The Long Lost Luna

Chapter 2 - A Miracle Mate

EZRA

I walked into the camp with the female wolf in my arms. She seemed so small and fragile, and I knew the past few years had broken her. She was malnourished, and based on the bruises covering her body, she had been mistreated. I held her close to my body. My chest was tight at the thought of everything she had to endure. She was my mate. My wolf made that clear the moment I saw her, and now I wanted to do everything I could to protect her from the harm of the world.

I wasn’t sure if I could do that with the status of the world. Werewolves were slowly going extinct. The humans continued to hunt us down, and the only reason my pack and I were still alive was because we had managed to hide our pack deep in the mountains. We had started out as a small pack, but over the years, we had taken in every stray werewolf we had come across and offered them protection in exchange for working hard to keep the pack safe and fed.

It was fate that I had been in the woods this morning and found this girl, whose name I still didn’t know. Normally, I didn’t go that far to deal with threats, but we had received reports of several human hunters in that area that were heading in the direction of my pack. I couldn’t risk our home being discovered, so I traveled farther than normal with my warriors to deal with the threats myself. If I hadn’t been there, there was a chance my mate would have died today. She still looked like she could die at any moment, and the only thing keeping me together was hearing her heartbeat fill my ears.

I walked into our small village, nodding to the warriors guarding our borders. I went straight to the clinic, knowing the wolf in my arms needed to be checked by our doctor right away.

I entered the building, and Amara jumped to her feet, rushing over to me. “Ezra, what happened?”

Amara was my sister, and she was also the pack doctor. She was the only one who I would trust with my mate.

“She needs medical attention,” I said.

Amara rolled her eyes. “No, duh, dummy. But what happened to her?”

“I don’t know.” That thought killed me a little. I wanted to ring the necks of the bastards who would ever treat a woman like this.

Amara raised her eyebrows. “That’s it? I don’t know? You could at least give me some sort of explanation. It’s not every day you bring a random woman to me.”

The girl in my arms started coughing, and I instantly held her against my body protectively.

“She needs medical attention right away.” I didn’t want to waste any more time with this conversation.

“Man of many words,” she said sarcastically. “Set her over here, and I’ll take a look at her.”

I carried my mate to the examination table that Amara had pointed to. I set the female werewolf down as gently as possible. Amara was eying me suspiciously, and I knew she would demand more of an explanation from me later, but I couldn’t tell her this woman was my mate. Not yet. First I needed to make sure my mate was okay, and then I would deal with the ramifications this would cause later on.

“Please step to the side,” Amara said, motioning to the side of the room.

Don’t leave, mate, Grayson, my wolf, growled in my head.

I stayed in place, refusing to move. Seeing my mate in such a weakened state made my protective side go wild. I had just assumed my mate was dead. With how few werewolves were left in the world, the chances of finding one’s mate grew more and more slim each day. Everyone in my pack accepted that mates were a wild dream that wasn’t worth waiting for these days. Werewolves would definitely go extinct if the few survivors held out for a mate that was likely long dead.

However, as I stared down at this woman in front of me, I felt sorry for anyone who never found their mate, because they would never be able to experience this intense feeling. She made my entire body feel like it was floating just by being near it, and she was already taking over all of the thoughts in my head.

“Ezra, move,” Amara said, deepening her voice. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I won’t be able to examine this girl if you don’t step away.”

“I’m the alpha. You shouldn’t talk to me like that.” Grayson was protesting in my head, and I had to calm him down. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, Amara was right. We had to make sure she could work her magic to make sure my mate was okay.

“I’m also your older sister. Move.” Amara’s voice was firm, and it reminded me of our mother, strong and caring, but she also didn’t put up with any bullshit, especially from me.

My body moved, even against Grayson’s protests. I stood against the wall as I watched Amara start taking the woman’s vitals. She was going over her body carefully, but then suddenly she stopped.

She turned to me and motioned to the door. “I need some privacy now for the sake of this woman. I don’t know why you are acting so protective over her specifically, but I will not continue the rest of this exam with you in this room.”

She’s our mate. She doesn’t need privacy, Grayson growled.

She deserves respect, I protested, even though a part of me agreed with Grayson.

Without saying another word, I forced myself out of the room to give Amara the privacy she had demanded. I had a feeling I knew why she needed the privacy, but the thought of it made me absolutely sick. I wanted to know exactly how my mate had been hurt, but if there were more bruises under my mate’s clothes, I wasn’t sure if I could keep my calm.

Every inch of my body was screaming at me to go back out and find the bastards that were chasing the woman. We had a couple of werewolves showing up in similar states before, and their stories were ones from nightmares. I knew there were camps out there that treated werewolves as less than dogs. They were used as slave labor, and I hated it. Part of me wanted to go and attack every human camp like that, but I had to put the health of my pack first. We didn’t have the resources to take out human camps yet.

I found myself pacing outside of the patient’s room, waiting for Amara to finish her exam. It was an agonizing wait, and the moment the door opened, I jumped and rushed to Amara.

Amara put her hands up. “Slow down there, Ezra. Seriously, what’s gotten into you? You’ve taken in other werewolves before, and I have never seen you act like this before. In fact, I have never even seen you personally handle bringing them to me.”

I didn’t want to tell Amara the truth. There were too many things I had to figure out as the alpha before officially accepting my mate. The more people who knew I found my mate before I was ready to announce it to the pack, the more problems it would cause.

But Amara was my sister, and she already knew I was acting strangely. There was no lying to her. She was the one person who could see right through my lies.

“She’s my mate.”

Amara’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “Are you serious?”

“Why would I lie about that?” I clenched my jaw at the accusation. I didn’t want to have this conversation. I just wanted to know how the woman was doing.

Amara hit my chest. “Don’t be such a dumb ass. I wasn’t accusing you of lying. I just wasn’t expecting that explanation. It’s a little bit of a miracle. The pack is going to be thrilled. The alpha actually finding his mate? Who would have thought?”

“You can’t tell anyone.” My alpha tone slipped into my voice, which was something I usually avoided using on Amara, but this absolutely had to stay a secret for the safety of my mate. “Not everyone will be happy about this news.”

Amara’s face fell. “Right. Of course I won’t tell anyone.”

“Good.” I glanced back at the room where I knew my mate was lying down. “How bad is it?”

Amara glanced back, and she seemed to shrink. “Knowing she’s your mate is going to make this so much harder to tell you. Are you sure you want to know?”

“Tell me everything.” I didn’t want to hear it, but I had to know for sure. I couldn’t shy away from the truth just because it wasn’t something I wanted to hear.

***

I found myself in the training ring, punching a dummy over and over and over again. It was the only thing I could do to stop myself from going after those slave owners and ripping their bodies limb from limb. No one deserved to go through the trauma my mate had, and we only knew what the wounds and scars on her body told us. I was sure there was so much more that we didn’t know about.

It made me blind with rage, and I knew I needed to calm down before I did something stupid. I also needed to calm down before she woke up. Amara said it would be a while before she woke up. She had been dehydrated and underfed, and her body was absolutely exhausted. Amara thought the woman had given everything she had to try and escape her situation, and it would take a while for her to fully heal, even with the increased healing abilities werewolves had.

“Again,” Rhett, my beta, said. He was the one who dragged me into the training room when I was ready to go slaughter those humans.

I punched the dummy in front of me again. We had been doing this for hours, and it still wasn’t enough to get out the aggression.

“Are you going to tell me what happened out there that has put you in such a sour mood?” Rhett asked.

I let out a growl and punched the training dummy so hard that it actually made Rhett take a step back.

“That’s a no,” Rhett said. He was used to my bad moods. It didn’t happen often, but when something really pushed my buttons, I had to spend hours getting my energy out in the healthiest way I could that avoided taking my anger out on my pack unnecessarily. Rhett was always my voice of reason and made sure I trained until I was too exhausted to do something I would regret.

Ezra, Amara’s voice said in my head. She’s awake. I thought you would want to be the first one to know.

I dropped everything I was doing and began sprinting across the village. I needed to see my mate as soon as possible. I needed to see that she was okay with my own eyes.