The Luna He Chose Was My Cousin

The candles were still burning when the screaming started.

I had lit every single one of them myself. Twelve white pillar candles arranged down the center of the dining table, my mother's good silver beside each plate, the wildflowers I had cut from the garden standing in a crystal vase that my father always said was too pretty to actually use. I had spent three hours on that table. Three hours, because tonight was the night I was finally going to tell Jason.

His child had been growing inside me for six weeks, and I had been carrying the secret like something fragile, cupped in both hands, terrified to breathe too hard.

The screaming shattered every bit of that.

It was not one voice. It was many, ripping through the estate all at once, and underneath the voices came a sound I had never heard before in my life. A sound like the pack bond itself was tearing. Like something ancient and deeply wrong had just walked through our gates.

My wolf shot upright inside me before my body even moved.

"Mama." I was already running before I finished the word. "Mama, where are you?"

The hallway outside the dining room was chaos. Pack warriors I had known since childhood were sprinting past me with weapons drawn, their faces locked into something that was not fear but sat right beside it. One of them grabbed my arm as I ran.

"Laila, you need to stay back."

"Let go of me." I pulled free so hard my shoulder burned. "Where are my parents?"

He opened his mouth. Then a crash came from the east wing, a sound like something massive had been thrown through a wall, and we both went still.

"Where are they?" I said again, and my voice came out wrong. Too quiet. Too controlled. The kind of quiet that only happens when your body knows something your mind is not ready for.

He could not look at me.

I ran.

The east corridor was full of smoke and the sharp metallic smell of blood, the kind of blood smell that hits the back of your throat and stays there. I shoved past two warriors who tried to stop me, ducked under a shattered door frame, and burst into my father's private study.

I stopped.

My father, Alpha King Ronan Ashford, was on the floor.

My mother, Luna Elara, was beside him, half over him, like she had tried to cover him with her own body.

Three rogues stood at the far wall. One of them looked at me and grinned.

I do not remember what happened to them. My wolf took over and I let her, completely and without hesitation, and when it was over my hands were shaking and the rogues were not standing anymore and I was already on my knees between my parents before the sound of the fight had even finished echoing off the walls.

"Papa." I pressed both hands to my father's chest. The blood was everywhere. It was warm, and it was too much, and I knew before I even checked his pulse what I was already losing. "Papa, look at me. Look at me right now."

His eyes opened. Dark brown, like mine. Adopted or not, everyone always said we had the same eyes.

"Laila." His voice was barely anything. A thread. "Get up."

"I am not leaving you."

"Laila."

"Stop talking." My hands pressed harder, completely useless, and I knew they were useless. I kept pressing anyway. "Jason is coming home tonight. He is going to be here soon and everything is going to be fine, just stop talking and let me—"

"Laila." My mother's hand found my face.

I made myself look at her.

She looked at me the way she always had, like I was the most important thing she had ever held. Even now. Even like this. Her fingers were cold against my cheek and I reached up and covered them with my hand and pressed them there, keeping them there, refusing to let go.

"Run," she whispered.

"Mama, no."

"There are more of them coming." Her eyes were still clear, still sharp, still so completely and unbearably hers. "You have to run, baby girl. There is something they want, something they came here for, and it is not the pack. It is you. You have to go."

"I am not leaving you here."

"You have to." She coughed. Her hand went still against my face. "Promise me."

I could not speak.

"Laila." The word was barely a breath. "Promise me."

"I promise," I said. And I hated myself for saying it, even as I said it. "I promise, Mama."

Her eyes closed.

My father's hand found mine in the dark, and he held it for four more seconds, and then he did not.

I do not know how long I stayed on that floor. Long enough for the sounds of fighting outside to go quiet. Long enough for the smoke to start stinging my eyes or maybe that was something else. Long enough for the child inside me, the tiny secret that had no idea yet what kind of world it had been born into, to feel like the only real thing left.

I pressed my hand to my stomach in the dark.

"It is okay," I said, to no one. To both of us. "It is okay. He is coming."

I reached for my phone with bloody hands and called Jason.

It rang five times and went to voicemail.

I called again. Four times. Three times. Twice.

Nothing.

I sent a message. Two words. My hands were shaking so badly the first attempt came out as gibberish and I had to retype it.

Come home.

By the time the pack betas arrived at the estate, I was still sitting on that floor. Still between my parents. Still covered in blood that had gone cold and dark.

The first beta through the door was a man named Corin, young, new to his rank, and I watched his face go through three different things in the span of two seconds. Shock. Grief. And then something that made my stomach clench.

Suspicion.

He looked at my parents. He looked at me. He looked at the blood on my hands, my arms, my face, and I watched the thing behind his eyes shift into a shape I recognized, even then. Even numb and hollow and still holding my mother's cold hand.

He was doing the math.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

"No."

"What happened here?"

"Rogues." My voice was flat. I felt flat, like something had pressed me paper-thin. "There were rogues. Three of them. They are in the corner."

He looked at the corner.

I watched his jaw tighten.

"We should get you somewhere to sit down," he said carefully. The kind of careful that means something else entirely.

"I am sitting down."

"Laila." He crouched in front of me, not reaching out, keeping distance he was pretending was courtesy. "You should not be in here right now."

"These are my parents."

"I know." He said it the way people say things they are not sure they believe. "But we need to secure the scene and, right now, everyone who was present when this happened needs to be accounted for."

I stared at him.

"You think I did this," I said.

He did not say yes. He did not say no. He held my gaze and said nothing, and that nothing answered every single thing I had just asked.

I stood up slowly. My legs were stiff and my hands were still trembling and I did not wipe the blood from my face because I could not make myself care about it.

"Jason is coming home tonight," I said. "When he gets here, I need to speak with him immediately. Tell every person in this pack, whoever arrives first, that Laila Ashford is waiting. Tell them I will not move until my mate comes home."

Corin nodded, slow and careful and deeply, terribly cautious.

I sat back down beside my parents.

I sent Jason one more message.

I need you. Please.

Outside, through the shattered windows of my father's study, the night was still and cold and enormous. The Canadian wind moved through the trees at the edge of the territory the way it always did, indifferent and ancient, unbothered by any of it.

I pressed my palm flat to my stomach again.

Held it there.

Waited.

He would come. He always came back. That was who we were to each other, the kind of mates who always found their way back to each other, and tonight, when he walked through those gates and saw what had happened, he would take one look at me and every lie anyone tried to tell about this night would collapse under the weight of what he knew about me.

He would come home.

I believed that.

I had never believed anything so completely in my life.

And that was the cruelest thing about what happened next.