Lunar Eclipse

Chapter Eight

(Annette's POV)

The next week went by without a hitch, everything was just fine. I watched Camilla’s kids so they could go out for a dinner. They both came back pink faced and hair tousled looking like two horny teenagers after getting caught in the act. Annika as usual started a temper tantrum about having to leave while Hilda gave me a sweet hug and left without complaint. It was only after Asbjorn talked to Annika quietly that she sniffled up her tears and agreed to go, it was amazing how well he did with her.

Gia had been asking for nightly runs going back to the same spot where she first smelled her mate but since the full moon we haven’t smelled anything. This led me to believe that our mate was probably a Rouge and was long gone, good riddance, I didn’t want a mate. Gia finally found that that little secret out and was pissed at me, now she talked to me less and less, I could feel her irritation growing each day which was giving me daily migraines.

Tonight we were going on our daily run and Gia’s irritation was palpable, you could cut it with a knife.

“Gia I know you are irritated with me but you and I both know we can’t go past the border and we have tried to find your mates sent all over the pack grounds” she whined again but I could tell she accepted my reasoning but was not happy to accept it. though she wasn’t going to give me the satisfaction of telling me I was right.

“We should have gone after OUR mate the day we smelled his scent, he would have protected us against any Rouges” she tossed her head confident in her argument.

“Or he could be a Rouge and reject us then kill us, or worse leave us to the Exiles. Plus how do you know it is a man not a woman?” Honestly distracting her was working and she was running slower, hopefully she would get tired soon and turn around.

“I want a man and so do you. And our mate would never do that to us, our mate will want us as badly as we will” she picked up her pace again out of anger.

“Your mate not mine, I do not want a mate” as soon as the words were out she growled so loudly the pack probably heard it bouncing off the trees, it was menacing and promised pain.

“He will be OUR mate, if you reject him them I will reject you” mentally I was shocked, we never had an argument before this mate business we had always been on the same page about everything. A wolf can ‘reject’ its human counterpart by basically retreating so deep in our subconscious that we practically become human and after a while your wolf disappears.

Losing that part of yourself makes most people go mad and the ones who don’t are barely welcome in the pack anymore. It is very rare for a wolf to reject its human counterpart, most of the time this leads to living just on the edge of the pack or becoming a Rouge.

Exiles are different from rouges, rogues leave their packs willingly or are banished for some other minor infraction. It is not necessarily bad to be a rouge, most packs will accept you once they look at your files from your last pack but Exiles are a whole other ball of wax.

Exiles are hard criminals, you can only become an Exile for the most heinous crimes to our world like murder, r**e, and kidnapping. Exiles are branded on the upper right arm with a mixture of wolfs bane and silver, not enough to cause death but enough to permanently change their scent to smell like burning flesh all the time.

If Gia left me, rejected me I would become a shell of myself I would lose my position on the Luna Guard. I know my family would support me and stay with me but the rest of the pack would not see me the same, I would either be a laughing stock or be pitied. This scared me either lose my wolf and become half a person or mate and have the possibility of losing that mate and lose a part of myself. Either way I would be losing a part of myself, why is it I have to lose a part of myself either way?

“You would do that to us? To me” I ask horrified.

“I could ask you the same question” she had a point I was denying her something so important to her just like she would deny me.

“You saw what happened to my mother, I do not want that happening to us, the pain I am scared of it” I admitted to her, I was scared of the whole mating process of being that bonded to another person.

“Next time you are with your mother ask her if she would change anything in her time together with her mate” after she said those words she blocked me out while she focused on her search for our mate’s smell.