Wrongfully Claimed [ MxM ]

Chapter 6

APOLLO ||

I feel his worry through the pack link. It's not something that Lorenzo has been able to hide from anyone. I know what's causing him pain and the Alpha in me, aches to relieve that. It hurts even more that I can't fix it completely.

The only thing I can offer him is my touch. That's the only thing that seems to help ease the throbbing.

Knocking on the bathroom door, I wait for him to invite me in, and when he does, I open the door to find Lorenzo in front of the mirror, face twisted in pain and one hand rubbing diligently at the left side of his neck.

Slowly approaching him, I stifle the way my eyes want to roam his back and bare chest with all the newly constructed muscles that lay there. Instead I focus on making my way to him and taking deep, steady breaths.

"Still hurts?" I ask, my hands gently removing his and taking their place. One covering this bruised mark on the side of his neck and the other, lying on his shoulder to massage away the tension there.

Lorenzo nods, his face still twisted up. "Yeah. Every full Moon, it gets to acting up."

I sigh, knowing that much. We still don't know where, why or how Lorenzo acquired such a painful mark. He wasn't mated, hadn't found his fated and he hadn't been marked by another wolf that we know of.

The only thing we did know was that this mark showed up on his neck the same night as my coronation nine years ago.

I wasn't around to see what happened and Lorenzo had no memory of it, but when I returned from trying to find who kidnapped and wrongfully claimed my fated, I saw Lorenzo also stumbling out of the treeline, one hand on his neck and a painful look in his eyes.

At first I thought maybe he'd found his mate and was marked by him or her, but this mark wasn't a mate mark. It didn't look like one, he didn't carry any other scents and he didn't have the urge to be near whoever or whatever gave him this mark.

We both lost something that day. My fated, and his memory on what happened to him during the time I took off after the men who'd taken my Noah.

Strange thing is, it was a full Moon that night. A phase of the Moon that should have brought tranquility and relaxation throughout our pack and all the visiting packs for my coronation.

Instead it ended up becoming one of the worst nights of my life and one of the oddest ones of Lorenzo's.

The next night, we had a crescent Moon. It was offputting to say the least. . . Maybe, offputting wasn't the right word.

"No, it was impossible." — Slade offers and I find myself nodding

Yeah, it was impossible. The Moon doesn't shift through phases that quickly, but she had that night. She went from the fully blossomed light of our night to a phase of her being, that symbolized strength, truthfulness, togetherness and empowerment to all wolves.

It was a phase where she would be a quarter of her whole and the lives of her wolves made up the rest of her existence.

Crescent Moons were rare. Very rare and she only shows that phase of herself when she needs her children to come together and be whole.

Except I didn't know why she had shown us that phase the very next night after Lorenzo and I had some of the weirdest experiences to have ever happen to us.

I shouldn't have asked her. I shouldn't have questioned her wisdom and her power because when I did, that's when the night terrors started for me, and the dreams started for Lorenzo.

They weren't something we could ever explain. Our parents couldn't help us and Sloane had no idea what was going on. He'd searched all history books for phases of the Moon and what she meant to do during each, but we all came up short.