Lay me Down to Sleep

Chapter 1

A/n: hey guys! Thank you for reading my book! Before you start I've noticed a lot of people reading them out of order. If that is how you prefer that is totally fine but, I feel there is more payoff if you read them in order. Here is the proper order for the series. I know it seems like a lot but, I promise if you saw the tags for this book and decided you were interested you will love this series.

Book 1- When the Pieces Fall
Book 2- All the Things Between us
Book 3- Lay me Down to Sleep
Book 4- Twelve Steps Forward
Book 5- Ourselves and our Posterity
Book 6- The Beginning

  I have been ostracized since Hope left. The entire pack treats me like a leper when I was once a prized member. I was renowned for my status and beauty. A good lot of my pack had even thought that I would have of been Luna until Hope came along.
Since her departure everyday has practically been like a funeral for her. The entire pack is still mourning the loss of their Luna. Every Sunday she is mentioned at the end of service and everyone says prayer for her return. Sometimes random pack members will just start crying for her.
Packs are almost like families and to lose anyone would be a tragedy that the entire pack would grieve for. Even back when she was an omega, she'd spend months in everyone's hearts and minds. For her to have just accepted the Luna position and then to have of immediately left like that was one of the most painful things for a pack to go through. An omega would have been one thing, but the Luna is the heart of a pack. With her departure and the way, she did it it's no wonder people have been grieving for the past eight years, they'll probably keep grieving for a century.
That's not even the worst part. After Hope left Will completely fell apart. All he does is drink and look for her. When he's not doing that he's working out; pushing himself to extreme levels. He has also cut off all his old friends, but not before beating the hell out of them first. He is no longer the boy he was on his eighteenth birthday.
He can't really function as an alpha anymore, but no one would ever say anything. Everyone is terrified of him or pities him too much. He has become what people tell horror stories of.
While a lot of people do blame me for Hope's departure; even more blame him. He's the man who beat his mate. He beat his pack's sole healer too. At end the end of the day most people agree that his actions are what drove Hope away.
I am ashamed to say that I continued to try with Will even after Hope left. In fact, I tried even harder than before. Despite what he had done to me I still craved his power. I would love nothing more than to be a Luna. I'm not incapable of recognizing my own sins though. I have broken the tenth command. I know I cannot repent when I am not truly sorry either. I will go to hell for what I've done and continue to do.
In the beginning Will used to get angry when I was to throw myself at him. These days on the rare opportunity I get to see him and try my luck he just ignores me. Everytime I run into him he just murmurs to himself and fidgets with something in his pocket.
Everyone else is having the same problem. Not that his mental state matters too much. No one wants to talk to the guy. Almost all pack matters are handled by his Beta. Will has become a figure head.
He's even gone as far as to move out of the pack house. Most Alphas will stay living in the pack house until they start a family. He, however, moved into Hope's old house. He doesn't interact with the neighbors at all, but he's keen on upkeep of the place. He repaints the exterior yearly with the same light-yellow walls and pastel blue shutters. The lawn is honestly even better than when Hope left. He replants the flowers in the window boxes with every season. He even went as far as to renovate the front porch into a wrap around deck. I've seen that now he's in the process of reshingling the roof.
No one really understood the new found fascination of home renovation he'd developed; that was until he replaced the mail box. There hadn't been anything wrong with it. It was a pretty normal one. It was a tin half cylinder shape on a pole that you'd see in front of most houses. Then he replaced it with a lovely wood a brick one he'd built by hand. On the side of it he put cute wooden letters spelling "Hope and Will" and the street adress number. Even I was feeling awful when I saw it. I got some extra dirty looks in church that week.
Despite all his obvious guilt, a lot of people almost hate him. Mates are so precious that the idea of laying a hand on one is unthinkable. To have of done what he did is considered downright evil. Even though he hadn't known who she was, people talk.
I think the worst to him is my mother. I know that she's just trying to to take the heat off of me. If you heard what she was saying in public you'd think that she was personal friends with Hope. Behind closed doors though she curses her name like it's no one's business. She says that Hope was a little skank in league with the devil to steal my "rightful place". She's always wanted me to be Luna, and she's hated Hope for a very long time because of it. She about threw a party when Will turned his back on her after her parents died.
When it came out that Will and Hope were mates my mom was livid. She screamed at me for hours about how much of a failure I was. She told me if I hadn't been so ugly then I could have gotten pregnant by Will and have been made Luna. She told me it was my fault that an ungodly whore had been made Luna. She said I was wretched for my mistakes and that God would punish me. She forced me to stay in our closet and repent for two days straight.
Mom was delighted when Hope left. She was so elated that she didn't even care about the scars I got. Normally she'd have about killed me for something like that. Scars to her are ugly and for me to have one would be desecrating god's temple. They'd make me less marketable to men, and then there'd be no way I'd get us into a higher position.