LUNA

1

When I was younger imagined that meeting my mate would this magical experience. That's what you grow up hearing. And it's not only the young girls who dream of the day their soul recognizes it's counterpart. Even the boys grew up knowing that there was someone out there that was made for them. 

I was supposed to feel as if a fire was ignited in my soul and there was going to be nothing that could take away from the experience. 

I was wrong.  

As the lone daughter of an Alpha I expected to have boys knocking on my door waiting to find out if I was the one. They did, at first. Months started to pass and none of them were the one. Within the blink of an eye, I turned eighteen and had experienced no semblance of familiarity with another wolf. Then I turned nineteen, and, as of recently, I turned twenty. It's been two years and not a single scent of my mate. 

My friends started to settle down. They started to move on, leaving me in a different stage of life. After a while I started to wonder if I'd ever meet the one. 

Everyone around me told me to wait—that it would be mine turn eventually. 

They say time can heal all wounds, but sometimes it creates it's own. 

I've somehow turned into the worst version of myself. Bitter. Hateful. Resentful. I've become someone my own family doesn't recognize. 

My older brother stepped into his goddess given role as Alpha, a few years ago, but my parents find my love life to be of greater interest.

"Why don't we try to see if he's at the SilverRain Pack? Why don't you join your brother at the next meeting?"

It's always something with them. They poke and the prod and eventually I snap. This time is not going to be any different. I'm going to get to the SilverRain Pack and be let down once again.

Theo usually avoids the conversation of my mate, but this time he agreed with my parents. He wanted me to join him and so I am. We're nearing the last hour of our drive to Alpha Reece's Pack that lies on the boarder of Montana and Canada. 

The first few hours of our drive were spent in silence. I had nothing to say that I haven't already vocalized. He knows that if this trip goes poorly, that it will only set me further. The other part of him knows that if I meet my mate, I'm not going to be excited. I think he's somehow more worried for that outcome. 

"So if you find him." Theo trails off as he keeps his eyes on the road in front of us. There are not too many cars on the roads around here. It reminds me of the outskirts of our town, but colder.

"Funny you say." I turn my body towards him. I'm deciding whether it's worth engaging in this topic of conversation. If I don't we'll be forced to maintain silence until we arrive. 

"If I find him I'm gonna ask him why in goddess name he hasn't come looking for me," I say as I feel an emptiness in my chest at the thought. 

I joke about being single a lot, but that's all surface level. Beneath all of the humor is a lot of pain. I want to know my mate. I want to know the person that I'm meant to spend the rest of my life with.

"And then I go live happily ever after." I add in a small voice. 

I'll have to live as if these last two years didn't break me down from the inside out. 

Theo looks over at me for a split second. "Jen, if you meet him you're gonna have to live with him." He looks nervous as he reminds me of my duties as a possible new mate.

"I'm twenty, not fourteen."

"And? You're still my baby sister and I wanna prepare you." He explains. "I'm trying to warn you about what mom and dad won't tell you."

If my brother is about to give me a sex talk I'm gonna have to do a swift tuck and roll out of this Jeep. 

"Theo, buddy, I know about the birds and the bees and I know how these things go."

I'm not a complete hermit. I watched my friends meet their mates and appear days later bearing a mark. I know what a male wolf is expecting. 

"I'm talking about having an Alpha as a mate." He stops me for speaking up in protest. "It's not the same as your little girlfriends having some normal wolf as a mate."

The infamous alphas are protective speech. I get the gist, but in all honesty I couldn't care less. I'm not going to become submissive because it's expected of me. 

"I know how I am with Kelly," he says. "I also know the mistake I made when I first met her and I almost lost her because of it."

"What do you mean?"

Kelly was the most innocent little thing anyone had ever seen and she still is. She walks into rooms as if she's floating on air and she has the voice of an angel. To make a long story short, she's nothing like me.

I've had a mouth on me since I could talk. Kelly, though? She's built to be a Luna. She's poised and professional with a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

When Theo met her he was eighteen and was about to step into the position of Alpha. He became serious as he got older, but the day he met Kelly was different. He looked like he'd been hit by Cupid's arrow. I was a dumb naive twelve year old at the time and I didn't know everything that was going on, but I would've known if my brother was being a monster.

"I marked her against her will."

But I guess not everything is how it seems.

"She was drawn to me but she didn't want to be marked yet. I thought that because I was an Alpha that I could force her into being compliant. We fought and she stormed out of the house. I searched for hours and then she showed up and acted like nothing happened." He tells me as his hands grip onto the steering wheel for dear life. "I got so angry and I snapped right then and there. She almost died because her wolf wasn't ready and neither was she."

Theo Winston Harris is the last person I would ever accuse of doing such a thing. This is the same guy who cried at the age of fifteen when his girlfriend dumped him.

"I screwed up and I'm not about to have your stubborn ass die because some stupid horny Alpha can't control himself. And newsflash, most of them can't." He finishes his thought before taking one hand off of the wheel and resting it on my seat.

"I won't let anyone take advantage of me. You don't have to worry about that." I assure him. That seems to ease some of his worries.

"Not to mention whatever Alpha is my mate will be dead before he has a chance to apologize for his actions. I rather have him dead and suffer the pain of a bond breaking than have an abusive mate."

"I don't suggest that, but I also don't disagree. I'm surprised Kelly didn't reject me after that night." 

"Now look at you guys." I tease. "You're a happy family."

They're a nice couple, but they clash with my parents. They don't run things the same way and that usually causes arguments between them. Recently, they have been far from happy. 

"You're lucky you're my sister or else I wouldn't put up with your sarcasm and arrogance."

"Some would call it my best quality."

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