His Missing Luna

Chapter Twenty Five

Amelia's Point of View

"Holy s**t! Your eyes!"

That had been the first thing out of Erin's mouth when I emerged from the bathroom an hour after she first sent me in there. I was wrapped in a bathrobe that was four times the size of me, and I'd forgotten to put my dull contacts back into my eyes.

"Wow, they're incredible." She continued to look me straight in the eye, whilst I felt my cheeks starting to glow with embarrassment. Erin tapped her index finger against her mouth in thought, but after a few seconds she shrugged her shoulders and pulled me down into a vacant chair.

"Congratulations Luna, you smell - not dead!"

After following her every instruction, three times over, I was expecting a little more praise than that. Instead, she grabbed a towel and rough dried my hair. With the emphasis being on 'rough'.

"You do understand that my hair is attached to my scalp, right?" I asked.

Erin simply tutted and started combing it through with her fingers. It was torture!

Once she had finished her barbaric actions, she double-dutch braided my damp hair. Or at least that's what she told me she'd done. She had this crazy obsession about not letting me look in a mirror until I was 'done'. How long that was going to take was anyone's guess as, since then, we had done precisely nothing other than open a bottle of pink champagne and make a serious dent in the box of truffles.

"This is so good," I told her, taking another small sip from my glass. I was actually talking more about the effect it was having on my body and mind rather than the taste. I'd never had a drink before, but I could totally see why people did it.

Erin took a huge gulp, draining her glass for the third time. She made quick work of opening the second bottle and re-filled her glass.

"So how come I didn't meet you yesterday?" I asked her. Raya had been lovely to me when I first met her, but it became obvious that her loyalties were with Peyton first and foremost. In the short time Erin and I had spent time together, she seemed much more neutral.

"Because this isn't my pack, lovely. I belong to Cerulean Moon."

"Where Bethany lives?" I clarified.

"How do you know that?" Erin asked, looking a little shocked. Her body tensed in readiness for my answer.

"My Mom told me. She visited her when I was a little girl."

I watched as Erin's body physically relaxed. "That's a good answer. Very few people know about her. Liam almost told Peyton once and I had to get a vampire to push him into a swimming pool - never mind that's a story for another day."

"So Cerulean Moon houses Vampires? Do you know I didn't know they existed until yesterday?" My Goddess, the bubbles in my glass were more potent than Bethany's truth spell.

Erin frowned. "I've been told you know nothing of our own kind either." This clearly troubled her.

"My Mom chose to keep us hidden in the human world, hence the boring color contacts. She was the only wolf I knew. Her time here was so painful she never discussed it. Sometimes, small things would remind her of her previous life. When that happened, it tore her apart. I never felt like I had any right to push it."

"Didn't you think you had a right to ask questions though?" She asked me gently. I felt the back of my eyes burning. Over the past day or so, more people had been nice to me than ever before. I just couldn't process it.

"I do now." I sniffed. I was beginning to notice that my grief for my Mom was starting to morph into anger. "She told me nothing, not even on the day she died. So now I'm left to try and figure this all out alone. And until I do that I'm stuck here!"

"Alone? Stuck here?" Erin echoed. "You are neither of those things! This is your home, Alpha Peyton is your mate. Why would you want to go anywhere else?"

"Because Peyton killed my mother." I told her with a not-so subtle wail.

"Pah." Erin exclaimed, waving my declaration away with her hand. "That's the biggest load of horse s**t I've ever heard."

Within ten minutes of meeting Erin, I'd decided two things. Firstly, I wanted her and I to be friends, and secondly, she was so open I couldn't imagine her lying. So, although several people had already tried to convince me that Peyton was innocent, I found myself sitting up straighter in my chair and leaning forwards in anticipation of the answer to my next question.

"How can you be so sure? Even if you and he were separated at birth, you weren't there so you wouldn't know!"

"I don't mean to patronize you, Amelia, but when you finally learn exactly what the mate bond does and what it is capable of, you will realize that is the dumbest question you could ask."

"Don't feel like you have to spare my feelings-" I pouted.

But she wasn't finished. "I have a mate, Jordan." When she said his name her whole face lit up. "He's the center of my universe. Right now, I miss him so much my heart aches, and he can feel that through our mate bond. I would never hurt him, intentionally or otherwise, and he would never hurt me. Are you with me so far?"

I nodded.

"Peyton is your mate and would NEVER do anything to hurt you. And that is true of the slightest little thing. If he hurt your feelings, he would hurt his own. If he hurt you physically, even just the smallest accidental thing, he wouldn't get over it for months. Killing your mother, and putting you through that grief, is something he wouldn't even contemplate. He wouldn't harm a hair on your head."

"But that only leaves the explanation that my mother lied to me!" My voice crept up in volume, I was starting to become frustrated again.

"Tell me, is that such a leap to make considering she had hidden so much from you? How different is withholding the truth to telling a lie?" She was studying me, gauging my reaction to her questions.

"She thought she was protecting me by keeping things from me!" I folded my arms over my chest defensively.

"Any chance she thought she was protecting you by lying?" Erin asked tactfully. Or at least I suspected it was tactful for her.

I thought back to the conversation I'd had with Bethany. It was only yesterday but it felt like weeks ago. She told me that my father had betrayed my Mom. But my Mom had always said she had to leave him behind. That was a lie. Bethany had also told me that I had been promised to Peyton as his Luna. My Mom would have done anything to make sure I was safe. But lying about someone stealing her life? That would be one giant leap too far.

'Peyton would rather kill himself than hurt you, Amelia.' Vae had been listening patiently to my conversation with Erin. She hadn't tried to interrupt or to side with Erin's take on things. I was so grateful for her giving me time to process my feelings, but the truth was I wasn't getting anywhere with it. It was making me feel uneasy.

"Right," Erin clapped her hands together and startled me out of my trance. "Enough with the heavy! Let's get you ready. Trudy has picked you out something which, in my opinion, should only be used for starting a fire." She curled her lip back as she took in what seemed to be an ordinary summer dress. "Luckily, I've bought some of my own clothes along!"

I sighed inwardly, knowing there was no getting out of playing dress up.