Becoming Luna

3 ~The One-Legged Future Luna

“Honey, I’m home! Oh, wow! Something smells so good, my mouth is watering! Oh, here it is!”

Siena squeals as Andrew hugs her from behind and kisses her neck, sucking the tender skin there lightly, playfully.

“...that steak is a little overcooked, though,” he teases her, pointing at the meat on the grill that has barely turned a beautiful light golden color on one side.

She rolls her eyes. “It's not medium rare if it never touched the grill, Drew.”

“That can’t be right. How come you're so hot even though you're not being grilled?”

She bursts out laughing. “Cheesy, but I’ll take it.” She tiptoes for a kiss and he grins widely as he lifts her to meet her lips. “You’re just in time, if you want to shower first?”

“Yeah, I’m all sweaty from training so I need to freshen up a bit. But I’m starving and that steak smells heavenly so I promise I’ll be real quick!”

“Go on, I’ll set the table while you’re getting cleaned up.”

“I’ll take care of it when I come back. You must be tired from all the cooking, so just sit and look pretty for me,” he winks before jogging to their bedroom, taking off his clothes on the way.

Siena sighs, and hobbles over to where they keep the dishes. She is tired. Her lower back is aching and her right leg is contemplating mutiny after carrying all the weight as she goes around the kitchen while cooking. However, she’s determined never to be a burden and to make sure Andrew is always happy to be home, so she starts setting the table too. It’s the least she can do, being pretty much limited from doing other stuff.

Ever since she lost one of her legs from the rogue attack more than a year ago, she has been fighting off depression and trying to stay positive, but sometimes it’s just so exhausting. Andrew has been incredibly wonderful and supportive through it all, which is more than she can ask for. He has been patient, constant, and encouraging during her very long stay at the pack’s hospital and even after that, during her convalescence period at home.

There are times, though, that she is inclined to think it’s because he feels guilty for not reaching her in time, when the rogue took her leg from her while she was in the middle of shifting.

There are wounds even the spirit beasts cannot heal. Her poor wolf certainly cannot regrow her foot once it has been bitten off. It was already a miracle she even survived, as she had been delirious with fever for several days due to the infection from the rogue’s rabies. The pack doctors had given up her fate to the Moon Goddess’s will.

But Siena, by some miracle, survived. Her fever finally broke and her body started to heal, even though her leg and foot, of course, were irredeemable. They are wolves, afterall, not lizards that can grow new limbs. No amount of licking would heal what was irrevocably lost. Now, all she has of her left leg is a stump. Oh, and phantom pains that haunt her to this day.

Which sucks, really, because how do you make it feel better if it’s not even there?

When she woke up and found out what happened for the first time, her first instinct was to brace herself against Andrew’s rejection. She would have understood, had he done it then, because duty to the pack always comes first, and he needs a Luna who can defend their territory by his side. And be able to trust her to defend his back.

What would he do with a one-legged Luna!?

That rogue attack wasn’t the first one and it certainly will not be the last. Their territory needs to be under constant surveillance and they must always be ready for such aggressive invasions because their land is bordering into the Barrenlands, where rogues roam free and unchecked, after being banished there from their old packs. Life is hard for everyone, but rogues are the condemned ones of their lot. Of course they would want to get out of that hell-hole.

Siena was resigned, but Andrew showed real backbone when he refused to break the fated bond with her, despite everyone advising him it’s what’s best for the pack. It could be his guilt or it could be sheer stubbornness, but he bared his fangs and told everyone he has no intention of giving up his fated mate.

“What happened to Siena is my fault. I failed to protect her, my own mate, from that cursed rogue. I will not fail her again.”

He even defied his father’s (the Alpha) command to think about it first. The older man cannot order him to reject a fated bond by the Moon Goddess so he can only ask his heir to reconsider. However, Andrew stood tall, taller than she had ever seen him before. And her chest puffed out with pride for her mate as she listened to him tell everybody that he loves her and that together, they can overcome anything. His bravery gave her courage. His determination gave her a reason to dream.

If this isn’t true love, then she doesn’t know what is.

Because of Andrew’s show of courage and loyalty, which apparently equates to maturity in their books—or maybe it’s just a matter of saving face since the Alpha’s will is no longer absolute when Andrew was able to defy him—Alpha Warren decided to step down and hand the reins over to his son, once Andrew reaches his twenty-first birthday, which is going to be in a little more than a month.

Andrew is in some kind of really tough training now, physically and mentally, to prepare him for his upcoming role and duties. So should Siena be, in truth, but the current Luna seems more reluctant to relinquish her role and keeps postponing their lessons, saying that Siena needs to recover fully first, and that unlike being the Alpha, whatever she needs to learn, she can learn in time, even when she’s already Luna.

Siena suspects Luna Cristina believes teaching a one-legged wolf how to become Luna is just a waste of time, and that she is probably hoping her son will still come to his senses before long. Either that or a twisted hope that there will be another rogue wave attack which will finish Siena off for good.

Not that she blames the Luna for it. Sometimes, she wonders if it was better if she hadn’t survived. It would have made everything easier for everyone.

She shakes her head, trying her best to shoo those pesky, dark thoughts away. Andrew loves her and she loves him. He’s right, together, they will be able to do anything. What she lacks physically, she will compensate with her mind and her heart.

She will focus all her time, dedication, and hidden talent on making life better for the pack. Already she has several ideas on how to improve the pack’s finances once she is Luna. While she stays at home ‘recuperating’, she has been researching, thinking of projects and ways to generate more income that will help them save more than enough money to build better border protections and surveillance.

She’s already planning on pitching one of her baby projects to the Alpha King’s outreach programs; those well-funded grants aimed to assist packs or individuals with innovative ideas. There’s going to be one in a month, three days before they will become Alpha and Luna. She could go to the city with an excuse of one last ‘unmarked girl’s day out’ and be back the next day in time to prepare for the special occasion.

Yes. She is going to apply for the grant and she will win it, come hell or high water, and then she will give the certificate and check to Andrew as a marking gift, once she is officially his Luna. To show everyone that she is not going to be a burden. That she will be a worthy mate of the new alpha, and that Andrew did not make a mistake in defending their bond.

She can’t wait to see their faces, especially Luna Cristina’s, who has always been nothing but an arm candy to the Alpha.

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Andrew says casually as they are having dinner. “I’m leaving for a couple of days, maybe three. Dad is sending me as a proxy on an important alliance meeting in a pack territory a day’s run from here. I already talked to the patrollers and my trusted beta warriors. They all swore to make sure someone is always here to protect you in my absence, just in case there’s another attack while I’m gone, so you don’t have to worry about your safety.”

Siena grimaces internally. It’s one of those moments that she feels so helpless and more like a rock around someone’s neck. No matter how many times she tries to explain it to Andrew so that he won’t bother other people for her sake, he only tells her not to worry, and that it’s always been the warriors’ job to protect their Luna anyway.

It’s pointless to argue with him when his mind is already set on something so she just lets him drone on and on about his itinerary. She plans to tell the warriors herself that she doesn’t need their constant supervision. Rogues usually attack during new moon, when everything is dark and hidden in the shadows. Everyone in the pack knows by now that the light of the moon hurts the rogues’ red eyes so they keep to their filthy dens during full moon and even the days before and after it, which, as luck would have it, is exactly the two or three days Andrew will be going away.

Just to keep everyone calm, she’s even willing to just stay locked at home, breaking in her new prosthetic leg because she needs to be able to walk on it like she’s been doing it all her life, at least in time for her presentation for the Alpha King’s Grant. In order to win them over and actually sell her idea, she must conquer her number one enemy and win her own battle first.

Siena loathes the prosthetic leg, even though it didn’t do anything to her. Goddess help her, but she secretly hates the thing and everything it represents, like the fact that she has lost her real foot forever. She resents the pain to be endured just to get used to something she never wanted in the first place. And while she knows that in the end, it will help her regain her autonomy and self-confidence, she knows that it’s because she has no other choice.

But she’ll be fine. She’ll find a way to make her peace with it somehow. Her plans for the future are more important than her petty present self. Everything will be all right if she just focuses on their dreams.

Only, Siena has never been more wrong. Between the second and the third day, she gets hurt again. But this time, it is not the rogues who attack her. No, this time, it is so much worse because the pain isn’t physical and cannot be healed by her wolf.

It is the pain of the mate bond being betrayed. Of Andrew being intimate with another she-wolf!