The Barren Luna

1 - Ginny

I was sitting in front of my vanity, looking at myself in the mirror while sucking in my cheeks theatrically and then blowing raspberries with my lips only, reminding myself of a particularly foolish horse, but I urgently needed to relax my jaw, especially today. Both my mate and his mother have pointed out, repeatedly, that I tended to clench my jaw in a very obvious way in stressful and tense situations. And today was going to be both.

The pack has been blessed by a new pup, and as the Alpha and Luna, Henry and I needed to go to the hospital to visit the new mother and bless the newest member of our pack. It used to be my favorite Luna duty and yet now, four years into our pupless union, it has become a painful and uncomfortable experience for everyone involved.

My mate would be standing there looking frustrated and angry, I would be clenching my jaw, trying not to sob while smelling the pup, and the new parents would alternate between fear, pity, and saying mindless empty phrases such as: "May you be blessed next!" or "May you also experience joy like this soon!"

The pity was the worst. The condescending well-wishing was a close second. I felt my whole face tense up again and reminded myself to relax my damn jaw if I wanted to keep my original teeth in old age; shifter or not, they couldn't last me if I continued grinding them like this. Unfortunately, there were so many things to grit your teeth about: my infertility, my deteriorating relationship with my mate, his awful mother, the future of our pack, the Council of Elders constantly pressuring Henry to find a she-wolf to breed - and yet they all boiled down to one singular thing - my inability to give my mate (and our pack) an heir.

And it was universally agreed upon that it was my inability - it could not have been their Alpha's fault. Besides, he had had a pregnancy scare with an old lover once - an anecdote that never failed to make my old nursemaid scoff. She and Lucy were the only ones on my side. Even my own mother threw subtle jabs at me during the rare times I saw her, which made me see her even less. The distance helped - my old pack, Allegheny, was in Pennsylvania, and now I was Luna of the Spruce Mountain pack in West Virginia.

I'd met Henry when I was 20 years old, when he came to our pack with his father on official business; I'd come to the Alpha's office to bring some files that my dad, the gamma of the pack, had left at home, and it was instant fireworks for the two of us. Our wolves went crazy over each other, and we both followed very soon. I packed my things and I was in Spruce Mountain with him not even a week later, marked and mated. He was the only male I'd ever been with, and it still stung a bit that he hadn't waited for me, although everyone explained it away by saying that he was an Alpha and thus had appetites larger than regular wolves.

I sighed and started getting dressed. I chose a dark blue conservative dress that I often wore for official visits and pack functions. It was one step away from black so I could still express my mood without disrespecting the happy new parents. I honestly wouldn't have minded not having pups if I had been mated to a lower-ranked wolf - I could see myself accepting my destiny, overcoming that hardship with my mate, and living our life within the limitations our bodies had. But not in this instance; now this one thing was infesting and eating away at everything else. Henry and I barely talked anymore. All we did was try to breed. And that is truly what it was - forced breeding. The pack doctors and healers kept feeding me a mixture of herbs that would increase my fertility, and they advised Henry to remark me immediately after one heat cycle ended in order to induce another one, which resulted in me having heats every two months for the last year and a half. It was exhausting and humiliating and fruitless.

I bit my cheek from the inside to unclench my jaw again. I was surprised at how much I was noticing it now. Perhaps Catherine had been right to criticize me for it, for once. Clench. Oh. So thoughts of my mother-in-law were detrimental to my teeth, who'd have thought, I scoffed to myself. A bit of mascara, some lip balm, and I was ready to go. Punctual as always, the car picked me up in front of our house for the short drive to the hospital, during which Henry and I exchanged exactly zero words. The silence between us would probably have bothered me a year ago, but now I pretended to look out the window while he caught up on paperwork.