Moonlight Run

Seventeen

Nikolai’s POV

I struggled with my tie in the parlor, frustrated that my father refused to take my suggestion of ordering clip-ons. I could manage a windsor like the best of them, but bow-ties were a different matter altogether. 

“Lena,” I looked over to her. “When you’re done with Dad’s, do you think…?” I motioned to the fabric in my hands.

I heard snickering from behind the sofa. Lena’s children, my half brothers Phineas and Tiberius, were giggling as they watched me attempt to remove the knot I’d accidentally made. 

“I’ll put you in a knot, too.” I narrowed my eyes at them with a smile. They yelped and ran around the sofa as I reached across to grab them. Little Tiberius could not move fast enough, and I pulled him over the couch, tickling the four year old until he was red in the face.

“Boys,” Lena said. “That’s enough! You’ll mess up your tuxes.”

She slapped my shoulder playfully as I stood up, chiding me as she fixed my hair back into place. “I shouldn’t have to tell you, you giant kindergartener.”

Although Lena had just under a decade on me, she did well at playing the motherly role anyways. I was mortified, as a teenager, when my father began his unconventional relationship with her given that she was closer to my age than his. But she’d grown on me.

However, even today, I couldn’t make sense of their bond. They were sire-mates, only in the sense that my father had given her two children. But he would not mark her as his Luna, as he had my mother before her. Instead, their relationship remained open. Lena was not quite as practiced in discretion, such was evident when she was found with the Handler brothers last week. But I would often see young women coming and going from my father’s office at odd hours too, and I understood.

Still, she’d been a fine mother to the boys, and had taken on the duties that would otherwise belong to Luna in stride, despite never being given the title. I appreciated much that she had done for me over the years. As she was fixing up my tie, I told her so.

“Well, thank you Nikolai. That’s a very nice thing to say.”

“I’m going to miss having you around the office. You sure you want to move out and shack up with this old man?” I motioned to my father.

She shrugged, stifling a giggle. “I think the boys will enjoy the extra time they get with him in retirement,” she said. “I on the other hand will have to find something, or someone, to keep him busy or he’ll drive me insane, I’m sure.”

I laughed. “No doubt about that.”

“I heard that.” My father narrowed his eyes at us, pouring himself a glass of wine from a bottle off the rack. “No worries, Nikolai. You’ll still have Lena around a few days more.”

I looked back to Lena, as she finished up my tie, patting down my collar. “You’re staying on then? Does that mean Isadora won’t be—”

My father spoke again, “Lena will be training her up this week, isn’t that right?”

Lena nodded. “Just showing her where everything is, mostly. Due dates, reports, who gets paid when… all that.” 

“Ah,” I nodded. “Well, I appreciate that. I’m sure Isadora will, too.”

“Mmmhmm,” she smiled back at me, and then looked over to the boys. “Phineas, I’m going to take the boys down to the dining hall now. Should I tell the musicians that you’ll be along?”

“Yes,” my father nodded as he gulped down the red wine in his glass. “Have Leon waiting by the door, if you would?”

She shook her head as she ushered the boys out the door. “PJ! Why give your brother back his pocket square, now.”

“Happy Ascension day, Niko!” The younger Phineas said to me. 

“Thanks buddy.” I laughed as his mother drug him out the door by his collar. “You be good for your mom.”

I turned my attention back to my father. “So, are we doing this?”

He poured another two glasses out, this time from a Sauza bottle. “Let’s have a drink first. And let’s talk about how you were able to deflect my compulsion earlier.”

He laughed as he shoved the tumbler glass into my chest and I cringed. ”Dad, I’m sorry. I'm sorry that I stormed out. I didn’t mean to—”

“Learn to mean it.” He snapped. “Whether it’s walking away from me, making day to day decisions, or the ones that will change the course of this pack, Nikolai. Do it with intention, or don’t do it at all. You’re going to be Alpha tonight. And once you are, you don’t make apologies anymore, even to me.”

I was surprised by his unexpected words. I opened my mouth to speak but he continued, “Have you considered things with Dimitri then? Do you still plan to name him as your Beta?”

I gulped hard, turning my glass in my hand, the ice cubes swirling around at the top. “I do. I guess I’m just hoping that one day he’ll understand… about Isadora, I mean.”

“It’s not your concern if he understands or not, as long as he accepts it. And as long as you are sure he will not make it a lifelong issue. You must trust your Beta, Nikolai.”

I sighed as I threw the drink back, asking him after, “What if I can’t trust anyone?”

He laughed. “Then I’d say you’re more than ready to be Alpha. You can only trust that they’ll at least carry out their duties, my son. The truth is you can’t trust anyone’s character these days.”

I raised a brow, “Even your Luna?”

He scoffed. “Especially a Luna.” He set his glass back down on his desk, and pulled his tuxedo jacket off the back of his chair. “Why do you think I don’t have one? Your mother was the lesson of a lifetime.”

***

The dining hall was no doubt the most ostentatious room in the packhouse, and my favorite. The glass conservatory ceiling let in the starlight above, and a row of windows lined the right side of the room. The large windowed doors at the back of the space led out onto a concrete terrace, where you could make your way to the gardens. 

Generally, the room was filled with rectangular 8-foot-tables, lined end to end in three columns, which we use for the rare celebratory occasion we would all dine as a pack. But tonight, given the number of extra guests we had visiting, the room was filled with round tables. Only a large rectangular head table stood out, just off the dance floor. There were seven seats there, my father’s chair was at the center. When he saw the number, he motioned one of the caterers over. 

“My dear, there seems to be an extra seat at our table. I thought I let your boss know that my companion wouldn’t be dining with us tonight; she’ll be sitting at one of the round tables with her boys. My son and I should both be at the center of the table tonight, with our Beta’s and their respective mates on each side of us.”

The girl flipped through the papers on her clipboard, looking for the seating chart. I realized what had happened, and I said, “Dad, that was my doing.”

My father glanced over his shoulder at me, confused. “I had Isadora’s seat moved to our table.” I explained, unsure how he would reply. “I should’ve asked, I’m—”

“Ah, we’re okay here then.” He said to the caterer. “My mistake, dear.”

She gave a respectful nod and asked if we needed anything else and he said no, before he turned back to me. “I told you, no more apologies.”

I nodded, “Yes, sir.”

Then he chuckled as we made our way across the floor. “Still,” he began, “giving her a seat at the table… that’s a very public move. You’re sure about that?”

I took a breath, nodding. “I know what I felt today… in my office.” I reminded him, knowing he had been listening to our earlier exchange. “I’m sure.”

“Hm. And do you think she is?” His eyes wandered past me to the main entrance behind us, a grin taking shape on his face. I turned around to see what had caught his eye, when I saw her standing there. I exhaled, feeling a rush of adrenaline sweep over me as she came into view. My jaw fell agape, and my father quietly laughed.

All I could manage to say was, “God I hope so,”

***

Isa’s POV

“Ouch,” I flinched as Pipa shoved another bobby pin into my head. 

“She’s aggressive with those things, isn’t she?” Lily laughed.

I flinched again as she pushed the pin further into my hair.

“That’s one word for it,” I agreed.

Lily and Dahlia had been finished off first, and were now helping each other into their dresses. Lily’s long back hair had been pulled up into a high sleek ponytail, which Pipa had then added some lose curls to. She looked radiant in the sapphire blue dress she wore, shimmering with sparkles on the tulle overlay. 

“You’re glowing, Lily,” I remarked.

“Not yet, I wouldn’t think.” She laughed. “I might need to hear that in another few months though. Or at least, I hope.” Her smile fell, and Pipa and I exchanged puzzled glances in the mirror. 

Pipa spoke, “I thought everything worked out? Didn’t you say you were pretty sure it took?”

Lily nodded. “It definitely took, I’m just not sure when it took.”

Pipa shoved one last bobby pin in the curl on my head that had been giving her so much trouble, and then turned around. We watched Lily as she zipped Dahlia into a her dress.

“What do you mean? Did something go wrong last night?” She asked.

Lily finished zipping Dahlia up and then had a seat on the bed. “Not really, I guess.” She looked down at her feet, nervously. “It’s just… something happened. And this morning Marisol came by to check on me, and she mentioned something.”

I furrowed my brow at the mention of my mother. “My mom? Why was she… Oh. Right.” My mother was a nurse at the Pack’s clinic. We didn’t have OBs on the grounds, but she was an experienced midwife and helped the doctor deliver most of the babies in our pack over the years. “What did she say?”

Lily rung her hands anxiously. “Promise you won’t judge? It’s kind of embarrassing…” 

Dahlia took a seat beside her. “You can tell them, Lily,” she reassured her sister.

I leaned over the back of my chair intently, waiting for Lily to continue.

“When Mathis found me in the woods… I’d shifted. You know, when it started I was on two legs. But then I realized as they got closer that they weren’t. And I didn’t plan on running, you know. I figured, the first wolf that found me, I was going to submit to him. There was no point in dragging it out. But then I heard them getting closer… and there were so many of them. I was scared. I wanted to at least feel like I had a shot if things went south, you know?”

Pipa and I both nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Totally understandable.”

“Once my heat kicked in… I was miserable. I couldn’t run anymore. My vision was even blurry. But I managed to get myself up a tree, and I just laid up in the branches, trying to keep from whimpering, knowing how many wolves were out there…” She shuddered. “When Mathis found me, two other wolves were right behind him. Once they realized I was in the tree, they kept trying to climb up it, but the others would drag them down. And they all fought each other like that for a while,”

Pipa and I were still listening intently as she continued. “Then this fourth one comes along, and two of the three start on him. And he’s a mean one, so they had to team up. But, while they were busy with the new face, Mathis got up the tree. By that point, I was just ready for it to be over, you know? So I offered him my neck, and he howled. I mindlinked Alpha Phineas… that’s what I’d been told to do when it was over. And the other wolves were all beckoned back. But the big one at the base of the tree wouldn’t leave,” she shuddered. “He said it wasn’t over until Mathis claimed me… and until then he wasn’t leaving.”

 Pipa huffed. “So this asshole wouldn’t even give you the privacy you needed.. To…” Pipa shook her head. “Just another reason this damn practice is stupid.”

“So what happened, Lily?” I asked. 

“If I would’ve tried shifting back,” she hesitated. “I would’ve fallen out of the tree. I was holding on with my claws. So Mathis, he… he asked if he could…” She looked like she might cry. “He was just trying to end it, you know? To give me the relief I needed?”

Pipa leaned back against the vanity, gasping. “Lily, are you saying you two were in wolven form when you…”

Lily bit her lip and then she nodded. “Yes. Only at first, just until the other wolf would back off, accept that Mathis had won. Once he finally left, we spent the rest of the night together in our skins. But there’s no way to know…” The tears were welling up in her eyes. “We don’t know which time I would have conceived.”

I was speechless, and very worried for my friend. Mating in wolf form was dangerous and while not illegal, highly discouraged of our people. The resulting pregnancies, which we called moonbeams, were complicated, to say the least.

“How will you know?” Pipa asked after a moment of silence.

Lily straightened up. “I’ll have an ultrasound in about three weeks. If it’s a normal pregnancy, we’ll just see a sac still. But if it’s a moonbeam,” she sighed, repeating the word that we commonly used to describe such types of pregnancies, “then they’ll have a heartbeat already. And your mom will brew up some aconite draught…”

“And you’ll go into Moonsleep?” I sighed. Lily nodded.

Moonbeam pregnancies were high risk, but mostly because they moved incredibly fast. Although the babies conceived were born as human in appearance as the rest of us, their canine conception resulted in canine-like pregnancies. The babies would grow in their wombs for approximately ten weeks to 75 days, the usual time frame for a wolf in the wild. As appealing as it sounded, the quick growth would wreak havoc on even the strongest she-wolves' human bodies. This was compounded by the fact that a she-wolf’s chances of having multiples were higher in these circumstances. Just as wolves birthed litters, so often did the women who carried Moonbeam babies; twins were generally expected, although a rare case of triplets was not unheard of. I knew the Handler brothers had been Moonbeam children.

Fortunately, several generations ago our ancestors had discovered a way to convert wolfsbane into a sleeping draught— not entirely unlike the one the young Aurora Perrault had been given. The draught would let the mother sleep through her pregnancy, while the mother and child would be nourished through an IV. When the she-wolf reached the last few days of her pregnancy, they would slow the dose, waking her up in time for delivery. Due to the highly hallucinogenic effects that the women would experience while asleep during this time, our medical experts had come to refer to this medically-induced period of unconsciousness as Moonsleep.

I left my chair to hug my friend, who was now crying softly. “Hey,” I said, brushing the hair from her face. “It’s going to be okay. It’ll work out, either way. I promise.” I pulled her to my chest and Dahlia squeezed her sister’s hand hard. Pipa joined us, rubbing Lily’s back.

“Okay, but am I the only one who would say the thought of sleeping through a pregnancy is kind of appealing?” Dahlia snorted at Pipa’s comment. I rolled my eyes, and I heard Lily giggle in my arms. 

“Pipa,” I chided. “I can’t even with you,”

“Tell me I’m wrong though.” She shook her finger at me.

After we had all stopped sniffling, and Pipa had fixed Lily’s makeup back into place, she went to her closet. She came out with two dress bags, but first looked to Lily and Dahlia. 

“What do you think girls? Should we put Isa in black or red tonight?”

“Red,” the sisters said.

Lily giggled, looking me over reassuringly. “Everyone I’ve spoken to is wearing blue or black tonight. Don’t be afraid to stand out a little, love.”

Pipa unzipped the dress, “Oh, she’s going to stand out.”

Moments later I was unrecognizable as I stood in front of Pipa’s full-length mirror. The red dress was an off-the-shoulder mermaid gown with a sweetheart neckline. Pipa had rolls the top of my hair into vintage victory rolls, and curled the locks she left down into lose waves. I’d never worn so much eye makeup in my life, but I did admire her winged eyeliner skills. I could only wish I’d had such a steady hand. Carina certainly got her hair and makeup interests from Pipa, definitely not from me.

“One last touch,” Pipa said, handing me a tube off rouge lipstick. I leaned towards my reflection, applying as delicately as I could. The color was perfect.

“I cannot possible go downstairs looking like this,” I fanned myself. “I mean, wow. I look good. Don’t get me wrong. But I’m trying /not/ to stay on Nikolai’s radar, you know?”

Lily giggled now. “Look, Mathis isn’t unattractive by any means, but I’m just saying… I would have let Nikolai Blackburn hit it. Even if he quit it, I wouldn’t be mad.”

I burst into laughter, looking over at Lily, who’d gone red.

She shrugged. “Maybe it’s pregnancy hormones kicking in early, but damn… Isa, you have to admit… he’s kind of a catch.”

Dahlia leaned her head to the side. “And lest we forget, this is kind of his birthday party. No one would judge you.”

Lily shook her head in agreement. “No one.”

Pipa’s face drew into a frown, “I would. I would still judge you.”

I turned around to face my friends, setting the lipstick back on Pipa’s vanity. “Okay, since we’re already on the subject…” I took a deep breath. My girlfriends eagerly waited for me to speak.

“There’s something I think I need to tell you guys.”