Kill The Luna

64

Ella stood in the open doorway, her thin arms completely loaded down with plenty of heavy paper bags and small medical packages. The moment her wide eyes locked onto my bandaged form sitting up in the bed, her face twisted with absolute shock. She didn't waste a single second. She instantly dropped all the bags right onto the floor with a loud, messy crash, contents spilling out across the wooden planks, and ran across the room at full speed to throw her arms around me.

The sheer, terrifying force she used to slam her body into mine was completely too much for my battered frame to handle. It felt like all of my newly bandaged bones were violently breaking all over again under her weight. She buried her face into my shoulder, squeezing her arms around my neck so incredibly tight that my windpipe blocked up and I completely could not breathe a single pocket of air.

My vision began to go blurry around the edges, but what could I really say or do to push her away? This was Ella, after all, and I knew her frantic actions only came from a place of pure, desperate love. Struggling against the crushing weight of her embrace, I slowly lifted my heavy, aching arms. I wrapped my bandaged hands around her trembling waist, lightly patting her back in a rhythmic, comforting motion as I tried to get her to release her deadly grip.

"Calm down, Ella," I choked out, my voice sounding like a tiny, raspy wheeze against her ear as I winced from the pain. "I really think you are going to accidentally finish the job and kill me right now if you don't let go."

The moment the words left my mouth, a loud, heavy sob burst from Ella’s chest. She pulled back slightly, her whole face turning bright red as fresh streams of tears started pouring down her cheeks like an open faucet.

I let out a very long, deeply tired sound from the bottom of my lungs, my shoulders slumping against the pillows in absolute exhaustion. "Oh, please, not the crying routine again, Ella," I groaned softly, using my thumb to try and brush away the wet drops from her face. "I am right here."

"I truly thought they had taken you away from us forever, Luna!" she wailed, her voice cracking completely as tears filled her eyes and blurred her vision. She clutched the loose fabric of my hospital gown with shaking fingers, her knuckles turning completely white. "When the guards came back and said your trail vanished, my heart stopped. I thought I would absolutely never see your face again in this lifetime! I lay awake all night crying because I was so completely certain you would be lying dead in some dark ditch!"

"But you can see that I am sitting right here in front of you now, Ella," I murmured, keeping my tone as gentle and steady as possible as I looked into her frantic eyes. "The nightmare is over, so please stop crying before you make yourself sick."

Instead of calming down, Ella’s legs seemed to completely give out from the sheer weight of her emotions. She dropped heavily to her knees right beside the mattress, burying her face directly into my blanket-covered lap. The volume of her heavy crying instantly increased, her small shoulders shaking violently back and forth. Within seconds, I could feel the warm, soaking wet moisture of her thick tears seeping straight through the heavy blankets and filling my legs with a damp warmth.

After a few minutes of intense sobbing, she slowly raised her tear-stained head, her nose bright red and her eyes completely swollen as she stared up at me with a look of pure misery. "I know very well that you are sitting here alive right now, Luna," she stammered out, her lower lip trembling uncontrollably. "But what if something truly horrible had happened to your soul before the trackers arrived? What if those cruel people had decided to kill you the exact second they arrived at their destination?"

She grabbed my hand, squeezing it against her wet cheek as she kept rambling through her panic. "What if Alpha Michael didn't manage to get there in the absolute nick of time? If he had been just one single minute later, I would never have seen you again, Luna Fedora! You would be gone, and I would be left completely alone!"

I let out a very long, heavy exhale of total exhaustion, my head leaning back against the wooden headboard as I felt the last of my energy draining away. "But the fact remains that you have seen me again, Ella," I stated flatly, trying to use a firm voice to snap her out of her frantic state. "The bad things didn't happen. I am alive. Now please, get up off the cold floor and sit properly."

Instead of moving to the chair, she stubbornly buried her face right back into my legs, her voice sounding completely muffled and distorted against the heavy fabrics. "I am so incredibly sorry, Luna Fedora!" she cried out, her voice filled with a deep, crushing weight of guilt. "It was all my fault! The entire disaster was completely my fault from the very beginning! I should have never been so foolish as to suggest that we go out for a walk outside the safety of the pack borders! I should have never put your precious life in such a dangerous situation! I am the one who almost got you killed by those monsters! It was all my fault, every single bit of it!"

She began rocking her body back and forth against my knees, her voice rising in panic. "I was so incredibly foolish and completely stupid at the exact same time! Please, I beg you to find it in your heart to forgive me, Luna Fedora! Please have mercy on a stupid girl like me! I will take whatever punishment you give me because it was all my fault!"

I reached down and firmly grabbed her by the shoulders, using what little strength I had to force her to stop rocking. "It is completely okay, Ella," I stated, my eyebrows knitting together as the stress of her words began to make my head throb. "You are seriously stressing my entire body out right now with all this screaming. Stop saying all these nonsense things. It was absolutely not your fault that those people were waiting in the shadows. You were actually just trying to do me a good favor by taking me out to get some fresh air."

Hearing my words, she slowly raised her head from my lap, her sobbing finally reducing to a few quiet whimpers. She cautiously shifted her weight and sat down on the very edge of the mattress near my hip. Seeing her look so completely broken, I leaned forward a bit and gently used the pads of my thumbs to clean the fresh tears away from her cheeks.

"Look at me directly in the eyes, Ella," I commanded softly, waiting until her shaking chin lifted.

She forced herself to look straight at me, her chest still heaving up and down as she let out a small, trembling sob. Once I knew I had her full, undivided attention, I lowered my hands to my lap and braced myself for the truth.

"Now, I need you to calm your mind and tell me absolutely everything that happened from the exact moment I was grabbed," I whispered, my expression turning completely serious.