Lacking Humanity|Half Crescent

Chapter Forty-Four (Rewritten)

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Sage and Andy were dreading the end of their journey for different reasons, so she firmly moved and positioned herself to look at him—Only to attempt a shift. While he tried to stop her, the better half of him knew this was definitely a conversation to have in skin than half and half.

Now, she sat on top of the covered mattress in her travel gear, and he made the silent notion of helping her out of her bear fur and folding it up. "Talk about what?"

"How we're going to call everyone's families and packs..." Andy began, "It will take some time, and we had to make it appealing to the Alpha. Even if you were a part of the pack, we didn't have much of a standing."
"My brothers will help, and then family in Mystic Grimm too." Andy had remained silent for a moment and sighed. He was not sure if he could trust just her words anymore.

"I don't know, hun. Alpha Harlow didn't sound too stoked about the idea. We need to be prepared on the off chance that they don't want to help." She swallowed thickly after that notion. She didn't doubt that even if Remus were no longer here, her friends would remain just as they were—friends—family, even.

Her stomach ached at the idea of his death, that he could've died thinking that he'd meet her again in the afterlife or whatever was after this place.

Andy spotted the turmoil and came down beside her. His soft eyes were a gentle awakening. A familiar glint that twinkled in them had enacted a wave of trust that she should listen to his concerns and make plans.

Even if he didn't know the whole truth.

Yet, as they spoke and conversed about planning for the inevitable, it still didn't change the fact that she wasn't feeling all that great about being so close yet so far from the arrival date.

"We'll figure it out. I like having a backup plan, I didn't mean to scare you like that."
"Not scared just...Very worried. I'm Luna of another pack...How does that look?" He nodded, guilt riddling his scared face soon after.

"Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, sweetheart. This doesn't look good on my end. Our bond. Our...Friendship. But you'll protect me from your Mate's brothers, right?" Sage blinked for a moment, the automatic response almost fell out and would've outted everything. 'Remus doesn't have any brothers,' how easily would things shift if Andy heard it?

But Sage managed to hold herself back, and thankfully, Torin had interrupted them by coming over with the first drop of firewood. "The pups are looking for food, witches claim there are no signs of life...It's strange. The Luna was right—This building is evil." Sage nodded to his words and gave a light smile to the Viking as she spotted his tattoos under his own thick coat.

"Evil man does bad things in this building. Mate calls it a graveyard." Sage claimed, and Andy allowed his head to bounce a few times in agreement. "It's fortunate we found this place when we did. The snow is already starting to settle. I'll need more able hands to gather enough wood." With that, the Alpha was prepared for some heavy labor to get his mind off his crushing demise.

It occasionally crossed his mind how utterly wrong his feelings for Sage were. Andy was planning to replace her mate, a male who'd faced the fact that the mother of his pups had died so far away from him, and left the family, stripping them of their connecting bond.

Something that Andy wasn't all too sure how it was possible to achieve such a damning thing.

The Moon Goddess will certainly punish him for his betrayal of messing with her divine plan for her sons and daughters. But he knew that he had more than just Sage's mate to answer to, and that started with getting to the bottom of why this place still felt eery and dark, even after being foreclosed for more than a decade.