The Alpha’s Hidden Luna

2.

I opened my eyes as I exhaled and leaned against the column, staring up at the barn’s ceiling. As stupid as I felt now, how was I supposed to see it coming? The other fated mates I’d met in our pack accepted each other openly and publicly, even if they were otherwise private people. The same went for the wolves I’d encountered from other packs. A fated mate bond was just that — fated. I’d never heard of anyone rejecting their mate before, and I’d never heard of anyone being rejected, either. Fights? Sure, all couples fight sometimes. Falling out? Yep. Sometimes they lasted weeks, months even, but in the end, the mated pair always found their way back to each other. They found a way to heal. No ill will was permanent.

The chains jingled softly as I lifted my shoulders, as if to remind me they were still there. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Yeah, yeah, I know. Being chained up by the man you loved? I was pretty damn sure that was the sort of thing that fostered permanent ill will. Three years ago, I’d thought things would never change.

“Hey, Marnet?”

The man beneath me made a sleepy noise and my heart flip-flopped in my chest. I smiled, propping my chin up on his sternum as he murmured his response. “Hm? What’s up, Luna?”

“Would we…would we still be like this, if we hadn’t met when we did? On my eighteenth birthday, I mean.”

His emerald eyes blinked open, and his expression was still soft with sleep. He tipped his head to one side. “Well, yeah,” he said, and dropped his head back down. Clearly, he thought that was answer enough, but I wasn’t satisfied. I squirmed against his side.

Marnet exhaled. “You aren’t going to let me sleep, are you, you little minx?”

“Nope.” I shook my head. “Humor me, okay?”

He sighed again, then slung a heavy arm around my middle and pulled me closer. “Don’t you think there’d be a lot fewer fated mates overall if they had to meet when she turned eighteen?” He raised a brow. “Because the bond doesn’t work when he turns eighteen, so that’s one single day across two lifetimes.”

I frowned a little, mouth turning down into a pout. “Well… I guess, but fate’s a pretty powerful thing, isn’t it?”

Marnet shrugged one thick shoulder. “I guess? I dunno. It’s not like some hands reached down from the sky and smashed us together.”

“No…”

“I think, actually, some hands were smashing something else.” Marnet turned his smirk on me.

I started to turn pink. “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?” I asked, feeling the skin on the back of my neck prickle. It hadn’t been my best moment. His sister, Sophia, had been nasty to me since we were in elementary school. The conflict had come to a head during our senior year of high school, when I’d edged her out as salutatorian. I’d bumped her off some podium — there was only room for two. Why she didn’t feel robbed by the valedictorian too, I’d never been sure.

I had thought it would be over after we graduated. I hadn’t seen much of Sophia that summer, but on my birthday in late August, I was planning to meet some friends at a local diner for a celebratory dinner. It wasn’t much, but that was the best we had. Who did I run in to on the way but Sophia. She was dead set on humiliating me right there on the sidewalk, as if ruining my eighteenth birthday would somehow make up for the fact that she didn’t get to speak at our graduation.

I never fought in school, and I’d always done did my best to ignore Sophia. I don’t know what changed that day. I didn’t want to hear all the nasty things she had to say — I wasn’t going to hear the things she had to say. When Sophia swung at me, well, I swung right back.

It wasn’t a long fight, but I had gotten a few good punches in before someone hauled me back off Sophia. I’d been so upset, I hadn’t even realized Sophia wasn’t trying to fight back. Someone had hands on her too, separating us even as I continued to kick and swing. I still remember, clear as day, whirling around and coming face to face with those gorgeous green eyes. I’d met Marnet before, of course, he’d only been two years ahead in school, but it felt like the first time I had really seen him. My heart skipped three beats and he caught my hand easily, looking more puzzled than any man breaking up a fight ought to.

“Earth to Luna.”

A singsong voice shook me out of the recollection. Marnet was wearing a s**t-eating grin, pleased as punch. “You’re never going to forget that day either, you know. Because that’s the day you met me.”

“I already knew you.”

“Did you, though?” His grin only widened as he tugged me back into his warm embrace. “C’mon, enough with this. Of course I would have found you. That’s what happens, that’s just what happens. There’s no other way. Now go back to sleep, Luna. I need at least a few damn minutes of shuteye.”

I jerked upright, as if standing could rid me of the memory. Even just this morning, I had considered it a tender moment; something special to treasure as we embarked on the rest of our lives together. Again, I jolted against the chains. They rattled against the wood and dug into my skin. No amount of wiggling seemed to change that.

My cheeks felt hot and my eyes started to prickle, blurring my vision as I sucked in a sharp, shuddering breath, trying to force my lungs to operate normally. Sadness was welling up in the back of my throat like something sticky sweet, something I couldn’t swallow back down no matter how hard I tried. I opened my mouth to yell, to scream, to howl — anything to get someone’s attention and get me out of this freaking barn — and instead a broken sob escaped.

Marnet was going to kill me. He’d said I would be put to death, and I knew that would be his doing. He was the alpha. Pack wolves lived and died by the alpha’s whim.

Tears rolled down my cheeks, falling freely off my chin. I heard them drop softly against the hay in the moment of silence before I exhaled another wounded noise. My chest hurt as if someone had punched me, held me down, and beaten me. It was no such thing, but I was starting to believe a person could die of a broken heart. I couldn’t go on like this. I couldn’t live like this, with a Marnet-sized hole burned into my chest, leaving me with an empty place and jagged edges.

My heart tripped and stumbled; it felt like my very soul lurched, then went another direction. Like I was on a path, and my feet decided we would all take another trail without my brain’s consent.