The Endangered Luna

Chapter 3: Funeral encounter

Jackson's POV

Voices coming from the living room woke me up and it took me a few moments to compose myself. Then I yawned and got out of the bed. The sun was nowhere in sight and everywhere was quite chilly so I knew it was still very early in the morning. The voices coming from the living room were like whispers and I began to wonder what could be going on. I threw the bedcovers away from my body and got out of bed. I walked out of the room and the voices became louder as I walked down the stairs. Then they stopped and I heard receding footsteps. The door opened at the same time I entered the living-room and I only caught a glimpse of the person's back before they disappeared and the door shut behind them. I turned to see my father standing with a worried look on his face.

“What's wrong, Pops?” I asked. He moved backwards and plopped into the sofa with such force that I feared it would have broken if it had been a wooden chair.

“That was Manfred,” he replied. “Jan passed away a few hours ago.”

“s**t,” I exclaimed. The news hit me so hard that I had to take a seat myself. Jan was my father's beta and the most trusted member of his council. He and my father had grown up together and they'd been on many adventures together. He was my godfather and I had learnt a lot of things from him while growing up. He'd taught me another approach to hunting, one I liked better than my father's style. He'd taught me how to swim, how to fish—something I hadn't learnt from my father because he wasn't good at it—and many other things. He also told me stories about his childhood with my father, although I suspected there was an element of exaggeration in those stories but I loved to hear them anyways. He celebrated his birthday just a few days ago and now he is dead and gone forever.

“Get dressed,” my father commanded. “We're heading there in a few minutes.”

I hated going on official duties with my father, but because this particular one was very important, I knew I had no choice and I simply nodded my head and left for my room. My father was fully dressed when I returned to the living-room several minutes later and I met him lost in thoughts.

“Dad, let's go,” I said, placing my hand on his shoulder.

He turned to look at me and placed his hand over mine. I could see the hurt in his eyes and it was understandable. No words would be able to express how everything he was feeling at that moment but his eyes did. He suddenly looked older than he was and the wrinkles on his face seemed to have increased. We left the house together and took his car to the late Jan’s house. My mother had offered to come along but my father told her it was unnecessary and she didn't bother to argue. We all knew that she hadn't really liked Jan while he was alive but no one knew why and I didn't think anyone bothered to find out why.

I held my hand out to my father as we approached his car. “Let me drive,” I offered.

He seemed happy to allow me to do it, as if a great responsibility he had been afraid to handle had been taken off his hands. He went around to the passenger side and I opened the driver's door and got behind the wheel. I started driving and we arrived at Jan’s house twenty minutes later. The sun was just beginning to rise when we got there and the whole house was filled with mourning people. They were getting ready to carry his body to be buried and my father joined them to make final arrangements. As custom demands, there was to be a procession that would carry his coffin around the main streets of Yellowstone and that procession will end at the site where he is to be buried. We had a general cemetery that had been used to bury werewolves in our clan for centuries and it was on the other side of town, close to the small river in the woods. The procession started a few minutes later and the streets were filled with people who gathered to watch. Finally, we got to the cemetery and the coffin was laid on the floor. His grave had already been dug and what remained before he would be laid to rest was a priest to say final prayers for him. After the prayers were said, his coffin was sealed shut and lowered into the grave. The area was filled with wailing as the dirt that had been dug up to make his grave was now being used to cover it and I watched in pity as some people tried to console his wife. She had maintained her composure all through the procession and it was only after her husband had been laid to rest that she allowed the tears to control her.

Seeing as my presence wasn't really needed anymore, I broke up from the group and wandered deeper into the woods. I went around the river till I was on the other side, and I picked up a few rocks and started skipping them across the river. Halfway through that, I caught the scent of something very appealing to the nose and it was so close that I turned around sharply.

“Hi,” the owner of the scent said and I nearly lost my breath.

“Hi,” was the only thing I could say. A barrage of thoughts rushed into my mind but my mouth couldn't turn any of them into words.

“I saw you going into the woods and I decided to follow you,” She explained. She gathered a few rocks and came to stand beside me.

“Where were you before?” I asked.

“Uh?” She said. She threw a few rocks and all of them skipped across the water correctly. Only three out of the ten I attempted had done what I meant for them to do. An understanding look crossed her face and she added, “oh. You meant where I was that I saw you coming into the woods.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I was at Jan's funeral,” she said.

I turned to look at her. “How well do you know Jan?” I asked.

“Not really,” she replied. She threw the remaining rocks in her hand and all of them made it across the river. She'd skipped nine rocks in total and all of them had been perfect.

“Then why are you at his funeral?” The words came out more as an accusation, which was never my intention but she didn't seem to be offended by it.

“Trust me, I would never willingly attend a funeral,” she said. “I'm only here at my parents’ request.”

So she did live here. But how come I had never seen her?

“You might be wondering why you haven't seen my face around. It's because I left Yellowstone while I was a kid to live with my mother's family and I only just returned recently. My parents are the Hunters,” she explained.

That made much more sense to me and it answered all my questions.

“You're right. I was thinking you were new in town or something,” I said.

“Well, considering that I've been away for almost fifteen years, I'm kinda new,” she said. “A lot of things have changed since I left and I mean a lot.”

“Like wh—”

The rest of my words died in my mind as we heard a loud scream that instantly commanded our attention.