Wonderful Luna

3

“The bullet is indeed made of very pure silver, something even the experts found surprising,” said the surgeon as a nurse handed him the papers that contained my fate. “This isn’t standard ammunition.”

“The rogues have access to that kind of ammo?” Lucian asked my brother, as if he were in charge of the world’s silver supply.

“We’ll find out, my friend, I assure you.”

“Continue,” Lucian ordered the surgeon after that brief interruption.

“It’s lodged, as the initial tests showed, in part of the third lumbar disc, pressing on the nerve that’s preventing the patient’s mobility,” the surgeon continued.

“Then remove it!” Lucian exclaimed, as if his anger alone could force the bullet out of my body.

Connor had to step closer to Lucian and place a hand on his shoulder to calm him.

“That’s the problem, Alpha,” said the surgeon, as if he were somehow to blame for the bullet’s position. “If we remove it, we’ll likely damage the network of nerves that enables movement in the rest of the patient’s body.”

“What?” Lucian, Connor, and I all exclaimed at once.

The surgeon shook his head.

“I’m very sorry, but that’s the opinion of all the experts I consulted, and I agree with them. There’s a 98% chance that if we remove the bullet, it will affect the nerve network. The patient would be left quadriplegic. My recommendation is…”

“My Luna, my mate, my wife in just a few days, won’t be able to walk again? Is that what you’re telling me?!” Lucian shouted, completely unhinged. I feared that if Connor didn’t hold him back with enough strength, he would lunge at the surgeon and tear him apart with his own hands.

“Please, lion. Calm down!” I shouted, seeing Lucian lose control. The tears that had filled my eyes since hearing the doctor’s verdict receded in the face of my own outburst. “I’m the one who has to bear this, and it’s not the end of the world. I know we can get through it.”

Lucian locked his gaze onto mine. He was shattered. I had never seen him so destroyed, not even at his father’s funeral, when he threw himself over the casket to swear vengeance against the King Rogue.

“No… this can’t be,” he said before leaving the room for the first time in five days.

Connor stood by my side, and I had to take his hand to keep from falling apart.

“I… I’m so sorry, Luna,” the surgeon said. “I truly wish there was a solution, or that the percentage was much lower, but I’m afraid that medical science doesn’t have the means to remove the bullet without causing that kind of damage.”

I looked at the surgeon. It wasn’t his fault, of course.

“I would have wanted that too,” I whispered, my voice choked with tears. “Maybe… maybe in a few years…”

I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

I was only eighteen years old and had just learned that I would never walk again, that I was condemned to a wheelchair from the prime of my youth, just as my adult life was beginning.

Everything was starting to fall apart so quickly around me!

In that moment, while Connor tried to comfort me, I heard the door open, and with a certain shyness mixed with growing nervousness and sorrow, the two people I needed most in my life at that moment entered: Lena and Riley, my two best friends.

I looked up.

“Eli…” Lena said, anguished.

Riley’s eyes met Connor’s, who nodded in answer to his silent question.

“The Alpha is outside. He’s devastated,” I heard Riley say to my brother while he hugged Lena.

“We’ll do something, Eli. We’ll search all the packs; we’ll go across the world if necessary. There has to be a way for you to walk again…” Lena’s final words got caught in her throat.

Lena’s words were meant to be encouraging, but I was sure that was all they were. There was no way my life could ever be as wonderful as it had been just five days ago.

It wasn’t until the late hours of the night that Lena and Riley left the room. If it hadn’t been for their inescapable commitments to the pack (Riley worked in security, and Lena was attending healing school to train as a healer), my friends would have stayed with me, just like my brother did—at least until a sedative put me to sleep.

And during all that time, where was Lucian?

I was asleep when I sensed him approaching through our mate bond. Although he was still on the ground floor of the hospital, his presence was enough to wake me, even to the point of making the sedative fade from my blood, losing its effect.

Freidis woke up as well and began calling out to Fenrir.

We needed them urgently. I wanted to feel Lucian’s embrace now that it was clear I would never walk again, at least not until there was some miracle in medical science. I felt him coming up in the hospital elevator; he stopped for a moment at the reception area on my floor, and Connor, my brother, was outside, waiting for him.

I wanted to contact him through our mental link, but I held back. He probably had important things to discuss with my brother. Lucian had been neglecting many urgent matters in the pack over the last five days, and maybe it was time he started addressing them personally, which was why my brother was holding him back.

Fifteen minutes passed, then thirty, and he still hadn’t come to my room. He was still talking to my brother. They had moved further away—not too much, still in the hospital, but now on a different floor, a higher one. Although I could sense him, we weren’t close enough for me to communicate with him.

“What’s happening? Why isn’t he coming?” I asked Freidis, my only companion at that early hour.

“Something’s going on; I don’t know what it is, but Lucian’s emotions are conflicted.”

“He must still be tormented by what’s happened. Finding out your mate will never walk again can’t be easy.”

“Yes, Elise, it’s that… but there’s something more. There’s anger in him too, and I sense Fenrir is upset with his human. I’m afraid that whatever is happening may be more serious.”

Freidis’s words filled me with anxiety, increasing my need to see Lucian.

Why wasn’t he coming into my room?

Why wouldn’t he come and hold me when I needed him the most?

All I wanted was a hug, nothing more. He could go deal with his duties as Alpha afterward, but first, I needed my hug, please. It was all I wanted in this moment of immense anguish and pain.

Then I felt him getting closer again. He was still with Connor, but just as Freidis had said, he was agitated, his heart rate accelerated. As mates, we could sense these things, even each other’s feelings when we were angry, scared, sad, or happy. Lucian’s emotions at that moment were a powerful mix of many negative sensations, which began to frighten me.

“Fenrir is upset with Lucian,” Freidis said. “He’s trying to tell me something, but I don’t understand. He’s arguing with Lucian, telling him he can’t do it, that it’s the worst thing he could do…”

To me, Freidis’s words were starting to sound confusing as well.

“What? He’s not thinking of ending his own life, or doing something reckless like going after the King Rogue tonight, is he? Is that it, Freidis? Or what is going on?”

“I don’t know, Elise. I just lost contact with Fenrir. It’s like… like something got blocked.”

“What?”

I felt what my wolf was experiencing too. Something very serious had just happened. Lucian was… blocked.

“I need to know what’s going on out there,” I said with determination, but the foolish reflex of trying to get up reminded me of my current situation. It’s incredible how you take something as simple as standing up for granted, and only when you can’t do it do you realize the intense frustration of not being able to. “Freidis, help me, tell me what to do. I have to get out of this room and find out what’s happening with Lucian.”

“I… I don’t know what to do, Elise. Let yourself fall to the ground and push yourself with your hands.”

It was an option, but…

Crawl?

How would I look, crawling through the hospital hallway?

No. There had to be another way.

“A wheelchair. Hospitals always have wheelchairs to transport patients. That’s how they took me to the tests. Where did that wheelchair end up?”

I had been so confident after the tests, so sure I’d be able to walk again after surgery, that I hadn’t even paid attention to where they put the wheelchair. Despite the night vision I’d gained with Freidis, I turned on the light in the room.

“There it is,” I said. “It’s not too far, and only you’ll see me crawling.”

I did what Freidis suggested. I let myself slide off the bed, and although I hit my back a bit, I managed to drag myself over to the wheelchair. I had to hold back the tears that started to well up as I felt so helpless and realized that, from now on, this might be my primary mode of transport.

“I have to get out,” I said after more than five minutes of struggling to lift myself into the wheelchair using only my arms, which were still sluggish from the effects of the sedative and other medications. “Now… how the hell do I move this thing?”

I’d seen in movies, and maybe by observing a disabled person without much attention, that you could move the chair by pushing it with your hands, but there was a big gap between the idea and the actual action.

“I think you have to unlock the chair first, Elise.”

“A very timely observation, Freidis. What would I do without you, my little wolf?”

I unlocked the chair and, after some clumsy attempts, managed to set the wheels in motion. I left the room, guided by the mate link, which had weakened a bit but was impossible to fully break, and headed toward where Lucian was.

I stopped before rounding the corner of the hallway where both Connor and Lucian were speaking in hushed voices, but my wolf hearing was more than enough to hear them as if they were right beside me.

“You can’t do this to my sister, especially not now when she’s just beginning to go through all this.”

“It’ll be much worse if I do it later. It has to be now, before she gets the idea that life will just go on as if nothing happened.”

“This is unbelievable. I never would have expected this from you. If you were rejecting me because you found me unfit as Beta, I’d understand. Believe me, I would, and I’d take it upon myself to find you a new Beta. But she’s your mate, and in just a few days she’ll be our Luna. You can’t reject her. You don’t reject a mate.”

I had to cover my mouth with my hands, and even then, I was sure they heard my strangled gasp.

With a surprising speed and a skill I was only beginning to develop, I pushed my wheelchair back to the room as everything around me started to spin. I heard them coming closer, but I managed to close the door and lock it before they could reach me.

Reject me?

Was that what had Lucian so agitated?

Was he actually considering rejecting me?

Freidis couldn’t hold back and began to howl in pure, solid pain.