A Tale of Three Lunas-Completed

Chapter 4

Zinnia's POV

2 days before Shawn's birthday

I woke up this morning to a notification on my phone that my dress had been delivered to the mail drop off center. I'm so glad it got here in time!

I love living alone. After my parents died, I was offered to move into the pack house, but I requested to stay here, where I lived with them. I hope someday I can bring my pups to this home to show them pictures of the three of us that are still hanging on the walls and they can see me when we were all happy together.

I have a lot to do to prepare for Shawn's party, so I ask KJ if I can put my training on hold, just for a little while. After a quick breakfast at the pack house, I returned home. I strip, put my wallet in my dress pocket and tie the simple dress around my neck. Even though she hasn't said anything, I haven't let my wolf out in a few days, so I'm going to let her take the trip to the drop off center. After I shift, I run out of my house.

My wolf is gray and white with silver eyes. Her name is Xena. We used to be really close. She would always advise me and comfort me when I was down. It was like having a warm, fuzzy blanket in my head.

These days though, she doesn't say a word. She will let me push her out for a run, but she doesn't talk to or interact with me. I hope one day she'll let me back into her heart. She's the main reason I haven't taken that step with Shawn. I don't want to put her through mating with him if I know she'll hate it. Its unfair after everything she's done for me. I want her to be in love with Shawn by the time we mate with him.

Xena takes the dirt trail toward the drop-off center at full speed. I love the pads of my paws pounding the dirt and the feeling of the breeze in my fur. She's enjoying herself so much, I laugh to myself when I feel our tongue hanging out the side of our mouth as we run. I am startled, though, when she comes to a dead stop about half a mile away from the center.

'Delightful.'

I hear her voice in my head for the first time in a long time, but I am more stunned by the word that just came out of her.

'Excuse me? You're a wolf. Have you been busy reading a thesaurus during the time you've been ignoring me?' I ask her.

She sniffs the air and the scent she picks up reaches me. Rich mahogany, dark oak and frosted lavender. Refreshing. I feel it deeper than in my nose, I feel it in my chest. The very smell puts an image in my head of my wolf and I standing in a forest I have never been in before, feeling its safety and protection, the wind blowing all around us, kicking the rejuvenating scent into our noses.

Xena is about to follow her nose toward the scent, when three familiar wolves burst out from the nearby woods. It's Shawn, Alex and Rodney, who are supposed to be in school.

'We're under attack!' Shawn mindlinks me. 'Go to your house.'

'Yes, Alpha.' Xena growls at Shawn's wolf.

'Well, Xena. Someone smelled extra good to us today.' I tease her. Shawn must smell so good to us because it is almost his birthday and soon she will recognize him as our mate.

Once they are gone, so is the scent and Xena trots forward and continues to the welcome center.

'Xena, I'm glad you're so insistent on me getting my dress, but our Alpha just gave us an order.'

'That mutt will never be my Alpha. The more you listen to him, the less I will.'

We walk up to the man who runs the mail drop off center and after greeting us and scratching our head with a back scratcher he keeps hanging on the wall, he gives us the package, a small gray bag, that we carry in our mouth.

Soon, we are trotting the trail that leads us back home.

'Xena, I really enjoyed our walk today. Even when you're being mean to me, you still make me laugh. We used to be best friends. What do you say we go back to that?'

'You betrayed me.' she grumbles in her wolfy voice.

'I'm sorry you feel that way, Xena.' I genuinely am. The two most important relationships we have are with our wolf and our mate and the one of those that is definitely going to be with me for the rest of my life loathes me.

'I don't need your apologies.'

'I already told Shawn we would not mate with each other until we are official. What else can I do for you to forgive me?'

Xena pauses, thinking.

'Touch no one but your mate.'

I think a bit before I respond.

'Okay, I can do that for you.'

When we get into town, the place looks abandoned and I wish Xena had just run back to the house when Shawn told us to. I figure that we are under attack when I see some of our wolves running speedily through the town. The last time we were under attack, a Council member was murdered. During times like this, we are all instructed to turn all the lights out in our houses and hide in a room without windows, pantries or in our underground bunkers while the warriors take care of whatever the trouble is. The windows in all of the houses are all blacked out, like we were instructed by the Alpha.

I find some trees to hide behind so I can shift and put on the dress I had tied on my neck. I reach for my wallet and take out some things my mom always told me to carry with me for emergencies, a pill that we can use to mask our scent from the inside and a packet of the powder we can sprinkle on our clothes to suppress it. After I dry swallow the pill and quickly powder myself, I climb one of the trees to hide in so that I am not caught up in the battle.

I really hate being stuck out here. I'm not afraid, I can defend myself, but I would rather be inside my house and in my bunker.

I wait and wait in the tree and keep alert so I can figure out exactly what is going on and after a while, I am surprised to notice that I don't see anything worthy of the alert. All I see is the same group of warriors running around in a seemingly frantic, but obviously organized way. I know it's an organized formation because I have seen them run this drill at some point in the past.

My phone has died, so I don't know how long I have been out here, but I have so many questions.

During the entire time I am out here, the only thing out of the ordinary that I notice are that the warriors who are not running drills are surrounding the packhouse and that around dusk, a small group of people is led out of the packhouse and into a vehicle that I have never seen on our lands before.