The Luna He Hates

5

Meluna Lockwood.

“Kaden!” I scream with every last thread left in my lungs, but Helen yanks me back, arms tight around mine like she’s restraining a prisoner. I thrash, helpless, useless as I watch my brother crumple beneath the Roan’s wrath.

It’s just one blow at first but that’s all it takes to drain the warmth from Kaden’s face. He turns pale right in front of me, like life is leaking from him. Like the light in him has already begun to die.

Then, it gets worse. Roan doesn’t stop. He beats my brother where his skin isn’t already bruised, where his bones haven’t yet broken until Kaden can’t even lift his head. Until he’s twitching on the ground like something dying, like something discarded.

I’ve cried before—moons, I’ve cried but never like this. Never with this choking silence. Never while watching the last person I love bleed in front of me.

It’s just soundless gasping. My whole body heaves in grief that no noise can carry. Something in me is ripping apart and Roan?

Roan licks his lips.

He licks his lips like he’s just finished a meal.

He’s not a person. He’s not even a wolf. He’s something hollow. He is bloodlust dressed in black. He is madness that walks on two legs.

“Take him to the med.” he says like he didn’t just break my brother’s body.

The gammas move to collect what’s left of Kaden. They’re careful, trying not to hurt him more when Roan turns back to me and when our eyes lock.

I was wrong. Could it be that he has always been a monster before what happened to his mother? And everyone that called him a mad wolf were not wrong. He is feral thing in the skin of a leader. The rumors weren’t wrong and now I know why people whisper behind his back. Why they don’t meet his eyes. Why everyone is afraid.

“She looks scared out of her mind, Alpha.” someone mutters.

“She does?” Roan jokes. “I hope she knows it could have easily been her. But of course…I don’t want to kill her yet.”

I can’t hold it in anymore.

“Just kill me!” I choke. “Why won’t you just kill me—”

I am in the middle of my sentence when he stalks towards me and clamps around my throat.

"You stuck a wolfsbane glass knife into my mother! Not just any knife—"

I gasp at the knowledge of this. I didn’t know I did that. I stabbed her with poison?

"Do you know what that does to one of us? The wound didn’t just bleed, it rotted from the inside out. Your choice of wolfsbane knife ate through her tissue and muscle like fire through parchment. You buried it all the way to the hilt. The tip came out her back after puncturing her lungs.”

His free hand traces a cruel line between my shoulder blades, mimicking the exit wound.

"The surgeons had to cut her open just to remove the shards. Ten days, they worked, ten days of her screaming as they peeled back her ribs to scrape the poison from her heart. You didn't just want her dead. You wanted her to feel it. And now?" His fingers flex around my throat.

“And when I ask why, you give me silence. You flinch. You defend yourself over some stupid rumour about your slut life, like I even care who you slept with!”

Tears pour down my face. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I shake my head, desperate to say no, to say I didn’t, but I can’t get the words out.

“Yes.” I whisper. “Yes. I did it because I didn’t want to be mated to a mad wolf like you. So just kill me. Just kill me!”

I say it not because it’s true but because I want it to end. I want him to stop. I’m don’t care about proving my innocence anymore. I just want to protect the people who keep getting hurt because of me. If my death is what he needs to stop his pain, then so be it.

He reacts in an instant.

Roan’s hand picks me up with my neck, so fast the air in my lungs rushes out like it’s been punched out of my chest. One moment my feet are planted on the ground - the next, I'm dangling like a hunted rabbit in a snare.

All with one arm. Tears slip from my eyes as my body starts to shake. I gasp, mouth opening and closing, but nothing comes. Just strangled, ugly sounds. My vision blurs. I don’t bother fight him. I want him to end me.

Suddenly, someone grabs my feet. I don’t know who for I can’t see through the haze of suffocation but the pressure makes Roan release me. His hand falls away from my throat, and I drop as air painfully comes back into my lungs.

I cough. I wheeze as my throat feels like it’s been crushed inwards.

Then, I see Splinter. He’s the one who grabbed me.

“Is it in your plan to kill her where everyone working in the pack house can see?”

“I can kill her wherever I want. She has a blood debt on her head, and it’s mine to collect!” Roan replies.

“Aurora.” Splinter turns away from Roan. “Take her to the medics.”

As Aurora helps me up, I hear Roan’s voice one last time.

“Make sure it’s not the same room as her brother. I ban her from seeing that fool.”

By the time we reach the med wing, I’m trembling so badly I can’t even sit up straight.

Two years of running, hiding and somehow, nothing I went through out there prepared me for this. Not for the humiliation of having Roan rip the robe from my body in front of his Beta. Not for the disgust in his eyes as he looked at me like I was filth and not the sound of Kaden's bones breaking under his Alpha's wrath.

The cot creaks as my trembling worsens in helpless jerks. I don’t even notice the nurse next to me until something stings the side of my lip—disinfectant. I turn to look at Aurora.

“Please, is Kaden… is he going to survive it? Was he even breathing?”

Aurora hesitates. “You should get treated first.”

“Treated?” I swipe at the endless tears rolling down my cheeks. “Treated just so he can come back and break me again.”

“I know you don’t know me, Aurora… but please. My brother. I just have to know.”

Aurora looks at me and her eyes soften. “Roan has banned you from knowing that.”

The nurse moves toward me again but I pull back.

“Stop. Please—stop, I don’t—”

I don’t get to finish when a clawed hand slaps me across the face. The pain is like hot wires tearing through my skin. I don’t know if it’s in my jaw, or in my head, or in the way my world spins but I hit the floor hard.

Blood.

I feel it running hot down my neck.

And when I look up, I see Aurora struggling to hold someone back—someone with claws already out and red staining her fingers.

“Cynthia!”

The girl thrashing in her hold looks just like Roan.

“This b***h stabbed my mother and you’re stopping me!?” she screams.

She’s the Alpha’s sister.

I don’t move. I don’t stand. I don’t even try to crawl away. If Roan doesn’t kill me, maybe it’s better that she does.

“Roan is already being punished—”

“Punishing her? He hasn’t even rejected her! The Elders and the whole pack are talking like she’s some kind of saviour, like she’s the one who’ll give him heirs! After two years of f*****g every Alpha who’d look at her!”

Cynthia throws Aurora off like she’s nothing and then she’s in front of me.

Her claws dig into my shoulders with such force I scream.

“Why did you do that to my mother!? You could’ve just rejected Roan if you didn’t want to marry him! I lost my dad and now I’m losing my mom every single day because of you!?”

“I don’t remember doing it!” I yell and the room goes utterly still.

“What did you just say?”

“I don’t remember doing it. I don’t even remember holding the knife. I was just there when it happened, and I looked down, and she was on the ground and there was so much blood. I don’t remember hurting her, I don’t know why I did it. Please believe me… please—”

Cynthia lunges at me again, and this time, her hand grips into my hair so hard that when Stravus yanks her back, she rips a thick strand straight from my scalp in her shaking fist.

I scream in pain but all I can do is cradle my head.

“She thinks it’s a joke!” Cynthia is screeching as Stravus hauls her out of the room. “

Her voice disappears into the hallway but the pain doesn’t.

I curl in tighter on the floor and press my knees into my chest. My breath is all I have.

“What did you just say? You don’t remember hurting Sarah?”

I look up at Aurora but I don’t answer.

I’m done talking. I shouldn’t have said anything at all. No one will believe me. And if I keep saying it—if I keep trying…they’ll just think I’m making excuses. Worse. They’ll find new ways to punish me.

“I want to go to my room.” My voice comes out like a dry gust, scattered and breaking into pieces.

Aurora doesn’t say anything. So I stand.

Every movement is agony. My back screams. My shoulders are raw. My neck is still throbbing where Roan’s fingers choked the breath from me. My scalp feels torn. My heart…

I don’t ask Aurora how to find my way in the Dunefang pack house. I don’t want her help. I don’t even know where I’m going. I just remember how I came in. I find stairs and I start climbing them, one aching step at a time.

On the way, I pass people who whisper.

"...that's her..."

"...wolfsbane killer..."

"...Alpha's cursed mate..."

Some hold up phones and I hear clicks. I forgot how massive the Dunefang pack house is. Delegation buildings for Roan’s council. Training divisions. Quarters for the gammas and omegas delta staff. Hundreds of staff. Hundreds of eyes.

Finally, finally…I make it outside. I hold my arm as I hurry down the walkway that leads back to the training ground. If I follow it far enough, I’ll find my room again.

When I’m a minute in, I stop because right in the middle of the field, Roan is still there. And next to him is Lisa, whose body is angled toward him like she belongs there. Her fingers rest possessively on his bicep and her lips move in some private joke.

That is supposed to be my best friend.

We went to school together. We were supposed to go to prom together the day after Roan’s coronation. Just the day before, we’d gone from mall to mall, giggling and trying on heels we couldn’t walk in. I even begged my mom to let her come with me to the Dunefang pack house for the coronation.

How can my own best friend be attracted to Roan? To replace me….

As if Roan can hear my thoughts, his eyes find mine even from across the massive training ground. He holds me in place with nothing more than a look.

I tighten my arm around myself and see him reach for her waist.

He pulls Lisa into him, so easy, so familiar and slides down until he squeezes. Her hip. Her ass. All while staring straight at me.

My wolf howls and our bond sears like a white-hot brand. I feel the wrongness of him touching another female in public. Of him doing it to hurt me.

Roan tilts Lisa’s chin up and kisses her.

I take my eyes away but I accept it even if it’s painful to witness. Even if my wolf hates it.