Marked by the Moon

Chapter 2: The Human Cannot Be the Luna

KAEL’S POV

I drove back to pack territory with both hands on the wheel and my wolf clawing at the inside of my chest the entire way.

Fifty-three minutes. That was how long it took to get from the Whitmore Ballroom to the compound gates. Fifty-three minutes of silence while Damon sat in the passenger seat not asking questions, because he always knew when questions would cost him something.

I didn’t speak until we were through the gates.

“Find everything there is on her. Do it tonight.”

He didn’t ask who. He didn't need to. He just nodded and pulled out his phone.

-----

Lyra was waiting on the compound steps when I got out of the car.

Of course she was.

My Gamma had the annoying ability to sense emotional disruption in the pack the way other wolves sensed clouds changing. She felt it in the bones. She was leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed and an expression that said she’d been standing there for a while.

“You’re radiating way too much”, she said.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re absolutely not fine.”, She fell into step beside me as I moved through the entrance hall. “Your mood hits the barracks like a tidal wave. Two warriors nearly shifted at dinner.” she teased

“Tell them to get better control.”

“Kael.” She caught my arm. First name. Something she only used when she was genuinely concerned. “What happened?”

I stopped on my tracks. Looked right at her. Lyra had been with me since the beginning, since I was twenty-one and scared and refusing to show it. She had earned things from me that no one else had.

“I found my mate,” I said.

The silence stretched for three full seconds.

“That’s—” She exhaled. “That’s good. That’s—”

“She’s human.” I looked away

Another silence as the air shifted

“Oh,” Lyra said quietly. “Oh, that’s a problem, Kael…It’s abominable.”

I clenched my fist at that word and without a response I walked away

-----

By midnight, Damon had a file.

Seraphina Vale. Twenty years old. A Psychology student in her third year with three part-time jobs. Seraphina had no family beyond a distant aunt in the northern counties. No pack connection of any kind, there was no supernatural registry nor was there a documented ability of any kind. She was just.……Human.

I read it twice. Every page. Her university ID photograph looked nothing like the woman I’d seen in person. the camera had darkened something in her that the ballroom lighting had caught. The amber-grey eyes. The unique quality of her attention.

I closed the file.

“No supernatural signature,” Damon said carefully. Running his had through his hair “Nothing in the system anywhere.” he was baffled

“I know what I felt. I'm sure of it”

“I’m not questioning that.” He paused. “I’m questioning what it means that she felt nothing back.”

I didn’t answer. Because I didn’t have one.

-----

The elders arrived at one in the morning. I hadn’t summoned them gently. I was mentally prepared for what was about to happen

There was no way in hell this meeting would go in my favor.

Elder Crane came first, he was silver-haired and sharp-eyed, reading the room with distrust before he’d fully entered it. Elder Marsh was behind him carrying the same caution. And last, Elder Voss—oldest of the three, unhurried, he was the kind of man who was never in a rush because he had already decided how every room would end.

I told them the situation plainly without any form of embellishment.

The reaction was not subtle.

“A human?!.” Crane’s voice boomed, almost flying out of his seat. “You’re telling me your mate is a human woman with no pack blood, no supernatural signature, and no knowledge of our world?!.” I could hear the alarm In his tone.

“Yes.” I responded unmoved

“Then reject her!,” Marsh said. Like it was that simple. Like I should have already done it on the drive home. “Do it immediately! Before the bond deepens.” His eyes darted at random “Do it at once, we cannot have a disgusting human as our Luna! Never!”

Something moved through me that I didn’t let reach my face. It was rage. I wanted to rip him to shreds for talking down on my woman. This wasn't me. I'm not irrational. But there was something about her that made me want to lose control

“That’s not a decision I’m making tonight.” I said plainly, masking my rage behind a wall.

“Alpha—”

“I said, It’s not a decision I’m making tonight” I repeated. Quieter. The kind of calmness that ended conversations. They knew better not to push.

Voss hadn’t spoken yet. He was watching me with those pale, careful eyes, and I liked that least of all.

“There is precedent,” he said finally. In a slow melodramatic way that made the room shift

“A century ago.” He moved to the chair across from me and sat without an invitation “An Alpha in the eastern territories found a human mate and he refused to reject her. In fact, he claimed her. Brought her into the pack.” He paused. “Forty-three wolves died before it was over. The pack was destroyed. The territory was absorbed. And the human woman—” Another pause, carefully placed. “She didn’t survive either.”

Nobody else moved apart from the cackling fire in my office

“What happened to her?” Damon, who had been standing quietly, asked.

“That,” Voss said, “is a longer conversation for another time.”

I noticed he didn’t answer the question. I noticed that Damon noticed too.

“Reject her, Alpha Kael.” Voss’s voice was almost gentle and it was almost kind. “Before she ruins this pack the way the last one did. You have a responsibility to three hundred wolves that outweighs a bond you only felt an hour ago.”

I looked at him for a long moment.

Then I stood. “This meeting is over.”

“Kael—”

“I said it’s over.” I held the door. “You’ll be notified when there’s a decision to notify you about.”

They filed out. Crane wouldn’t meet my eyes. Marsh looked worried in a way that almost resembled genuine concern. Voss was last, and he paused in the doorway just long enough to make the pause intentional.

“Kael, the bond is still young,” he said quietly, only to me. “It won’t feel like a choice for much longer.”

Then he was gone.

-----

Damon and I stood alone in the room. The fire had burned low. Outside, the compound had gone completely quiet. I paced, with my heart pounding loudly in my chest. The council was against my mate bond. Not just that, they were afraid of it.

‘Reject her. Before she destroys this pack the way the last one did.’

I could feel the words settling into something I couldn’t shake off. Not because I believed them. Because I didn’t know enough yet to reject them either.

“What are you thinking?” Damon asked.

I thought about those amber-grey eyes that had looked straight at me and seen nothing remarkable when every other woman swoon over my very presence.

I thought about “Thanks”, delivered flatly, while my entire world shifted itself.

“I’m thinking,” I said slowly, “that I need to know what really happened to that human Luna a century ago.”

Damon went very still. “Why?”

I looked at him. “Because Voss wouldn’t tell us. And Voss always has a reason for what he doesn’t say.”

The silence between us held the weight of everything that was coming.

I wondered if a council meeting was the right call. I rubbed my temple. Seraphina was out there all alone. She was vulnerable.

What if the council decides to take matters into their own hands or worse, what if word got out? I wasn't exactly subtle at the university event. My mate would be in danger. I needed to act fast.

Neither of us slept that night and I gave Damon clear instructions I could only trust him with. He was like a brother to me, not just a beta.

I need to know more about Seraphina and Damon is the only person I can trust with my mate….my woman.

“Damon, I have an assignment for you. The most important one”.