Moonlight Run

Eleven

Nikolai’s POV

After I set the space up for Dimitri, I threw together a backpack of essentials I’d need for the weekend and I drove back to the manor house. After I’d arrived, my phone lit up.

“Come see me in the parlor,” the text message from my father read.

‘Great’. I thought. I’d been hopeful I could just sneak down to the gym to get a few lifts in, then shower and get to sleep early. Apparently my father had other plans.

Although his message had told me to come see him, I decided to head down the hall first to drop my bag off. I eyed myself in my old bedroom mirror and I considered changing my clothes. My father very much disapproved when I was seen around the pack common grounds in anything but a tie. Today I had on grey joggers and a tee. He would not be pleased.

In fairness, I’d been tearing up carpet in the other apartment all day, readying it for Isadora’s upcoming occupancy. But my father was very particular about appearances.

I suppose this is part of the reason I was so taken aback when I walked into the parlor and found him half-dressed, wearing just his trousers. His shirt was off and his tie hung loosely around his neck.

“Well, you look… comfortable.” I raised a brow.

“I’ve just had company,” he remarked, taking a puff of a cigar he held in his hand.

“Oh?” That was surprising, usually I could smell Lena’s parfum from a mile away, but I couldn’t pick her up this time.

“Not Lena,” he said, no doubt reading my mind. “It turns out I found a use for Pipa Fournier, afterall.”

I waited expectantly for a punchline. And then I said, “Surely, you’re joking.”

“Take that judgmental expression right off your face,” he snapped.

“She is your Beta’s daughter,” I said simply. I was doing my best to manage my tone, but inside I wanted to lash out at him. “You don’t see how that could be even slightly problematic?”

He brushed me off as he began to button up his white collared shirt. “The only problem that existed between me and that insolent girl was her mouth. It turned out to be the solution, too. We are agreed that if she can manage to keep her mouth shut in the future, such solutions won’t be necessary.``

I pinched the bridge of my nose and inhaled deeply, slowing myself from reacting, trying to think through the words to reason with him. But the simple truth is, as I’ve long come to learn with my father, that you can’t teach an old wolf new tricks, and he was never going to see things as I did. When I finally opened my mouth to speak, he cut me off.

“Don’t you even start on that #metoo s**t with me, boy.” He said with his eyes ablaze. They lit up a golden color, revealing just a hint of the wolf that lay inside of him. “I’m still the Alpha around here. Young women like Pipa Fournier need to be reminded of what that means.”

Having finished putting his shirt back on, and now fixing up his tie, he drew in close to me. My father’s breath smelled of cigars and a touch of too much whiskey. “If the Petrova girl turns out to be your mate, you’d be wise to remind her, too. You and I both know she has Pipa in her ear, and that won’t do.”

I felt my fist clench as he said Isadora’s name, and as I realized it, he must have, too. He clutched my fist and held it in his hands, squeezing hard against it. I felt a sting in my knuckles, and with another golden flash of his eyes I felt the words before I heard them, “Kneel Nikolai, and hear me.”

Unable to resist his Alpha compulsion, I sunk to my knees, feeling momentarily weak. He released my fist from his grip. “You forget your place,” he said. “You forget that you don’t ascend without me. How easily I could refuse to perform your ceremony and install either one of Lena’s boys instead… they carry that Alpha blood, too. Don’t you dare forget it.”

While Lena and my father maintained the pretense that she was his assistant, and he had not marked her as his Luna, it was hardly a secret that the two boys the unmated and unwed Lena had birthed belonged to my father. When she was on the cusp of 25 more than six years ago, she had come to my father requesting to be placed in the council’s matchmaking program to find a mate. My father was taken with her and instead offered her a place at his side, siring the first of the two boys with her.

My father’s favorite past-time in the years since then seemed to be threatening to make either one of my little brothers, who were now 6 and 4, Alpha. I didn’t concern myself with the threats, because I knew he would drink himself dead before either would ever turn 21.

But each time he used his Alpha compulsion on me it was like being stuck in the brain with a hot poker. I willed myself through it, telling myself to just maintain the facade, be the good son… soon enough I would ascend and he wouldn’t have that hold on me anymore.

“I’m sorry, father. You’re right. The girls…” I winced. “They push their will where it should bend instead. I will keep this in mind with Isadora.”

A moment later the burning feeling at the base of my brain dissolved and my father released me from his mental hold. He placed his hand firmly on my shoulder and gripped me hard. “She’ll be a better Luna for it, son. And you’ll be a stronger Alpha with a Luna who leads by example… showing love, respect, and compliance for her mate.That’s important. You’ll see.”

As he let go of my shoulder he took another puff of the cigar he held in his other hand. I stood back to my feet.

“May I be dismissed, sir?” I asked.

He nodded. “If it means you’ll go put on some decent fūcking clothes.”

***

Isa’s POV

I sat at the end of Pipa’s bed, wrapped in disbelief as she shared the earlier events of her time with Alpha Phineas.

“Pipa, we have to do something. He can’t get away with this.”

But the earlier fighting spirit I was so accustomed to seeing in my step-sister and best friend was gone now. “Isa,” she said, “Can’t you see? You were right. This is because I pushed him.”

“OK, and you may have warranted a stint in the cells, but this…"

She shook her head and stood from her bed. “I need to get out of these clothes. Can you check the bathroom and make sure that Carina’s side is locked?”

I nodded, and did as she asked. Pipa’s bedroom and Carina’s bedroom in the Beta wing were connected through a shared bath. The two doors from each side could however be locked, giving the other some privacy. I was grateful my family had given me one of the guest rooms within the Beta wing. There was a small three-quarter bath across the hall that hardly anyone used. It had basically become my own private bathroom since we rarely entertained guests these days.

The monthly singles mixers were sure to change that, I’m sure. At his announcement last week, the Alpha had said that our first mixer would be in two weeks, the second Saturday in June. These halls would soon be lined with Alphas and Betas, and our pack bunkhouse would be filled with visiting guests hopeful to find their mates. I was relieved that I would be moving into the duplex that Nikolai owned soon, at least in the way that I would avoid all of that.

As Pipa was showering the scent of Alpha Phineas off of her, it occurred to me that my twentieth birthday would fall on the Tuesday after the first mixer. I thought of what Nikolai said when he’d pulled Pipa and I into his office barely more than a week ago.

“…You have just a little more than a year to start conducting yourself like a responsible she-wolf in this pack before the council’s rules apply to you.”

I groaned at the thought. And now with the practice of the Moonlight Run reinstated, I had more reason than ever to get the hell out of here before I turned twenty-one and my heat cycles began.

I realized I’d not yet had a chance to talk to Nikolai about the space, or even see it. I drew my phone from my pocket to text him, but it seemed he had beat me to it. There were unread notifications I’d had from him. I remembered that I’d turned notifications from his number off after the party last weekend. Crap.

From Sunday evening, “You looked well today at brunch. I’m glad you’re alright. And I am sorry about last night.”

And then there were two from yesterday, “You know, you’re pretty fast. If you used that right, you’d have the big dudes like me on their ass in a minute. Let’s work on that next session.”

Followed by, “Also. If you and Pipa don’t already have plans why don’t you come by to see the new space tomorrow? Contractors are coming in Monday. I’d like to have your thoughts in mind… It’ll get you away from the Dimitri drama, too.”

Suddenly I felt like a bit of an ass for having silenced his messages. I switched them back on and began typing back, when there was a knock at Pipa’s bedroom door.

“Pipa,” I called to the bathroom a few times. The shower water was still running. She probably couldn’t hear me.

I decided I would answer the door. There Nikolai stood before me. He was in the sort of clothes I only ever saw on him at training. It was unexpected, as I was more than used to seeing him in his suits and ties.

“Hey,” he said, a look of surprise on his face. “Sorry, I was looking for Pipa.”

“She’s in the shower,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “Why are you—“

“My father was gloating.” He said. I could tell he was bothered by it just as much as I was.

I stepped out from the bedroom into the hall and closed the door behind me. He didn’t move when I did, so I found myself leaning against the door and him inches from my face.

Thoughts of him at training over the last week began to flood my mind and I closed my eyes a moment, willing them away before I spoke, “I just got your messages. Sorry, apparently I’ve had my phone on do-not-disturb all week,” I lied.

“All week?”

I bit my lip. “Well, more specifically… I guess I had your messages on do-not-disturb.”

His lips pulled into a tight line and he frowned. “I see. I guess that’s fair. I was a bit of an ass.”

“Like father, like son,” I said with a sigh.

His expression changed to total distaste. “God no,” He put his arm on the door frame above my head and leaned over me. “Please, do not compare me to him.”

“You do tend to get preachy about the pack laws, and yet don’t seem to mind bending the rules when they apply to you.”

“How so?” Nikolai asked.

I didn’t know what came over me when I blurted it out. “You’re telling me those intentions that you supposedly had for me at that party were anything better than what your father—“

“Shh.” He put a finger over my lips and it caught me off guard. After a moment of quiet, Nikolai took his finger from my lips and took a step back to look down the halls. “Let’s go somewhere else and talk about that.”

“About what didn’t happen with us or what just—“

He hushed me again. This time his finger met his own lips, and he motioned to the end of the hall. “That’s your room, right?”

I nodded.

As I closed the door behind him I pulled out my phone to text Pipa and let her know I’d gone to my room. I left out the part about Nikolai being with me. I set the phone down on the small desk across from my bed and slipped out of my shoes.

Nikolai sat on my bed. I sat at my desk chair sideways, leaning my right elbow over the back of the chair.

“So,” I said. “You were saying?”

“Do you know what happens when an Alpha comes of age?”

I shrugged. “Same as everyone else, I imagine.”

“We acquire our Alpha skills as soon as we turn twenty-one— I have had the compulsion ability all this time. The laws just forbid us from using them on our people until our father’s have passed the title onto us. I can mind-link any individual in the pack already— I just can’t mind-link the pack as a whole until after the Ascension ceremony.”

He paused. “But something else happens, too. Once I became of age, anytime my father tries to compell me? It's painful now. It's a burning feeling I couldn't being to describe to you. And that happens because as an Alpha myself, it's unnatural to be compelled by another. But until I ascend, because he is my father, he can still do that. And he takes every opportunity... he meets my every ounce of disobedience with the chance to use the to hurt me. That's who my father is."

I shuddered. "I never knew that. I just didn't think you had Alpha abilities until 25, is all."

"No, the four years between twenty-one and twenty-five were supposed to be about my father readying me to be the best Alpha I can. And now here I am… twenty-five at last, just a couple days from Ascension, and do you know what he’s managed to teach me in the last four years?”

I shrugged.

“How not to lead. Because all he has taught me is how to rule like he has… desperate for control, knowing his people fear him, and foolish enough to equate that with respect. His views are dated, and I know he comes from a generation where being an Alpha was more about being an Alpha Male than an Alpha Wolf.”

“There’s a difference?” I asked, moving over to sit on the bed beside him.

Nikolai leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he sat. “An Alpha male just cares that he’s in charge and people listen. The Alpha wolf knows that he’s been charged with a duty— to make sure his people are fed, safe, cared and provided for. And if the people listen, it’s because they trust in him, not because they fear him…”

He fell quiet, and looked down at his feet. I smiled, realizing he had the hiking boots on again. Nikolai continued to speak before I could ask about them, “I know which one I want to be. But on the way there, while I still live under his rule, I’ve gotta put on a mask, ya know? And this becomes a problem when I’m so used to the mask that…”

I sat up, wanting to reach out to him. Instead I came over to the bed and sat beside him. “That it’s like second nature to you now?”

His eyes met mine, and he nodded solemnly. “It doesn’t excuse it. But when I act that way… when the ‘Alpha Male’ comes out… please know, I don’t want it to be that way when I’m leading this pack, at least not all the time. Not like him.”

I exhaled. “I know a little bit about that… Don’t forget that Leon helped get your father installed because mine was the tyrant.”

Nikolai raised a brow.

“I promise you, he was worse than your father, if that says anything.” I leaned back and let myself fall onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “But what he did to Pipa…”

He fell backwards onto the bed beside me, and I was suddenly aware of the perceived awkwardness of the of us lying on the bed together. I put the thought from my head.

“I know,” he said. “That’s his way. He thinks he owns every female in this pack until someone else does.”

“So where does the future Alpha really stand on the mating laws then?” I turned my head towards him.

He sighed, still staring up at my bedroom ceiling. “Do you remember the story I told you last week over lunch, when you asked why the rogues slaughtered all the children in our pack, too?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to shudder at the thought.

“The she-wolf who had strayed from her mate, who found her true mate among the rogue wolves… she was my mother.”

I turned onto my side and supported myself on my elbows. “What? But I thought you said the baby didn’t make it?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t. I’m the other child, the older one she shared through a sire bond with her husband; with my father.”

“Oh my god,” I breathed.

Nikolai sat up on my bed again, so I did too. “I can’t help but think… if our people only mated as the moon goddess willed it? I wouldn’t be here. That thought lives in my head, screaming at me every time that I have to cite those laws.”

“So I don’t have the answers, Isadora. But I do think if your heart belongs to someone, and that someone happens to be your true mate, that’s the best outcome you can hope for. You know better than anyone what happens when you love someone, and it turns out they’re not your mate…”

I bit my lip, nodding. “Yeah.”

“But,” he admitted. “I also have the predisposition of being a man who sometimes thinks with the wrong head— and I would be a hypocrite to encourage ‘abstinence’ only along the way.”

“Ah,” I smiled knowingly. “So Pipa was right. You do have a body count, then?”

He chuckled. “When my mate didn’t just appear out of thin air after I turned 21, I had a bit of a phase... and then I started hooking up with the younger sister of a friend.”

“Becca?” I remembered the girl in the blue dress that Pipa had pointed out at the party.

Nikolai shook his head. “It was meant to be fun, you know… just until I found my mate. Next thing I know it’s been well over eighteen months, we’ve become an item… and now she’s turning twenty-one.” He paused. “It wasn’t even until I was getting ready for her party that I said to her brother, “Val, I think I'm in love with your sister. And I don’t know what I’m going to do if I see her today and I’m not her mate.”

“And then you weren’t…” I frowned.

“Yeah, and then I wasn’t.”

He ran his hands through his hair and let out a nervous laugh. “But we still didn’t break it off, you know? Not at first. But then I guess I realized that there was no point if she wasn’t meant to be my mate, you know? That’s when I ended it.”

“Because you didn’t want to drag it out?” I asked.

He nodded in agreement. “Pretty much. And then when the day she’s supposed to go check in for voluntary lock-up before her first heat wave starts, she asks me to meet with her. I didn’t think anything of it, so I just go to the address. It turns out to be this abandoned place out at the edge of town. So I get there, and I’m calling for her… and she’s in the basement. And when I find her, she locks the door behind me.” He hesitated, letting out a sigh. “And then Becca swallows the key.”

I gasped, realizing what he’s suggesting. “She wanted you to be stuck there with her when she went into heat?”

Nikolai nodded. “Yeah, thankfully I was able to link my father. He got there just in time. And then my father banished her, ordered her to visit every other pack until she found her mate… he said she better not show her face here again until she had.”

I gulped. “If you two had hooked up while she was in heat…”

“She would’ve ended up pregnant, and we would’ve been mated through the sire-bond, yeah.”

“But why would she want that? Wouldn’t she want to find her mate?” I couldn't understand.

He stood from the bed now and took a few steps before turning back around. “She said she didn’t make every choice she had to let ‘a silly thing like fate’ get in the way. That I was supposed to be hers, and she was meant to be my Luna because she chose her own fate.” Nikolai scoffed. “I guess it was all about the title...”

“God, Nikolai. I’m so sorry.” I stood now, walking over to him, extending my hand towards his upper arm. I brushed it softly, but then quickly pulled it back.

He met my eyes with a puzzled expression.

“Sorry,” I said. “I feel like I should comfort you, or something, but I don’t want to overstep.”

He cringed, forcing his hands into the pockets of his joggers. “And I feel like I should apologize… for all the oversharing.”

I chuckled back at him. “It’s nice to see the human side of Nikolai Blackburn.”

“I should’ve at least brought pizza if we’re going to make a habit of this.” He smiled now.

“Next time.” I said.

“Next time?” Nikolai raised a brow. I did not care for the way my body reacted when he did that, at all. Calm yourself, Isa. I thought.

“Yes,” I sighed. “You can help me move into the duplex next weekend and we can overshare over a few slices… If that’s something you’re up for?”

His lips pursed thoughtfully. “I think we can arrange that.”

“So it’s settled. PIzza, unpacking, and feelings. Like therapy, with extra cheese.”

Nikolai laughed as he made his way to the door, looking over his shoulder at me. “Extra cheese? I’ll be sure to remember that.” He paused in the doorway, looking me up and down for a moment more. “I’ll see you Saturday at the dinner though?”

“Dinner?” I asked.

“My father’s hosting a dinner in the dining hall before the Ascension ceremony. Some dancing, alcohol, all of the, um, celebratory fixings.”

“Oh. Of course there will be.” I rolled my eyes. “He really does love the theatrics, huh?”

“If you’ll be there in a dress again, I guess I can’t complain.”

I hoped that he couldn’t see the blush in my face as much as I could feel the blush in my face. “Well, I don’t know about green, but I imagine there will be a dress.” I said.

“I look forward to it,” And then he closed the door behind him.