The Luna

16

"There's a car about a mile up ahead," Malachi breaks the silence that had fallen over us as he ran. I don't know if it's because neither of us wanted to break the reverie that the darkness brings or if neither of us felt safe enough to speak until we knew we were out of the red zone.

A pink glow is sitting on the horizon, a warning that the sun is coming. A new day, a new chance and I'm hoping I made the right choice for that thought to even matter.

"Is it stolen?" my voice is low, and honestly he can probably hear just how sleepy I'm feeling. Everything has caught up with me, and I've been trying to fight off sleep for a while.

To be honest, I'm a little scared that I am already asleep. That I dreamed Malachi had come to help me, and I'd wake up on the floor by my bed, waiting for the guards to wake me from breakfast.

"Why would - No, nevermind, it's not stolen," he says, looking at me carefully. I try to read what he's thinking, what he assumes has happened, but I'm afraid I don't really want to know.

I don't want to know how naive he sees me, how naive they all must have seen me. I asked myself once what my mom would have thought of Caspian and the Wolf people. But now I'm wondering what she would think of my choices, regardless of their actions.

She would be disappointed. I had allowed myself to get swept up in the magic of it all and left my defenses down.

"Can I walk?" The feelings inside me are festering, and I need an outlet for them. Maybe walking will help alleviate the pressure on my chest.

Malachi sets me down gently, carefully arranging the cloak to still cover my body. He doesn't try to usher me or move me any quicker than I can go. He simply keeps pace with me, occasionally turning his head this way and that, as if checking that we're still in the clear.

"How far did we get from them?" I don't know why I'm whispering, but it seemed like the right thing to do suddenly.

What if we didn't get as far from them as I thought? What if, at any second, we hear their feet running after us? Maybe I should have continued to let him carry me - at least we were moving faster when he was.

I can barely see Malachi narrowing his eyes, clearly thinking over his answer. His silence is not reassuring and just as I'm about to have a small freak out, a root comes up from the ground and trips me.

"Careful," Malachi warns, grabbing my arm and saving me from what would have been an embarrassing face plant.

My cheeks flame and I mumble some sort of apology. I keep my eyes trained on the ground, carefully watching for more roots that might want to help introduce me to the ground.

"Not far enough," he says so suddenly that I nearly forgot I had even asked a question. He turns to look at me, and his face pales when he sees my face, "No, no I mean, once we get to the car and out of these woods..." he takes a deep breath, his hands moving to the back of his head as he takes a deep breath, "I'm not going to lie to you, Little Red," Malachi says softly after another deep breath, "But I don't want to scare you anymore than you already are either,"

"I'm a big girl. I just want to know what's going on. I don't like feeling so lost..." I trail off not really knowing what else I'm supposed to say.

I can't tell him that I'm not scared or that I can't be more scared because what if I could be? What if he still knows something that I don't know - which, if I'm honest with myself, he probably does. He knows wolves and knows what being a Luna means. I only have my assumptions.

"You look exhausted, you can sleep in the car," he gestures up ahead, and there nestled between some trees is a blacked-out SUV.

The sun is a little higher now, making it much easier for me to see, but I don't see any type of good road. There does appear to be a path, but that looks like it would give Indiana Jones a run for his money. Still, if Malachi isn't concerned, then I won't be either.

Okay, that's a lie. I'm concerned, but I'm not going to look scared.

Malachi reaches forward and opens the passenger door for me. He waits while I get in, seatbelt in his hand, ready to hand it to me when I'm ready.

"Thanks," I clicked it in place, pulling on the belt to tighten it. He moves quickly around the hood of the SUV, jumping in and starting the car within seconds.

I don't know if it's the fact that Malachi drives like a crazy person or if it's the fact that he's doing sixty miles an hour on the path of death. Even though he pulled his hood down the minute we got in the car, I've been trying to keep my hood covering my face so that he can't see my terrified expression. I have one hand gripping tightly the seat belt across my chest and the other tightly holding on to the grab bar on the roof.

Every bump and jostle has my eyes screwed shut. How he expects me to be able to sleep on this path, I'll never know, and if I thought I could open my mouth without screaming, I might ask.

"So what did you write in your note?" I slowly turned to look at him in the driver's seat, looking calm as if this path of death was nothing more than a stretch of paved highway. "I'm just curious,"

"Um, I said that everything was happening too fast and that I was going home to clear my head,"

Malachi doesn't say anything, just makes a noise in his throat as his eyes watch the road. After a few more bumps, I see the paved road and nearly sigh in relief. He barely stops at the road to check cross traffic before peeling out and accelerating.

"Where are we going?" I haven't wanted to ask, and I'm not sure why. I know he made a comment about taking me somewhere safe, that someone would know what to do, but who is it and where are the questions I wasn't ready to have answered.

"I'm taking you to the Concilium. It's near Glenwood Canyon in Colorado," he says quickly, accelerating impossibly faster, "It's about a twelve-hour drive, and I'm not stopping unless absolutely necessary, so you should rest," I turn to look out the window. The trees moving past us like nothing more than green blurs. It's hard to see where one starts and another ends. A quick glance at the odometer, even though I told myself I shouldn't, shows that Malachi is going well over eighty miles an hour.

Not far enough, he had said a little bit ago, and maybe now that we are moving eighty miles an hour it will make the distance grow even more. But with that thought, I still don't feel like I can call myself safe, and maybe I will never be able to.

Maybe I'll always be looking over my shoulder, wondering when Caspian or another wolf is going to jump out of the shadows. I'll always have to live with the fact that no matter what I do or where I go, if I'm found, I'll stand no chance against the wolf people.

I don't know when the exhaustion had won or how far we had gotten into the sunrise when my eyes closed, but when they opened again, the sun was on the other side of us and Malachi was gently shaking me.

"Oh good you're alive," he joked, and it took me a minute to tell that we weren't moving anymore, "You were so quiet and so still while you slept I was getting nervous,"

"Where are we?" My voice is hoarse and my body stiff as I try to stretch as much as possible.

"Riverton, Wyoming," he says, opening his door and jumping out of the car, "Keep the robe on," I nod, sliding out of the car, standing for a good stretch before following him into the gas station.

The gas station is busy, so I have to wait in a short line to use the restroom, which suddenly feels like a do-or-die situation with how full my bladder suddenly feels. By the time I'm finally done, Malachi is at the cashier, getting some change back and taking a gray plastic bag from the woman.

I can't help but think about what we must look like to these people. A large blacked-out SUV, long robes that cover us completely from head to toe, and from the glimpse in the bathroom mirror, I look like a mess with sleep lines on my face from the car.

Are we the weirdest travelers to come through today for them? At the diner, Justice and the other waitress would keep track of weird customers we had and at the end of the night, we would pick who had the weirdest one. It wasn't done to be mean, but rather to break up the monotony of small-town living with what seemed like the same faces coming and going all the time. The weird ones kept things interesting.

"Oh good. I got you some water and just guessed on snacks," he hands me the plastic bag, moving one hand to rest on the space between my shoulder blades and ushering me back to the car.

I climb in, digging through the bag as he starts to pump gas. He chose well, with a large variety of Cheez-Its, Oreos, Doritos, and even a small assortment of individually wrapped pastries. It all looks so good that after I chug a good portion of a bottle of water, I just reach in and take the first thing I grab.

Cheez-It.

"Alright, we set?" Malachi asked, jumping back into the car and taking a drink of his water.

"How far did we get?" I ask hesitantly, but a small amount of relief sweeps through me when Malachi snatches a Cheezit from my bag and smiles widely at me.

"We will be at the Concilium in about five and a half hours. I kept wondering if I should have woken you earlier, but you looked so peaceful that I decided you'd wake up if you really needed to stop. I really was starting to get worried," he pulled out of the gas station and onto the road with no hesitation.

"I must have been tired. Yesterday was an emotional day and I didn't sleep before you showed up," about five hours left of what was estimated, about twelve hours, means I slept nearly seven hours in a car of all things.

I mean I've always found car rides soothing in a way, but sometimes it's hard to get completely comfortable when someone else is driving, especially someone that you've only known a short time. But I guess when the emotional exhaustion hits, it doesn't matter where you are.

"Emotional? What happened?"

I munch on the Cheez-its, watching the city pass by in small blurs. Malachi has said he doesn't want to lie to me and (as far as I know) he hasn't. After everything that he's risked for me, not only does he deserve to know the truth, but I have no reason to lie to him.

However, there is still one vital piece of information I need from him. Something, that in the rush, hadn't occurred for me to ask last night, but had been on my mind after we had met in the woods.

"What were you doing that day in the woods before you saw me?" his eyes slid to me and I can see him sizing me up, similar to the way Caspian would look at me after asking a question.

But with Caspian, it was more about deflection. How could he make it seem like he was answering the question without actually telling me anything.

Malachi seems like he is trying to formulate an answer that will give enough truth to satisfy me without finally breaking me. I offer him a cracker while I wait for him to make up his mind on what he's going to say.

"I was watching the Lotus pack," he says finally, taking a small handful of the crackers, and when I don't respond he continues, "there have been rumors, suspicions, that the pack does things differently, but outsiders are very rarely let into Lotus and when they are, it's for brief amounts of time, and they are limited to where they can go and when,"

"So you were spying?"

"Yes," He didn't hesitate with his answer and didn't take his eyes off the road.

A million different thoughts race through my head. What could they be doing that was different from the other packs? Something with me and the title of Luna that they have given me, certainly, but that wouldn't be enough to have them be spied on, would it?

Unless being a Luna is really that bad.

My eyes stay locked on the side of Malachi's face as I think. How much had he found out in his spying - did I distract from what they were trying to find? Did he have to sacrifice whatever he was looking for to save some unsuspecting human from a trap she had fallen into?

Either way, he gave me the truth, so I'll give him the truth.

"They wanted to have the Luna Ceremony for me when the moon was full," the only response to my words were his fists tightening on the steering wheel, "He said it was an honor to be a Luna. That I was sent from the Moon Goddess ... that's what started the first fight. I wanted to postpone the ceremony because I wanted to understand what it all means...meant. But Caspian said it would be an insult to her,"

"What they're doing is an insult to her!" I couldn't help but shrink back at his disgusted tone as he spits the words out of his mouth.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, forcing a few deep breaths. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything? I should have kept it as a secret and buried it deep inside and had I known it would get this type of reaction, I would have.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't of -"

"No, no, I'm sorry, Amelia," he turned to face me, his eyes calm and sincere as they held my own. I can tell he is genuine in his apology, but I'm not sure what he's apologizing for. The reaction to what Caspian and I had fought about? For scaring me with his tone? For whatever Caspian and his pack had planned?

"Call me Mia," I don't know how else to respond, but with everything that's happened, Malachi doesn't need to be so formal with me.

"I'll call you Little Red," he smiled, reaching over and tugging lightly on the hood of my robe with a short laugh.