The Ugly Luna

CHAPTER 5

ELLIE

It's not the sunlight that wakes me. It's Adrian. I surface slowly from sleep, consciousness pulling me up through layers of warmth and exhaustion, and the first thing I become aware of is Adrian behind me.

His hands are on my hips, and he's already inside me, moving slow and deep, like sleep was just an interruption he decided to end. A soft sound escapes me before I'm fully awake.

My body already knows him, and it responds before my mind catches up, heat blooming low in my stomach, my hips pressing back into his on instinct.

"Morning," he murmurs against the back of my neck. His voice is rough with sleep, low and unhurried.

"Adrian." His name comes out before I can stop it, half plea, half warning.

"I know." His lips brush the mark on my neck. "I've got you."

His hand slides up to my throat and squeezes. Every thought I have dissolves. He works me slow and exact, each thrust deeper than the last. My fingers twist in the sheets. My thighs shake.

The pressure climbs and climbs, coiling tighter with every stroke, my breath coming in short, broken gasps. I feel myself right on the edge of it, suspended there, my whole body pulled taut.

"Stay with me," he says low against my ear.

"I'm—" The word breaks apart. "I can't—"

"Yes, you can." His grip on my throat tightens just slightly. "You can take it."

"Adrian, please."

"There she is," he murmurs.

Then it crashes over me, and I cry out, the sound raw and unguarded in the quiet morning room.

He follows shortly after, a rough groan against my neck, his grip on my hip tightening as he drives home one last time and stills.

For a moment, neither of us moves. The room is quiet except for our breathing. His arm stays around my waist. We didn't stop until nearly dawn.

My body feels wrung out and warm and more thoroughly known than it has ever been in eighteen years of living.

He pulls back, and before I can move, his arm comes around me, and he's lifting me up, carrying me through to the bathroom.

He sets me down on the edge of the tub and reaches past me to turn the shower on. While he waits for the water to heat, I catch myself in the mirror and stop.

There is a handprint on my hip, dark and clear, every finger accounted for. A bite at the curve of my neck and shoulder—the marking, yes, but also two others I don't remember happening.

A bruise blooming along my ribs where he'd gripped me. Another on my thigh.

I look like I survived something.

A laugh bubbles up before I can stop it, short and a little disbelieving. I press my fingers to the handprint on my hip and feel heat climb into my face. I hadn't imagined I'd look like this. I don't know exactly what I'd imagined, but it wasn't this.

I love every single one of them.

"Something funny?" Adrian asks behind me.

I meet his eyes in the mirror. "No," I say, and look away before he can see me smile.

The shower is large enough that I press myself to one side of it, acutely aware of every inch of my own skin. Adrian stands two feet away, completely unbothered. He reaches past me to adjust the water temperature, then picks up the soap, works it into a lather, and starts on my shoulders.

His hands are careful. Thorough. He finds every sore place without being told and works the tension out of it slowly. My shoulders drop.

"You're still nervous," he says. Not a question.

"I'm fine," I manage, which fools neither of us.

He turns me gently to face him. His eyes move over my face, calm and unhurried. "You don't have to be," he murmurs, turning me back around and keeping going.

Somewhere in there, the shyness quietly dissolves into something that doesn't have a name yet but feels a little like ease.

By the time he's done, I am warm all the way through, loose and easy in a way that has nothing to do with exhaustion. He wraps a towel around me. I dry off and step out, leaving him in the shower.

A gown is laid out on the chair. Deep gold, simple in cut, fitted through the waist. A silver moon badge sits beside it on the table. It's my mark as Luna.

I dress slowly, smoothing the fabric down, and I pick up the badge and pin it to my chest.

I stare at myself in the mirror, the mating mark shining brighter against my skin than any other mark Adrian left behind.

I draw in a slow breath. Can I really do this? Can I really be the Luna of his pack? I’m assuming that’s what’s next.

Yesterday, the only thing on my mind was what my wolf would be like. Today, I’m wondering what a thousand wolves will think of me. Whether they’ll accept me. Whether they’ll look at me and see a Luna… or just the broken girl who spent years pretending to be someone else.

I release another shaky breath and square my shoulders. One step at a time.

Adrian comes out of the bathroom a few minutes later. He dresses quickly. His eyes move over me, brief and warm.

"Ready?" he asks.

"Ready," I say.

The great hall is already full when we arrive. I hear them before I see them—the low hum of a crowd, dozens of voices folded over each other, the shuffle and press of bodies. My stomach tightens.

Adrian pushes the door open, and the sound rolls toward us. When we step inside, every head turns. The conversations die mid-sentence, and someone near the back drops something metal, the clatter ringing out sharp in the sudden quiet.

Morning light pours in from the high windows along the eastern wall, falling directly across the stone floor where I'm standing. I feel it catch in my hair, warm. Nobody moves.

I keep my shoulders back and my chin level. I am not the girl who spent ten years trying to disappear. I remind myself of this firmly, because my feet still remember how to curl toward the walls.

Then someone steps forward, and the spell breaks. The crowd comes to life all at once—a wave of movement and voices, people pressing in closer with open faces.

Pack members reach toward me, smiling, some with hands extended.

"Luna!"

"She's gorgeous."

"Look at her hair,"

The words come fast and overlapping and I can barely track them. A broad-shouldered man with a graying beard dips his head and tells me it's an honor.

A woman with bright eyes and laugh lines grabs both my hands and squeezes and says I'm even lovelier than the rumors already spreading through the compound.

Two younger wolves hang back shyly at the edge of the group, whispering to each other, breaking into wide grins when I catch their eyes.

I freeze. I have never been looked at like this.

The warmth starts somewhere behind my ribs, unfamiliar and a little overwhelming. I don't quite know what to do with it.

I smile and thank them, try to keep up with the names, and, underneath it all, some old part of me is still waiting for the cruelty to show up. For the other shoe. It doesn't come.

I'm in the middle of talking with a woman named Vera when I feel a small presence at the edge of the group. I look down.

A little girl stands at the fringe of the crowd, maybe six or seven, with two lopsided braids and enormous brown eyes.

She's wearing a dress with a grass stain at the knee. In her hands, she holds a bunch of wildflowers, purple and yellow, tied loosely together with a bit of vine like she gathered them herself this morning.

She stares up at me with her whole face. The crowd notices her at the same time I do, and a soft ripple of laughter moves through it.

I step forward and lower myself down until I'm at her eye level. For a second, she freezes. Then she thrusts the flowers toward me with both hands, her chin jutting out with the effort of her own bravery.

"For you," she whispers. "Because you're our Luna."

My throat tightens before I can stop it. I reach out and take the flowers gently. The stems are still damp with morning dew. A few petals flutter loose and drift to the floor.

"They're beautiful," I tell her. "What's your name?"

"Poppy."

"Poppy." I smile at her. "Thank you. I'll keep them." Her whole face splits open like sunrise, and she bolts back into the crowd.

Warm laughter breaks out around me, louder this time, bright and genuine.

I straighten slowly, the flowers still in my hands, and the sound of it settles over me like something I don't have a word for yet.

I feel eyes on me and turn to find Adrian watching from across the room. The crowd had separated us the moment we walked in, everyone eager to welcome their new Luna, but his gaze never left me. His arms are loosely crossed, something warm and impossibly soft lingering at the edges of his eyes.

He makes his way through the crowd until he’s standing in front of me.

“I didn’t even say a word,” he says, amused, talking about how the pack welcomed me without hesitation.

A nervous smile finds my lips.

“It just shows how amazing you are.”

Before I can think of a response, he leans down and presses a gentle kiss to my forehead.

My fingers find the moon badge pinned to my chest without thinking, my thumb brushing over its cool metal.

Something settles inside me then. I will become the kind of Luna this pack deserves.