The last Lunar His Unawakened Mate"

Chapter 7 LILY POV

The heavy oak doors of the dining hall had barely clicked shut behind my father, Jake, and Alex before my skin began to prickle with anxiety. I couldn't just sit here and pretend everything was normal. Not after last night. Not with the way the future Alpha of the Blood Moon pack had looked at me across the dinner table.

"Lily, can we go play in the game room?" Jace asked, tugging on my sleeve, his mouth still smeared with chocolate cake.

I looked at Emma, who was already wiping her little brother Joe’s hands with a napkin. She caught my eye, instantly reading the restless panic on my face. She knew exactly what I was thinking.

"Go ahead to the game room, boys. Emma and I will be right there in a minute," I told them, keeping my voice as light and cheerful as possible.

The second the two six-year-olds bolted down the opposite corridor, I turned to Emma. "I need to know what they're saying in there. My dad is hiding something big, and it has to do with why the rogues are attacking."

Emma’s eyes went wide, and she looked down the hallway toward my father's private office. "Lily, are you crazy? If your dad or future Alpha Jake catches you spying, we are dead. They’re alphas, Lily. Their hearing is insane."

"I don't care," I whispered, my heart already thumping hard against my ribs. "I'm going. Stay here and watch the boys."

Without waiting for Emma to argue, I kicked off my shoes, leaving them by the dining room door so my footsteps wouldn't make a sound on the hardwood floor.

I crept down the long, dim hallway leading to the Alpha's wing. The pack house was unusually quiet tonight, the silence heavy and suffocating. Every tiny creak of the floorboards felt like a gunshot in my ears. I pressed my back against the cold wall, slowly inching closer and closer to the massive oak doors of the office.

Without a wolf, I didn't have the enhanced hearing of a shifter. I had to press my ear completely flat against the heavy wood, straining to catch anything over the loud, erratic thudding of my own heart.

At first, it was just a low, rumbling murmur of male voices. I closed my eyes, focusing entirely on the sound.

"...stop beating around the bush..."

That was Jake's voice. Even muffled by the wood, his deep baritone sent a sudden shiver straight down my spine. His tone sounded completely stripped of the politeness he had shown at dinner. It sounded lethal.

"...read the ransom notes... targeting someone specific. Who is it?"

There was a heavy, agonizing pause from inside the room. I pressed harder against the door, my knuckles gripping the frame so tightly they turned white. I desperately needed to hear the answer.

When my father finally spoke, his voice was too low—a faint rumble that I couldn't decipher. I caught disjointed syllables, then a sudden, sharp phrase from Jake that cracked through the wood like thunder:

"...your daughter..."

My breath hitched. My heart stopped completely, and the blood rushed to my ears, turning my hands ice-cold. Me? Or Emma? Jay had mentioned at the camp that people were whispering about both of us. Which daughter did Jake mean?

I strained even harder, my ear burning against the wood, trying to hear my father's reply.

"...not broken..." I barely caught my dad's muffled whisper. "...turns eighteen... Lunar..."

The rest of the sentence drowned in a sudden scrape of a chair inside the room.

Lunar? What did that even mean?

Before I could try to make sense of the fragmented words, the deep, gravelly vibration of Jake’s voice flared with a sudden, violent edge of protective fury. I couldn't make out the exact words, but the sheer power of his Alpha aura leaked right through the cracks of the door, making the air in the hallway turn heavy and suffocating.

I gasped softly, stumbling back a step. They were talking about a daughter, eighteen, and something called 'Lunar'. I was almost eighteen. My mind was spinning, a terrifying realization sinking into my gut. The rogues weren't just attacking the pack for territory. They were looking for one of us.

Then, the conversation inside the office ground to a sudden, absolute halt.

I held my breath, my ear still hovering inches from the wood. The silence from the other side of the door was instant and deafening. It felt like the air in the hallway had completely frozen. I didn't have a wolf, but a primitive wave of panic hit my chest. The silence was wrong. The hair on my arms stood up, and every instinct told me that they knew I was there.

I spun around on my bare feet, ready to bolt back toward the dining hall, but before I could take a single step, the heavy brass doorknob began to turn.

Panicking, I scanned the hallway and threw myself into the supply closet next to the office, pulling the door shut just as the latch clicked. I stood in the pitch black, holding my breath so tightly my lungs burned, terrified that whoever opened that door would see or hear me.

Why did I have to be so bloody stupid and listen in? I scolded myself silently.

Heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed right outside my hiding spot. The presence on the other side of the closet door was overwhelming, making my heart race so loudly I was certain it would give me away. The footsteps paused right outside the closet door for a long, agonizing second. Then, finally, they turned around, and I heard the heavy oak office door shut once more.

I waited for two agonizing minutes, making completely sure no one was left in the hall. Shaking, I pushed open the closet door and sprinted as fast as my bare feet could carry me toward the safety of the game room