I opened my eyes in a sterile white room and the first splash of colour I saw was a mop of sandy blonde hair.
“Jackson –“ I croaked, my throat burning as I did.
“Luna, you are awake.” The owner of the mop of sandy blonde hair similar to my mate’s gave me an awkward smile. The woman beside him mirrored his smile. “I am Doctor Fabian. We have met before, if you remember,” he said.
“My mate?” I looked around the room that was empty save for the doctor and nurse giving me awkward smiles.
“We’ve contacted the Alpha. He will be here as soon as he can,” the doctor assured me. “We contacted him a few hours ago so he should be here soon,” he added.
“How long was I out?” I asked.
“About four hours now. You seem to be suffering from both fatigue and food poisoning. May I ask what you have eaten in the past twenty-four hours? Can you remember? Has there been any change in your diet?” I avoided his gaze and swallowed.
Heat crept up my neck as I thought back to the previous day. My hands curled at my side as if to squash my mortification. How could I tell a doctor the shenanigans I engaged in yesterday? How would he look at me if he knew I drank the blood of an animal I killed myself? That may not even be the cause of my food poisoning considering the concoctions I had been taking for the past week.
“I’ve just been taking this and that,” I muttered in a small voice.
“I need you to be a bit more specific, please,” the doctor insisted so with a small voice and gritted teeth, I confessed all the mindless things I had done in the past week.
I chanced a glance at the doctor when I finished speaking and met an expressionless face but the nurse was not as skilled as he was in maintaining a blank face. Her lips were rounded and her eyes conveyed incredulity that made me redden further.
After my confession, the doctor placed me on watch for the next forty-eight hours. Since I did not know what went into the concoctions I had taken, there was a chance some of the substances were dangerous so I had to be monitored.
When the doctor left, I scrolled through my phone while waiting for a call or text from my mate. A part of me knew he would not come but the other part of me – the bigger part of me that was in love with him, the part that still believed our relationship was salvageable – waited for him to arrive with worry painted on his face.
The first twenty-four hours passed with me hooked on drips and my bedside empty. No one called. No one texted and no one came to see me. I never felt more alone in my life than I did then. I was not an orphan. I had a family, a mate, a best friend, a pack, yet I lived like someone who was all alone in the world.
To distract myself from my misery, I scrolled through social media. As I scrolled, I stumbled upon a post about Alpha Valens and shuddered. He had taken over yet another pack and the picture underneath the post made me wince. If murderous had a poster image, it would be of the prince, a man often described as a shadow of evil. Sometimes, I doubted he was real. How could one man continually conquer so many packs in such a short time without anyone stopping him? It didn’t help that there were only two or three pictures of him on the web and all the pictures looked doctored to make him look as ferocious as possible.
The more I scrolled, the more posts of the cursed prince I saw. No one knew how a curse supposed to have been broken resurfaced in the prince – maybe the royal family knew but they kept their lips tightly sealed about the prince’s curse.
I touched my stomach.
“Aren’t you cursed, yourself?” I muttered. “Everyone says everything is fine, still, there’s no baby,” I laughed with no joy.
The next day, I was free to leave the hospital. Although I was grateful to be well again, I felt dread pool in my guts as I got into my car. The last forty-eight hours passed with relative peace. No one called to check on me but no one called to insult me either. I didn’t have to deal with the mocking or sympathetic looks of the pack members nor did I have to deal with the disgust in my mate’s eyes.
I drove myself back home in a hospital gown, a grim smile on my lips and a tightness in my chest. Going back to the real world filled me with anxiety. I didn’t know what to say to Jackson anymore. Should I confront him about abandoning me in the hospital? Should I say nothing to him? How long would I have to deal with his building hatred?
‘Leave him,’ a voice whispered to me and I pressed my lips together.
What would life without my mate be like? I could not think of who I was outside of Jackson’s Luna. If I broke our flimsy mate bond, I would no longer be the Luna of Blood Moon pack. Who then would I be?
I sat in my car for over twenty minutes after I pulled up at our home. My entire body felt too heavy to exit the car. A place which used to fill me with so much pride and joy now filled me with dread and anxiety as I stared at it.
Pushing my tired legs, I got out of the car and dragged myself to the house. The closer I got to the door, the faster my heart beat. I put in my keys to open the front door but met it unlocked. Why was Jackson home so early? My heart raced faster.
Pushing the door open like a criminal breaking in, I entered my home with shaky hands and feet, my breath hitching.
As an omega, I did not have the sharpest senses but I perceived an overwhelmingly foul odour as soon as I opened the door to the house. It took all of my willpower to drag myself up the stairs to our room and the closer I got to the room, the faster my heart beat and the harder it got to breathe.
My chest constricted when the obscene sounds floated into my ears. The door to my room – the room I shared with my mate – was slightly ajar and the sound and scent assailing my senses meant only one thing but I found it impossible to believe. I did not want to believe.
I peeked into the room before pushing the door ajar and stepping inside. My blood boiled. My hands were clenched at my side. My teeth gnashed hard against each other but when I opened my mouth, I could only make a small sound.
“Oh,” I muttered, the sound getting lost in the loud moans coming from my sister.
She noticed me first. Her eyes caught mine and the side of her lips rose in a smirk before she scrunched up her face and let out a loud moan. It sounded like a drowning dog.
“Yes – Ahh – yes – just like that – just like that, Jackie!” She moaned, wrapping her legs around my mate’s waist. My mate groaned, moving his hips faster as he pumped into my sister and my senses returned.
“What is this?” I found my voice and I shouted, feeling a rush of blood in my head. Tears blurred my vision but I blinked furiously.
“Ah – Argh!” Irene exclaimed, pushing Jackson away and scrambling for the covers as if she had just noticed my presence. My mate turned, caught my gaze and pursed his lips.
“Can you wait outside?” He said with a sigh as if I was the one defiling our marriage bed. He covered Irene like she was the most precious gift in the world while I remained motionless at the entrance.
“Chantelle!” He snapped when my legs refused to move and they unglued themselves from the ground. I ran from the room, stumbling my way down the stairs with blurred vision.
He was cheating on me.
It was something I never considered but it made sense. He already checked out of our relationship. I was the fool who kept striving to make things better. He found someone else already – my stepsister even!
Janet’s words from two days ago resounded in my head and I almost laughed through the tears pouring down my face and soaking my hospital gown. She knew about this. She knew her brother was cheating on me with my stepsister that’s why she warned me to conceive fast; before she did.
Who else knew?
I felt like a fool. All the signs were there. He stopped touching me and started looking at me like a piece of dog crap underneath his shoes but I refused to see the signs. I focused all my attention on building a family with him while he screwed my sister in our home, on our marriage bed which I excitedly picked out all those years ago.
“Such a fool,” I whispered, rocking myself back and forth in my seat. “Such a fool, Chantelle. Such a fool!”
“Chantelle, we need to talk.” My mate came down the stairs with my sister clad in his shirt.
“How long?” The words spilt from my lips.
“Do you really want to know?” He asked.
“You fucking bastard! How long have you been screwing my sister!” I screamed and the little bitch huddled into his side.
“Don’t – Don’t yell, Channy. Don’t scare the baby,” she mumbled, tears in her eyes as she cradled her stomach. I noticed the tiny bump and my heart sank to the ground.
“W – What?” I whispered, my jaw slackening.
“Uggh,” I sighed as I collapsed onto the sofa. “I’m tired of being pregnant,” I muttered as I sank deeper into the new sofa. I was a few weeks away from delivery and I felt huge, as in HUGE. There were times when I saw doors and I was scared I wouldn’t be able to fit through. Of course, it always ended up being my imagination but my back was killing me and my feet were now atrociously large. Most of all, I was more than eager to meet my babies. “We’re done, Luna,” the pack members who’d come to help Valens and me move into our new home announced. I’d been looking forward to this day for a long time and it was finally here. The house was fully decorated and we’d set up the babies’ room a while back. Everything was perfect. Life was awesome. We hadn’t moved all those months ago because aside from having to decorate the house, I didn’t think it was right to leave the pack house when the pack was still grieving. Redville had not experienced a battle in decades and although there were a
The sun hitting my face forced me to open my eyes. The sterile smell of antiseptic assailed my nostrils and made me wrinkle my nose. The hospital remained one of the worst places for me. It reminded me of the many long hours I used to spend in fertility clinics trying to conceive. I touched my stomach or I tried to. One of my hands felt numb and the other was gripped in someone else’s hand.I took a deep breath to calm myself as a flood of memories passed through me. It was as if I was being held at knifepoint again and my heart trembled. My lips pursed and tears rapidly filled my eyes. I’d been so scared, goddess, I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d been as scared as I was then. My life had flashed before my eyes and I saw everything I was about to lose.I tried to breathe but my chest felt like it was caving in on me and I could still feel a hand around my neck choking the breath out of me. The nightmare was over but the scars it left were permanent. As I lay there in bed
As the howls faded into the night, I continued to pace. Beth tried to comfort me but I couldn’t listen to her. Lucian had dispatched more wolves to the battleground and I knew my mate was badly hurt from the pulsing pain I felt at my side. All I could do now was pray to a goddess that had never answered me. Although I’d trained a lot in the past to augment my lack of strength as an omega, I’d neglected training since I entered Redville. Even if I was not pregnant, there was nothing I could do to help my mate at this point and it made me feel like a failure.My mate was out there risking his life to protect me, to protect us, and all I could do was hide. As his Luna, I should be by his side always and if I should die, I was to die by his side but I was hidden here, biting into my nails and holding back tears. Nestled in the pack’s sanctuary, I could not keep still. I and many other women were wide awake like an owl, the air heavy with tension and fear.Even after the moon waned and nig
*VALENS*My moon stared at me and I stared at her. We both knew what was coming. My wolf was already bristling with anticipation. Chantelle’s face was pale and I needed to reassure her.“It’ll be alright,” I said and I was sure of it. In seventeen years, I’d conquered twenty-four packs. There was nothing to fear from Dahlia and Jackson. I told her just that and it almost felt like bragging.“Then, you couldn’t be killed,” she responded, her voice disturbingly quiet. “But not anymore. Anything could happen and I’d lose you.” Tears filled her eyes and my chest tightened.“I’ll be by your side forever. That’s a promise. You’re mine in every lifetime so I’ll always be by your side, moon.”“Don’t say that.” She shook her head. “It sounds like you’re planning to die and leave my side. Don’t make it sound like you’re saying farewell.”“Farewell? We’ve not even moved into our new home. I’m not leaving you to raise our pups alone.” I hugged her to me. The sensation of having her pressed tight
*JACKSON*“Alpha Jackson, you are a genius!” Alpha Shawn praised me.Shawn was one of the many Alphas I met through my mysterious benefactor and the most powerful of all the Alphas I’d been introduced to. I found him obnoxious and too talkative but he had a large number of resources to throw away as long as he could watch the Cursed Alpha get trampled on. His stocky build was more like a Beta’s and he constantly stank of garlic so he wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around.He was a man that I would have dismissed if I didn’t know the power he wielded. Sometimes while we conversed, I felt resentful that a man like this had so many resources to spare while I was now battling bankruptcy thanks to Alpha Park.As if that bastard had known what lay ahead, he’d started to sell his properties in Blood Moon. I heard he’d made investments in Redville. Thelma had somehow found out that he’d willed everything, including his clothes, to his daughter. Everything he had left would go to her. I
By evening that day, the entire pack was silent. It was weird to me because usually, I’d ask Dahlia to tell me what was going on in the pack and now she wasn’t here anymore. It’s like she’d disappeared into thin air. Knowing her better now, I knew she had planned that too. She was smart so there was no way he didn’t know she’d be caught one day so she must have put in thorough plans into escaping when her crimes were exposed.As for her brother, he was not in jail because he was Valens’ Beta. I’d had to step in when it looked like my mate would unsheathe his claws and take a swipe at his chest and I knew the Beta would not try to defend himself. He’d take it without a word. For now, we put Lucian on probation.I was stressed, feeling feverish and stewing over Dahlia’s lies and how well she played me. It was as if the puzzle of life suddenly clicked. Everything made sense now, from how protective she seemed of Valens to the things happening around me. A girl like Dahlia who could sell