Claimed as the Alpha's Second Luna

Chapter 8 Jasper's Proposal

Annie's POV:

I turned and walked down the path between the rosebeds.

Behind me, I heard Jasper say something to Elena, too low for me to catch. A moment later, footsteps followed me down the path.

I walked ahead of him as fast as the path allowed—he kept pace behind me without a word. The forest pressed in on both sides, green and quiet. I couldn't stop looking over my shoulder. Every shadow could be a warrior Elena had sent. Every snapped branch made me wonder if Elena had changed her mind and sent someone after us.

I had made my decision standing in the wreckage of that flowerpot. I would take Jack from the camp, and we wouldn't come back. We would walk out of Ironclaw territory and keep going—the way I had walked out of Thornwood with a newborn in my arms. I had done it once. I could do it again.

There was nothing in my cabin worth taking. A few blankets. Jack's favorite shirt, the one with the torn sleeve I never got around to mending. The dress I wore to Louis's funeral. That was my whole life, small enough to fit in one bag, and I was ready to leave it all behind.

My foot caught a root. I pitched forward, arms reaching for a tree that was too far away.

Jasper caught me around the waist and held me until I found my footing. "Careful," he said. "Are you all right?"

Once, his kindness had meant something to me. He carried water to my cabin when the well froze. He checked on me when I was sick. He trained Jack like the boy mattered to him. I had been grateful for every bit of it. Grateful, careful, never to want more than that.

Now even his touch made me tense.

I pulled my arm out of his grip and kept walking.

He was the Beta. If he decided to kill me, I couldn't run, couldn't fight, couldn't scream loud enough for anyone to reach me. And he was loyal to the woman who had promised me an illness, an accident, a nobody's death.

"Annie."

I didn't stop.

"You know what my sister meant by this."

I stopped.

Everyone in the pack knew about Elena and Jasper. Their parents had died in a border raid when they were children, and Elena had raised her little brother alone, scrounging for food and fighting to survive until Ironclaw took them in. She had begged for scraps so he could eat. She had carried him on her back when he was too small to walk far. Jasper would never betray her. Whatever she asked of him, he would do it.

He had come with me because she had ordered him to. And now we were alone on a road with no one around to see.

I turned around. "Then do it."

He blinked. "Do what?"

"Whatever she told you to do to me." My voice came out steady. I wouldn't beg. "Just get it over with."

His expression changed. He stepped closer—I braced myself—but he only stopped in front of me and bowed his head.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "For all of it. For what my sister did to you. For what she's doing to Jack."

He looked up at me, his eyes bright.

"And thank you. For not saying anything in front of the Alpha. If you had, she would have..." He stopped. We both knew what she would have done.

'Sorry. He's sorry. And what does that change?'

I was pregnant. His sister's heir was growing inside me, and if Elena ever found out, she wouldn't let me live to raise a child who could challenge her. 'I hadn't told him. I hadn't told anyone. Chloe figured it out on her own—but I never said it aloud, and I never will, because every person who knows is another road back to Elena.'

He didn't know any of it. He was standing in front of me, apologizing for a wound he couldn't even see, while the truth he couldn't see was growing inside me with every passing day.

"I'm leaving," I said. "After I pick up Jack, we're leaving Ironclaw."

Jasper went quiet. The silence stretched until I thought he wouldn't answer at all.

Then he shook his head.

"No," he said. "I'm sorry, Annie, but I can't let you leave. Not yet."

My blood went cold. "You know what your sister plans for me. You heard her. Illness. Accident. Nobody cares about the death of a nobody. You know she's going to kill me."

"I know."

He said it simply, looking straight at me, and the honesty of it hurt worse than the threat.

"That's why I've thought of a way out."

"Which is?"

"Marry me."

The words hung in the air between us.

Marry him? The Beta of the Ironclaw Pack, Elena's brother, the last person in this territory I expected to offer me a way out, stood there, hands at his sides, saying it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Jasper," I said slowly. "You're her brother."

"I know what I am." He didn't look away. "I'm also the only person in this pack she can't order to hurt you. As her mate, you'd be untouchable. Even she can't touch a Beta's mate without the whole pack turning on her."

Marriage might protect me, but I still didn't know if I could trust the man offering it.

"You want to marry me, to save me from your sister's hands." I wondered if I'd heard him right. Or if he'd lost his mind.

"Yes," he said without hesitation. "If it keeps you alive."

The forest was quiet. Somewhere above us, a bird was singing, the same way it had sung in Elena's garden the day she asked me to carry her husband's child.