The Luna He Hates

2

Alpha Roan.

What dear Elder Ren was about to say before the knife nearly took his manhood is that I shouldn’t forget one inconvenient little fact. “that only a fated mate can carry the pup of a pure-blood Dusthound like me.”

“Roan, what is going on!?”

That sounds like my uncle, Splinter. Judging by the multiple footsteps that came in through the door, I’m sure he’s brought the usual parade of dusty tradition-keepers. Elders. When I turn to look, I am rightfully so.

“What does it look like? I got tired of the chase so I hunted the famous w***e of Pacific state and Wolf Groove city myself.” I fix my gaze back at the pale, snow-white form on the floor.

I remember every crevice of that innocent face. How could I not? It has haunted me for the last two years. When I claimed her as mine at my coronation, they wouldn’t meet mine. As if she knew one look would undo me. I thought she was beautiful even when she was four years my junior at the Delta academy.

What are Atlantic oceans if not the color of her gaze? Big. Blue. Glittering with a shimmer I once mistook for innocence. My wolf, Ros…stirs inside me at the sight of them, drawn like he always was but I meet that pull with contempt.

Her skin is the color of milk. Hair black as the ash after fire. She has a small nose. I am easily six times her size. That’s how fragile the mate we’ve been hunting for two years truly is. Quickly, her lips begin to quiver for just as I am taking in the sight of her, she is taking in the sight of me and oh, that must be f*****g terrifying for a junior who already knows my history through the Delta academy.

I hear the pull of knife from skin so I check back at the elder to see him clutch another man for balance in pain. There is sweat on his wrinkled brow as I’d missed his genitals by a whisper. Intentionally.

“That’s for calling her my mate! Now get him the hell out of here before I castrate him properly.”

One glance at my eyes and they’re dragging the old fool through the doors before he bleeds on my floors.

"But she is your fated mate." Splinter repeats. He is the only man in this pack with balls enough to say it twice.

"Traditions?" I stare back at the trembling w***e. "I piss on traditions! This cunt basically murdered my mother. You really believe I’d stain my title with this backstabbing w***e as my Luna? Plus. I’ve already chosen another as my replacement Luna.”

"Though, since you all ask…maybe I should claim my mate's rights right here and give you all a proper show." I watch Meluna’s pupils dilate in terror as I undo my belt buckle. I fix her legs around me in a bloody obscene position as if I’m prepared to penetrate her. My Delta gammas erupt in laughter, pounding fists on wall with a few making crude thrusting motions.

The elders shift uncomfortably and I fling Meluna’s legs away from me.

“Ah, but look at you all.” I muse and rise back on my feet.

“I didn’t capture her for mating or legacy or any of your pitiful hopes. I don’t give a damn about heirs. If you think I’m going to breed with this loose traitor, you must be losing what little mind you have left!” I growl at all of them.

It is no rumour that mother has been in a vegetative state since the criminal left her in a pool of blood and vanished into the wild like a coward. Two years of vengeance simmering under my skin. I’ve counted every goddamn day. I’ve measured the minutes.

All that know, call me the Mad Wolf. In all fairness, I do give them reason to call me mad. At ten, I tore a loose jaguar from limb to limb after it pounced at my sister when it fled it’s cage at the zoo. I didn’t hesitate. I just ripped. The elders said no child should know how to make something scream like that.

At fourteen, when I discovered an elder plotting against the pack, I didn’t exile him. No, I threw him in a pit wrapped in silver-laced chains and let him rot in the dark. During my first shift, I broke silver chains in under a minute and howled for three nights straight. The kind of howl that makes the stars pull back.

They say I went mad after my father died. They’re wrong for I’ve always been this way.

My father’s death just gave me the throne to sit on. Now I wear madness like a crown. I was exactly nine when the training for the Alpha seat began and it was grief of losing my father that sharpened me.

We dusthounds are wolves born thousands of years ago from sun-split deserts and endless deserts of golden dunes. Our kind were considered royalty and superior. In the age when deserts had names only the wind remembers, we ruled and fast forward to current time, we still do. As Alpha—no, a direct offspring of that bloodline. I carry certain... exclusive traits better left unspoken.

In Pacific state, the Dusthound pack is the apex. We own the landscape, the territory, the numbers. One call from me can derail legislation, silence an entire investigation and erase a rival pack’s assets before breakfast. That’s how deep we run in government. So, for my mate to believe she could outrun me? Even if she fled the continent, changed her name, changed her scent…she would still be mine to find. There is no place on this earth where my access does not reach.

“Is that who I think it is!?” My aunt Dorothy comes through and when no one answers, she storms forward and brushes back the wet strands clinging to w***e’s face. “She’s the one! She’s the one!”

“Is she!?” Cynthia, my younger sister joins to look at the disgusting thing.

Disgustingly, I’ve heard the rumours of how she’s been running from Alpha to Alpha, one pack to another. How these Alphas boast about how beautiful she was. That means something because every Alpha in this state is hungry to compete with me. To have a taste of what is mine. Therefore, when they caught wind that my mate had gone rogue, they joined the hunt, not to bring her back but to claim her. I have heard of how she traded her body for protection to anyone…to any alpha who would help hide her scent from me. I believe it. That’s the only way a pampered girl like her lasted this long in hiding. There is no way she survived without offering something in return.

“I’m—I’m sorry…” I hear a whisper and I find the owner of it with my eyes.

With retribution, I stalk towards her again!

My claws extend halfway so naturally, her pupils widen in horror. “What are you sorry for!? It can’t be for stabbing my mother. It also can’t be for running away after your crime. So, are you sorry you failed?”

“No…I—”

I grab her up until her face is level with mine.

“Why? Why did you do that to my mother!? Why!? Answer me!”

“Reject me. Just kill me please!” Her eyes meet mine in tears.

She would rather ask for death than tell me the truth?

“Is it not obvious, Roan!? She stabbed my sister because she didn’t want to be bonded to you!” Dorothy, my aunt seethes. "Your precious mother pushed for the bond, dreaming of the day you’d finally meet your mate before this ungrateful little b***h repaid her with a knife to the heart."

It doesn’t make sense at first. Yet, it does. She’d rather ask for death. This damn b***h would rather become a rogue! She murdered my mother just to escape a bond with the mad wolf. She would rather sell her body in hiding than to allow me claim her possessively and with respect?

My fingers tighten on her fragile arm until she whimpers. “Dorothy, what does pack law demand for this viper’s crime?”

“A blood debt.”

Everyone gasps at Dorothy’s answer.

“For the attempted murder of your mother, Meluna owes you her life, her body, her soul, and her blood a thousand times over! A thousand times you are permitted to take from her. A thousand times to inflict pain, even if the first leaves her dead!”

I push her back to her knees where she belongs.

“Hear that? And if you didn’t, hear this, Meluna Lockwood for I do not reject you, not yet. I am not in the business of granting you f*****g wishes. I am in the business of ensuring that every heartbeat in your chest is on borrowed time. A time where you cannot tell if tomorrow will be the day you die. I will punish you a thousand times. One for every day I waited. One for every time I saw my mother’s state. One for every second you thought you could escape me!”

“This is the bond you tried to sever…now you’ll live in it and every day shall be a reminder that you are the Luna I hate.”