Luna, Make a Wish

Of Course

"Emma, breathe."

I'd hardly even heard Serla talking to me. Breathe? What? Yes. Breathe.

I quickly averted my eyes from Darren's and looked around the room. Had anyone else seen that? Noticed that? What was that? Beta Rylen seemed to have noticed something. Although his posture didn't change, I could see him looking back and forth between Darren and I.

"Emma- isn't this what you always wanted?" Just as quick as she spoke, I'd put up a block on communication between Serla and I. I didn't need this right now. I didn't need her jesting that this was a granted wish from the Goddess, and I certainly didn't need her pointing out that Darren was still *staring* at me. I could already feel that.

I made sure that my gaze wholly and solely focused on my shoes. Yes. These interesting shoes of mine with their... laces and colors. It's not what I thought it was. It couldn't be what I thought it was. No one else seemed to notice, so I'm sure I just imagined it. It's because I had sugar and coffee for breakfast. Yes... This was a sugar high I was feeling... right?

I took a few steadying breaths as I continued to stare at my shoes. I wasn't really focusing anymore on anything but trying to get out of here. I peeked my head up long enough to see how far down the line Lenna had gotten. Four families left. Good.

Suddenly the emotions I had been feeling from the others in the room almost drifted off. As if someone had taken the stuck volume knob on a radio and turned it down from 20 to 8. Weird. That's never happened before.

Then I realized *why*. There was a whole presence worth of emotion and feelings inching its way towards me and surrounding me until I felt smothered by it. Curiosity, happiness, and... hurt? No. Offense. Someone was offended. Very offended.

I swallowed at the lump that built up in my throat and dared to lift my eyes in the direction all those feelings were coming for. I knew without looking who's they were, but I hoped I was wrong.

Of course I wasn't.

Alpha Darren was *staring* at me. Again. Staring as if I was the most outlandish and curious thing he had ever seen in his entire life. Maybe he was offended that *I* was the one that the Goddess had given to him as mate. Maybe, he was offended that I wasn't jumping for joy as some of these other girls would have and throwing myself at his feet. Maybe, he was offended that I had never so much as bothered to introduce myself.

Well, he was about to be a whole lot more offended by what I did next. The moment Lenna finished with the census and dismissed my group, I bolted. As fast as my feet could carry me without it being obvious that I was running.

I made my way to the double doors of the dining hall and rounded the corner into the hallway. I didn't bother looking up. I didn't want to risk meeting eyes with anyone else. Goddess knows this was bad enough as it was. The Alpha? Really?

I likely should have been watching where I was going a little more carefully than I had been, because I ran straight into one of those pretty half pillars. You know, the ones that look like solid painted concrete. The ones that had a porcelain bust of the previous Alpha on them? Yeah... Those pillars.

The pillars seemed to have been made of porcelain too because it began to wobble as I knocked into it full speed. I managed to catch and right the pillar... but not the bust on top.

Closing my eyes tightly I cringed and waited for the inevitable sound of the coming crash. And waited... I opened on eye and surveyed where the bust would have fallen. Nothing. I slowly opened my other eye and looked up.

Of course. There stood Alpha Darren. In all his Alpha glory... grinning like a bastard and holding the bust of his father. Of course, that was the one I'd knock over. Of course, he caught it. Of course, he got to me with ridiculous inhuman speed.

I swallowed that lump in my throat again and he stared down at me, yet that grin never left his lips.

"Mate?" I breathed the word more as a question than a statement, still unbelieving that this is what the Goddess had planned for us.

"Mate." He responded back in a tone that was both as cool as ice and as sweet as dark honey.

The soul-bond between two mates was always instantaneous. A deep look in the eyes would solidify that. Sometimes, it took a good many years to find your mate. Others found their mates as high school sweethearts. I obviously had not been that fortunate. In fact, High school was downright hell for me. I never understood those people who claimed high school were the best years of their lives.

Still, werewolves dated if they hadn't found their mate yet. Including all the intimacies that went along with it. Never anything wholly serious, as no one wanted to be dumped with their partner found their mate. I'd experienced that firsthand, and it sucked.

I shook my head at Darren as the others from the dining room had begun to file out, giving us strange looks as they passed. Some felt happy at the interaction. Many of the girls who had been fawning over the Alpha felt nothing but pure jealousy at my closeness to him, even if they didn't know what had just transpired.

"I... We don’t... we've never... Hn..." My words were getting all jumbled as my brain was spewing out things faster than my lips could move.

Darren set the porcelain bust of his father back up on the half pillar and nodded. "We don't know each other properly, and we've never even truly met?" There was a hefty tone of amusement as he unjumbled my words for me. "I don't dare question the Goddess, Emma."

Ooh... The way he said my name sent a wave of electricity coursing through my body. I had not expected that. I wasn't questioning the Goddess, was I? No... Yes. Yes, I was definitely questioning the Goddess.

Adoration and curiosity were the two biggest emotions from him that smothered me like the humidity on a monsoon day. Adoration I expected. With the soul-bond you couldn't... not. Right? I'd heard about wolves rejecting their mates before in lieu of finding a someone they liked better, or who had more social status or even when a couple had dated for a while and one of them found their mate. Regardless the reason, it felt like a slap to the Goddess. Though I suppose she wouldn't have given us the power of rejection if she did not want us to choose on some level.

"I... Erm... I need to... Yes. I'll..." I stumbled through. Then, without really thinking about it, I left. I simply walked past him and straight out the front door. I kept going and did not look back to see if he had followed me. I could feel that he hadn't as the weight of his emotions began to ebb away.

I could also feel that he was once more feeling offended. Rightly so. I would likely feel offended to if I had just found the mate of my life and they walked right out on me. There was a twinge of hurt, a pinch of anger and a dash of confusion. Moreover, however, the largest emotion that emitted from Alpha Darren... was amusement.

I kept walking without thinking. The rain was pouring and soaking me to the bone, the lightning was flashing across the sky. Yet I never flinched at the light or the thunder. My head was in an absolute haze. A deeper, more primal part of me wanted to go running back into the house and throw myself into the arms of my mate. The top more modern part of me was altogether confused, and mostly terrified.

Most of my life had been built around some kind of rejection or another. It wasn't because I felt ugly. There were many days where I felt quite pretty, in fact. I had a smidge more meat on me that most of the she-wolves my age as I didn't live for the healthiest eating plan. Still, school kids always find a way to out and bully someone they feel doesn't belong. That carried over into my adult life too.

Teased for being orphaned, or for wearing secondhand clothes, or because my hair was more brown than blonde or because that day I tied my left shoe before my right. It was always the same. I had a decent circle in high school. We all hung out together at lunch, or after school. Yet I was rarely invited to anything beyond that. I'd never put much thought to it until now.

Realizing that the reason I left the house... was that I was convinced on some subconscious level that Alpha Darren was going to reject me. I wasn't ugly, but I wasn't model gorgeous. I wasn't fragile but I wasn't overtly strong or confident. I certainly wasn't social... Which is what would be expected of an Alpha's Luna.

Somehow, I managed to get back to my apartment and walked my sopping wet self over to the counter. There, I saw the candle that had been lit and blown out for my birthday wish. The Goddess really had decided to grant my wish this year, and this was the one year I didn't take the wish seriously.

Of course.