Chapter Three: Saying Goodbye

I couldn’t believe it! 

Surely my mother had just lost her mind because the actual LUNA from the Roal Moon Pack was not only in our house but took time to speak with us! That had to be the reason because there was simply NO WAY that she just told me that they SOLD me BACK to the Luna! Why would she say something like that? If this is some kind of a joke, it is NOT funny! 

“Mom, what do you mean you sold me back to the Luna?” She turned around, looked up the stairs at me, and without hesitation told me that she didn’t think I was that stupid that I couldn’t understand a simple phrase. “We sold you, as in received money from the Luna of Royal Moon Pack, for you to leave here and “return” to her home for you to live in her custody,” she snarled.  

As she descended the stairs, she reminded me that I had precious little time to gather my belongings and be ready to leave. I was being given less time to pack up my entire life than it takes to make a pot of coffee and enjoy it.

I turned slowly back around, making my way back to my bedroom. Why would they do this? I am their daughter, not some piece of trash to be thrown away at a whim.The brimming tears finally found their way down my cheek as I walked over to my bed and started packing my things in the boxes I saw beside my open door. I didn’t remember seeing them earlier, but things don’t just magically show up. 

I haphazardly half-folded my clothing into a larger box, then emptied my dresser and nightstands of my belongings of the smaller things in a smaller box. As I labeled the boxes with their contents, one thought kept playing itself over and over in my head. The people I have loved and trusted for my entire life, the ones who taught me to be the best I could be, and the ones I would have taken a silver bullet for, have abandoned me. And for what? MONEY??!! I feel like my entire world has shattered. 

As I scurried through my room, checking to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, I heard the gravel of the driveway crunch under the weight of several vehicles. I looked out my window to see three large, black Cadillac Escalades pulling up. I didn’t know what an Escalade was as I had never seen one, but I knew that Cadillac only made luxury cars. 

I started to ponder then if I would even “fit” in her family when I didn’t even know what kind of car I was getting into. I don’t know what any other protocol was except how an Omega is expected to act around the Royal Hierarchy. 

What am I supposed to do now? How am I supposed to act and react in this new dynamic I am being thrown involuntarily into? How many times will I be able to mess things up before they get tired of me and rethink this whole idea of me being a part of their royal lineage and subsequently throw me out to fend on my own? 

I finished packing everything and sat on my now bare bed and sobbed. My mother returned to the doorway of my room with the same two warriors that were with Luna Ashley yesterday when they showed up here unannounced. “These warriors are here to bring your belongings out to the cars. You can go say goodbye to Charles if you would like to,” my mom said. 

I stared at her with a gaping mouth. Did she just call my dad “Charles” when referring to him to me? I shuffled down the stairs, grief-stricken. “Daddy?” I said to his back as I stepped off the bottom stair heading to the living room. He turned slowly, looking at me with some kind of emotion behind his stare before covering it up with his typical stoic glare. 

“You shouldn’t make the Luna wait,” he said to me as he started heading to the door, following the warriors and my mother out. I followed slowly, heading towards the Escalade that had Luna Ashley in it. As soon as she opened the door, holding her hand out to welcome me to her, I turned and ran back toward the house and my parents. 

My teary eyes made seeing difficult, and as I was making my way back to my parents, begging them not to make me go, my foot caught on an exposed tree root, and the next thing I knew, I was face-first in the dirt. The sharp edges of the root had dug into my leg, cutting it. I got up, limping the rest of the way to my parents, holding out my hands to them, “Please! Mom! Daddy! Don’t make me go. I will get another job and give you everything, so you don’t have to take Luna Ashley’s money. Just please let me stay here, at home?!” I begged as I looked at each of them hopefully. I was hugging my dad around the waist while waiting for a response.

“You need to go,” my dad finally said as he extricated my arms away from him and stepped back. My mother reached over, took his hand, and leaned into him as she said, “We’ve done our job. Let’s go back inside and leave this behind us.” Without another glance in my direction, they turned, went inside, and after the door shut, I distinctly heard the deadbolt click into place. 

I turned back towards the vehicles in the driveway and made my way slowly and somberly back to the middle vehicle. Luna Ashley stepped out and stood beside the open door. I had not met my wolf yet, so my healing ability was at the same rate as a human. Limping from the cuts and pain in my leg, I finally reached the vehicle.

Luna Ashley reached out to me as though she was going to bring me in for a hug, but I shrugged her gesture away and climbed into the back of the Escalade without a word to anyone. Luna Ashley got in, and before the door could be secured on her side, I was already leaning against the window of my side as far away from her as I could get, gazing out the window at nothing. 

“Claire,” Luna Ashley started to speak. I interrupted whatever she wanted to say. “Luna Ashley, with all due respect, I am tired, I am hungry, I was just taken from everything and everyone  I have ever known without even a hint of a conversation about how I might feel about any of it. I don’t know why you would have paid my parents to buy me, but I am not ok with it. So, please, leave me be while I try to process everything,” I clearly stated to her. As I turned back towards the window, my ankle caught on the seat in front of me and caused me to hiss from the renewed pain. 

“Are you ok, Claire?” Luna Ashley asked with a hint of worry in her voice. Although there are tears of pain in my eyes and blood running down my ankle, soaking my white socks and the top of my tennis shoe. I glanced down before meeting her eyes and replying, “I’m fine. Nothing a good cleansing and bandage won’t fix right up in no time. Thank you for your concern,” I said. As I turned back toward the window, I saw Luna Ashley lean down a bit from the corner of my eye to see what I had glanced at.

Her eyes glazed over, meaning she was mind-linking someone, so I figured we didn’t have much time left before this trip ended. As we pulled through the entrance gate, Luna Ashley informed me that the pack doctor would meet us at the pack house to take a look at my still weeping leg. I thanked her and leaned back on the seat, waiting until we stopped. 

As everyone disembarked from the Escalade, I limped out, taking care not to put too much pressure on the leg with the cut. I looked up and saw, at the top of the stairs leading into the pack house, Alpha Marlon and a boy that looked like a carbon copy of me, only in the male persuasion. “Is that my twin brother,” I thought to myself, “I’m not only Luna Ashley’s biological daughter, but I am also a twin?” I just stood back a little and observed the loving, welcoming Luna Ashley received from the alpha and her son/my brother, Anthony.