The Alpha's Other Woman

10 Responsible

Carrie

A couple of minutes after Madeline had made her kind offer, my day rapidly plummeted to intolerable. Dane continued showing Heidi around the pack house, and of course he had to bring her down to show her the luna's office.

I don't know what he had been expecting, since his eyes widened as if he was somehow surprised to find me there. It was almost as if it had not been him who had forced me to temporarily resume the luna's duties. All I knew was that I wanted to punch him in his imbecilic face.

"And this is Carrie. She's been taking care of the luna's duties and will show you the ropes," he introduced, barely taking his eyes off of the silly girl he had brought back. She was blond and very pretty, but she looked terribly young, probably at least ten years his junior. It was a pretty big age gap for a mated pair, although that was the least of my problems with it.

I pasted a warm smile onto my face. "Nice to meet you, Luna."

She seemed to have momentary misgivings, and I wondered if she saw through my best acting, or if she could sense the tension between me and her mate. "I'm looking forward to learning everything."

"And I'm looking forward to teaching you," I replied politely, only barely restraining myself from adding in an aside to Dane through the mind link, "And especially getting the hell out of here."

She giggled nervously. I gritted my teeth. She sounded as peppy as a cheerleader, I half expected her to break out pompoms. Is this what fate really thought our pack needed? I was beginning to think fate or the moon goddess or whatever just pulled names randomly from a hat.

Or maybe it really was all about reproduction. She did look sickeningly fertile. There were a lot of theories, but no one really knew the truth behind matings and I was getting more agnostic by the minute.

Not that it mattered. Dane broke in. "If you want, you can start tomorrow, Heidi. What do you think?"

"I think that sounds great, Dane," she said, looking up at him like he had said something purely amazing.

For one moment, I almost thought that Dane would be so insensitive as to start kissing her in front of me, but apparently even he was not that bad, as he gently pulled her away with a hand on her arm.

"See you tomorrow, Carrie," Heidi trilled.

"Yes, until then," I ground out in the most neutral voice I could muster.

At first, I had been hurt, but now I was genuinely beginning to worry about the fate of the pack with a luna like her.

—————

My first day training my replacement did not relieve my fears for the pack in the slightest.

She was enthusiastic, but her attention span seemed shorter than a humming bird's. I tried to work her through the forms and the duties, but there was always something else, whether a notification on her phone or a conversation with one of the pack members that distracted her from what she should be doing. All I found was my work started to pile up and my frustration grew while I made little headway with her.

I put up with the torture for two excruciatingly long weeks, before I finally couldn't take it anymore. I gave her a task to work on and made my way down to Dane's office alone. I knocked on the door and went in once he gave permission.

"Yes?" he asked coolly with a raised eyebrow. I hated this side of him. "Leave the door open," he ordered when I went to close it.

I took a seat even though he never offered, and a flash of that one time he took me—no, that was in the past—and I needed to focus. I had managed to desensitize myself to so many memories already, I just had to do that with this room, as well.