The Moonchild

REFLEXIONS OF A HUMAN AND HIS WOLF

Axel’s POV:

I got out of the hospital wing to find a small group of my warriors and ranked members in the lobby of the mansion waiting for me, with Jackson leading them. Apparently, the news about Kendra spread as if they were fire-catching on dry straw. Even some of the omegas that were cleaning the already tidy room were stretching their ears to catch up with the news. The group got closer to me, and before I could say something, one of them started:

“So, Alpha, may I ask you who the mysterious woman is?” Jordan, one of my most valuable warriors asked me. He seemed genuinely curious. Just curious.

However, I had to take a couple of deep breaths to calm myself down. He was asking about my mate, and that made Napoleon edgy. I could not blame that furball for the whole jealousy, though. I, Axel, was getting annoyed that some other male was asking questions about my female.

Realizing that the situation could get tense, Jackson stepped in and answered Jordan's question, "She's your future Luna, kid. It's off-limits, and I hope you all remember that, right?"

"Yes, Beta Jackson," the warriors replied in unison, lowering their heads in submission. This made Napoleon calm down. It was better that way.

“How is she, Axel?” Jackson asked me with a worried expression.

“She woke up a few hours ago, Jack. Her name is Kendra, but unfortunately, that is practically everything that she could remember. Apparently, she has a wolf too. She made that kind of expression that our younglings have when their wolves start to talk to them until they learn to control their expressions.”

Jackson thought for a moment and then said, "That's good. That means she's one of us. We don't have to hide our nature. It comes naturally to her." Some of the warriors who were listening to our conversation nodded agreeing with Jackson. I nodded too, but there was this sense of uneasiness that I usually have every time I face the unknown.

“But what if she is a rogue, Jack? I don’t know a thing about her! What if she is pretending that she lost her memory? You have to agree with me that there are more unanswered questions than answered ones.”

Jackson nodded knowing my instincts. “Yep. You are right.” Actually, the whole pack knew my instincts. I have always been suspicious of unknown things, and although that woman was my mate and Napoleon affirmed that we could trust her, I wasn’t completely at ease with his feelings. He could be fooled by the mate bond. I, however, didn’t mean to give myself up so easily.

Then an idea occurred to me at that moment. I knew that I would have to dig deeper into Kendra's origins, and I could start right then, so I told everyone, "Gentlemen, since you're here out of curiosity, I'll let you be as curious as you want to be. Jack, could you please lead this group on a search through the woods to the place where we found Kendra to see if we can find anything else that we missed when we took her out of the woods?"

Some of the warriors straightened and others got excited. Our pack was very peaceful and apart from the occasional rogue trying to cross our borders, there wasn't much action on a day-to-day basis. Even so, the warriors' training routine was rigid, despite not having had conflicts in at least a couple of years.

"Sure, Alpha," Jackson told me and then turned to the others and said, "Come on, boys. It's time to look for some clues. Let's go!" And they left that very minute.

I went straight to my office and started a brainstorm myself to unravel Kendra's mysterious identity. Sending the warriors to search the forest covered the investigation of the site, and from what I knew of Doc, he was sure to investigate more than Kendra's amnesia. He would do full tests, including genetic tests to try and find something out. After all, he loved a mystery as much as my warriors. I huffed, stifling a laugh. Sometimes these wolves gossiped more than old ladies.

One thing was for sure: the mystery Kendra represented would bring a certain stir that we hadn't seen in a while. Well, at least it would keep these pumpkin heads busy for more than 5 minutes.

Yet I was in an internal conflict with Napoleon. He was completely bewitched by Kendra and was dying to meet her wolf. Sometimes in Kendra’s presence, Napoleon howled so loudly that I could barely concentrate on what was happening around me.

"How can you so blindly trust someone you just met?" I asked him, exasperated.

"How can you not trust your mate?" Napoleon answered me with another question, intrigued as if he didn't understand my hesitation.

"You know it's not that simple. You know I don't trust strangers. Even though she's my mate, I've seen cases where your other half hurts you more than it heals you, and I have to be careful with that," I replied to him. It would be much easier if my mate had come with a certain reputation, or if I had known her since childhood. It would have been easy as breathing to accept a mate like that. Obviously, fate didn't seem to want it to be that easy for me.

I always thought that I would be presented by the moon goddess with a mate that was special, I mean, someone who came from an influential or ranked family from some other pack, or one of the members of my own pack. Some witch has made a prophecy to my parents that suggested that I would be important to the werewolf history, and I would be destined to make great things with my mate by my side, and that she was the key for the whole wolf community.  But who was this woman? Who could vouch for her origin, or could give me some level of confidence to accept her?

Napoleon, however, howled discontentedly in my head. He was the kind of guy, or rather wolf, who lived intensely in the present, and sometimes he was even careless in thinking about the consequences of his actions. I, on the other hand, tended to overthink everything, which he considered an exaggeration on my part. I couldn't have been paired with a better wolf, and usually one brought balance to the other with ease. However, Napoleon was not satisfied with my excessive care regarding Kendra.

“I don’t trust people so easily like you, Napoleon. Don’t you remember what happened to my sister?” I asked him.

Napoleon kept quiet for a couple of minutes, but right at the moment that I thought that I had won this discussion, he started to talk again: “But it is our mate that we are talking about! There is no way that you are going to compare our sweet Kendra to that scum bag Newton. Besides, he is dead and gone now. Good riddance!”

I had to agree with him. My sister Ava was better without that useless Newton, although I remember how much she suffered in his hands and even after his death. She lived in the pack lands, although after his death she decided to take some time for her and my beautiful niece Heather. Still, this discussion was not taking us anywhere, and I was getting more frustrated at the minute.

I shut Napoleon off to a corner of my mind and decided to go for a run and get to my parent’s home so I could talk to them. I did on foot because giving Napoleon control of our whole body probably would mean that he would come back to Kendra too soon, and I needed to think for myself.

About half an hour later, I reached my parents’ house. They used to live in the mansion but decided to move out after his retirement as an alpha. My mom, though, was still the pack’s current Luna, until someone fulfilled her duties. But she said that she could do that from their new home. When I reached their remodeled porch, my mom and dad opened the door without me asking. We didn’t need doorbells or mind links when your parents can recognize their pup by the scent, and since I was running, my scent was even stronger.

“Hey, guys! Good to see you!” I told them and got into their house. “This place is awesome! Are you the ones remodeling it?”  

My mom beamed with a smile, proud of her own handwork: “Yes, darling. I liked the packhouse and all the decoration that I did when I lived there, but this is the first time that we do it for ourselves, and It’s been a wonderful experience!”

“Mary, give our son some space!” My dad told her and hugged me. “How is everything, son? Is there any problem? Not that I’m upset with your unexpected visit, but you came unannounced, and it is not even Sunday,” my dad told me laughing.

I knew that he would ask if something had happened. That was the best of Jebediah Wyatt’s style. I was actually uneasy, but it was not a pack problem, so I shook my head to reassure them: “Everything is fine. Well, more than fine, actually.” I smiled at the end of my phrase.

“What happened, darling?” My mom asked me.

“I found her, mom. I found my Luna!” I exclaimed to them.

My mom started to jump in place, and my dad opened a wide smile.

“And who is she, son?” My dad asked me eagerly.

“I don’t know,” I answered them.

“What?” They both said in unison.