can breed me, and I’ll give him the heirs he needs to be a fully-realized Alpha with the lineage to carry on the title. You’ll be nothing but a distant memory… Or a nightmare that he wakes up to when he’s lying safe in my arms.”
My wolf is howling with such rage and hurt and betrayal inside me that I can’t even think right now. I can’t breathe, can’t do anything except experience the most intense pain of my life, almost as bad as the mate bond severing. This must be what Axel felt when he was forced to watch me, only his pain was one hundred times worse because he had to watch it and not just find out from someone else. He had to see it with his own eyes, knowing it was punishment for something he’d done and not just the unintended consequences of his mistake.
He did this because of me, but not to me. He moved on with his life, like he said, but he spared me the detail. I made him see every detail. I hurt him on purpose as revenge for the hurt he caused me. Oh, I’m a terrible, terrible person!
My lungs are heaving, but I can’t tear my gaze away from the bitch who got my mate… The mate whose heart I crushed to smithereens.
The wind howls around the house, screeching like a demon. A loose shutter bangs against the siding, making a whack, whack, whack kind of racket-it matches the erratic beating of my heart. I finally manage to pry my feet from the floor and turn to run.
“Not so fast,” Ama snarls, leaping in front of me and blocking my exit.
Her face is a horrible mask of rage as she seizes my arm.
“Let me go!” I cry, trying to pry her fingernails from my arm.
“Not happening. That wolf I sent to kill you failed to do his job, so I’m going to finish it.”
“You sent that wolf to kill me?” My eyes open wide in shock. “That was your doing?”
“Of course it was, dimwit. Do you think random male wolves give a shit about you? I paid him well, but the bastard didn’t deliver. He was supposed to get rid of you for good so Axel would run into my arms. Fuck was I pissed when you rolled back into town.”
“He’d never have anything to do with you if he knew what kind of person you are,” I shout, spitting at her and trying to pull free of her grip.
“How fortunate that you showed up today, when he’s busy helping the wolves who are actually deserving,” she says, almost cheerfully. “But you’re right-as long as you’re around, he might never really give up on you. And I can’t risk losing the Alpha now that I’ve gotten him at last.” Her eyes are wild, as wild as the storm billowing outside the door.
I wrench my arm out of her grasp at last, raising my palms toward her. “Okay, you can have him. I lost. I don’t even want Axel. Just let me go, and I’ll never see you again, I promise. I’ll disappear with the triplets.”
I try to sidle around her to get to the door, but she shoves me backward. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“I’m not?” I manage to squeak. “What are you going to do to stop me?”
“My god, you’re dumb.” A grin forms on her face, but she’s an ugly person under the surface beauty. Even I can see that. “What do you think I’m going to do? Obviously I’m going to kill you and dispose of you in the rising water. What else would I do?”
I swallow hard, my heart racing as I meet her cold, evil eyes. She really means it. I’m about to die.