Alpha Chose Another Luna, I Left
As Gamma of the Creed Pack, I'd held the Northern Border alone for three full years.
Every time I called in to ask when I could come home, my mate — the Alpha of Creed — picked up the phone himself.
He told me the rogues weren't cleared. He told me the rival packs were still circling.
He said, "Nora. One more year. Once we have completely eliminated all our enemies, I will hold the grandest mating ceremony for you. I swear it on the Moon."
I believed him.
When I dragged myself out of a pile of dead rogues with a silver arrowhead still lodged an inch from my heart, bleeding too fast for a medevac, my warriors had to shift and run me back in wolf form all the way to Creed territory.
The moment we crossed the border, I saw fairy lights strung from every streetlamp along the road to the pack house.
Pack wolves on the sidewalks were talking loud, smiling at each other.
"The Alpha's Mating Ceremony is tonight. He's taking the Elder's daughter as Luna. Three years of peace on the border. It's a good time to be Creed."
I coughed dark blood into the fur on the back of my warrior's neck and laughed, short and bitter.
He hadn't needed me holding the border.
He just hadn't wanted me home.