The Luna He Hates

3

Meluna Lockwood.

The look in Alpha Roan’s eyes is pure disgust. Disgust like he knows something about me I don’t even know myself. As soon as he walks out after declaring my sentence, eyes fall on me. Gathered around are those who would have become my new family if I somehow survived long enough to make it to the bonding ceremony.

I recognize a few of them.

Splinter. The Alpha’s uncle. He’s a friend of my father’s. I remember him visiting once, years ago, always with a book in one hand. I think he’s the head of the Pack’s Bench—the part of the council that handles the pack’s judiciary and tradition.

Instead of meeting everyone else's stares, I just look at him. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t look at me like I’m a ghost crawling through blood.

Then, a woman steps in and her eyes land on me.

“Aurora?” Splinter calls to her like he already knew she’d come.

He looks at me again. “Take her to get cleaned and fed. She’s limping. She’s not healing. That tells me she’s malnourished.”

He’s right. I have not nourished my body in four days. If my mom saw me like this… she wouldn’t even recognize me.

“What!? You want to clean and feed her?” Dorothy snaps. She’s the Alpha’s aunt. The sister of the woman I stabbed. She has every right in the world to hate me.

“Roan has decided to keep her alive—"

“If it was someone from your family who got stabbed, you’d have used your position to execute the killer immediately!”

“I’m not here to write new rules. I’m following the Alpha’s.”

While they argue, the woman—Aurora—crosses the room toward me. I brace myself for more hatred. For her to spit, or glare, or step past me like I don’t even exist.

But instead, she kneels beside me. Then gently, wraps her arm around my shoulder and helps me up. I can’t stop staring at her.

“Slow steps.” Aurora mutters.

I nod, and try. My legs feel heavier than before, like the shame and whispers are piling on my shoulders with every shuffle forward.

We barely get moving before Dorothy steps in front of me. Her eyes stab into me like she wants to rip the truth out of my skin.

Around us, the elders are murmuring but it is not low enough. I hear the words they don’t think I’ll catch. Words like incubator, can I still be Luna…wondering aloud how I survived being a rogue. Is the rumour true? Did she trade herself for safety? Did she offer her body for protection?

My stomach twists. So that’s what they think.

That’s why Alpha Roan looked at me like I was filth. They think I sold myself. That I used my body to crawl back alive. That I came back... tainted.

Outside that suffocating room, the hallway is golden and grand. It reminds me of the first time I saw the packhouse and thought it was something out of a dream. But the dream shatters the moment I see the crowd of omegas. They part for Aurora and continue the conversations the elders didn’t finish. They are talking about my chastity, my worth, as if they have the right to judge whether I’m still "clean."

Before I lower my head, I see someone familiar. Lisa—my best friend.

My heart leaps before my body can stop it.

“Lisa?” I catch her wrist.

She sees me. I know she does but her eyes show no spark of emotion or recognition.

I try again. “Lisa, it’s me—"

She swats my hand away like it burns her! Quickly, a sob pushes up into my throat but I don’t let it out.

“The replacement Luna and Meluna know each other?” someone mutters, and the words slaps me harder than her hand did.

Replacement Luna? Is she what Roan meant by he had already chosen a replacement? Before I can ask, Lisa turns…not to me, but to Aurora.

“What about Roan? Is he okay?”

“He’s in definitely not in a good mood. It’s best you leave him alone tonight.” Aurora taps the elevator button and tugs on my arm.

I look back at Lisa. I stare, long and hard, searching for anything that tells me I didn’t just lose my best friend too. I don’t get an answer as the elevator closes.

*****

I chug the water first.

It’s not graceful. I nearly spill half of it down. When I finally set it down, I dive straight for the rice, for the soup, for the herbal tea. I don’t care what comes first—spoonful after spoonful, everything goes down in messy bites.

I cough, choke a little, but I don’t stop swallowing until the tight grip of hunger in my belly starts to ease. Looking up, both Aurora and an omega are staring at me. Their faces say they’re not sure whether to be concerned or to just give me space. I don’t blame them.

I keep eating. I only stop when everything in front of me…every plate, every bowl, every single cup is empty.

“Do you want some more?”

I shake my head quickly. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

My voice doesn’t even sound like mine anymore. It’s too quiet, like it’s still afraid to make noise.

“I think you should take your bath now.” the omega wrinkles her nose.

She’s not wrong.

I glance down at myself and one word. Rags. The kind of clothes I wouldn’t have touched back when I was still the pampered daughter of my father.

I rise to my feet and brace myself for the limp but surprisingly, I feel none.

“We’re healed.” Eluna whispers inside me.

Of course, she’d feel better. Her mate is near and fortunately, that makes our healing process faster due to the link that still exists between Roan and I.

The bathroom is shown to me and for the first time in two years, I take a warm shower without having to hurry for my next hiding place. The steam softens the ache in my bones, the filth from days…weeks? It peels off in slow ribbons.

As I wash my hair, I stare at the shelves lined with shampoos, scented oils and thick creamy conditioners. Back then, I barely even noticed them. They were just things that were always there. Now? They look like miracles.

By the time I tie the robe around my waist, I look like a person again. A girl who just wanted to graduate Delta Academy and go for a vacation afterwards. Could it be… now that I’m here in the packhouse and not dead. I can find out what really happened—what made me do something I don’t even remember then maybe… maybe I can prove my innocence? That I’m not the monster they say I am.

When I step out of the bathroom, Aurora and the omega are still there. It looks like the omega was in the middle of saying something but she stops the moment she sees me.

“There are some clothes in the closet. Hmm, looks like you’re not limping anymore. It’s healed?”

I nod at Aurora. My throat is still sore and I don’t trust my voice to not tremble. I’m also sure that her question isn’t out of care. it’s just a checkmark, a routine task. She doesn’t really care. She’s just doing what Splinter told her to.

“We’ll leave you now.” Aurora adds and they leave.

The very first thing I do is lock the door.

Then I walk to the window, the pull of habit like a thread around my wrist. Outside, I see gammas in uniform. Some by the window. Others by the balcony. Their positions are meant for watching. Not guarding me, but guarding against me.

I’m not even thinking about running. I just want to sleep tonight.

I don’t touch the clothes in the closet. They’re probably comfortable but I don’t care. I crawl under the covers still in the soft robe and fall asleep.

I don’t know how long I sleep for, but my hands give me away. They start twitching and fidgeting against the sheets, even in my sleep because I’m always reacting. I’m always running and even when I’m not, my body is still on alert.

It learned the hard way. When the whole country heard I was being hunted by Roan, it wasn’t just the Dunefang pack that came for me. Roan’s enemies came too. Enemies I didn’t even know existed. The first Alpha I dared to trust was from the Twin Pack who lied that my father had sent him.

Innocently, I believed. What could I have done, I was starving and cold. My father never sent him, that bloody Alpha wanted to claim me.

I don’t even remember what tipped me off. Maybe it was the way he looked at me. The way his hand stayed too long on my wrist. But when he tried to corner me, I grabbed a knife from his dinner tray and stabbed him in the knee.

He screamed but his gammas thought the sound he made was from pleasure.

That was the chance I took and ran. The Alpha of the twin pack will never admit to his pack that he was bested by a frail, half-starved girl. No, of course not. So, he spun his own twisted version and lied to the world that he claimed me. More traumatic memories of how other Alphas, rogues and males cornered me blurs together, their voices do the same and just like that, I rise awake with a gasp.

It’s morning. The light pouring through the windows means safety, right?

NO!

I screech in shock because standing right there, at the edge of the bed, is a multi-dimensional Spartan figure that fills the room like death.

Alpha Roan.

I push myself up and press into the pillows as if they could protect me. How long has he been watching me?

Shoulders like a double-barrelled shotgun. Veined hands are folded in front of him. Knuckles like brass. Fingers as thick as cigars, each one tattooed with ink so dark it looks like he dipped them in liquid sin. These tattoos crawl down his arms and even wrap around his fingers.

His hair…since when did he grow it so long? It falls in waves past his jaw, half-tied back with a leather cord. The morning light paints silver streaks through it and catches on the sharp angles of his face: a nose that’s been broken more than once, lips set in a permanent snarl, and those eyes—

Gold. Onyx of bursting mercury.

All of a sudden, his claws snipe out!

I scramble until my legs tangle in the sheets. Is this it? Instead of making me suffer a thousand times, he’ll end it with one click! He is going to kill me now!?

I follow the movement of his eyes and realize that he’s looking at my thigh. The robe I threw on after the shower is loose, barely tied, and with how quickly I scrambled, the hem has snagged just below my hips, exposing the topography of my thighs.

That’s what Roan is staring at. Or…is he looking at the faint red scars there? I got them fighting for my life against another Alpha who scratched me with his claws. I was malnourished back then so I couldn’t heal cleanly which made the scars stay.

At once, his nostrils flare and his claws retract with a soft snick.

"Hickeys from your many worthless lovers?” Roan’s voice is velvet. Deep and cultured and by all means, he does not break eye contact.

He thinks—

He thinks these scars are from some passionate tryst. He thinks the scars are love bites.

Instead of answering Roan’s question, I do the only thing I can. I pull the robe down over my thighs to shield me from anymore of his accusations.

But I should know better. Movement from me, even something that small is a sin around him. Roan closes the distance between us, his large hand hooks into the robe fabric and pushes it back to look at again.

His jaw locks at the sight, but it isn’t sympathy I see in his eyes. It’s disgust.

"What do you think you are? Some innocent ass virgin? Do not play that modesty card in front of me. Your looks may fool others, but they’ll never fool me again.”

Again? Like I ever tried to.

“I’ve heard it from every corner of the state how you gave your slothful body to the Alpha of the Twin Pack, how you spent all night with one brother and all day with the other. Really, two brothers?”

I shake my head because it’s not true. That’s not what happened. That’s not what happened.

He seems done looking at me for the robe falls back into place when he lets go. His jaw ticks again.

“You disgust me. Your face. This bond. Everything about you…it makes my blood boil! Who do I blame for bringing a thing like you into this world? Your parents? All they did was raise a criminal who went crawling around the country, spreading her legs for my rivals—”

“That’s not true!” I yell and Roan goes deathly still.

I press a hand to my mouth but I know it’s already too late.

Slithered in Roan’s eyes, is fury as if my voice is a privilege I shouldn’t even have.