A Luna's Duty

Chapter One

One year later

-Claire's P.O.V.-

When imagining an adventure after a life of a simply dispassionate existence, one is often forgetful of the restrictions that are still very much present on the outside despite whatever internal epiphany you might have reached.  In my case, this applied to the way my ‘soul searching’ trip was cut short by my realization that I was still an underage pack-attached werewolf that had certain human responsibilities.

Unfortunately, those ‘human responsibilities’ came to me in the form of high school.

Thing is, though at first I was justifiably bummed out by the prospect of having to enroll into a foreign school and dealing with the nearby packs that might find my presence a bit...intruding, I soon accepted the action as a new experience. After all, hadn’t this been my purpose after leaving my pack behind? Finding new experiences? Also, somehow attending school in a place where no one knew me and where I wasn’t known seemed better. Perhaps there were too many memories attached to the hallways of my last school. 

“Do you have to come here, even on your last day?” 

Aaron, my lab partner, and eventual best friend was staring down at me disapprovingly as I sat down on the field while leaning against a tree. I was sure I had been subtle enough when slipping away from the lunchroom. His presence indicated that I had been mistaken.

I adjusted the angle of my book in my grip, then frowned at the lack of lightning. “You are blocking the sun.”

He rolls his eyes. “Nice try, Claire. Allison was asking for you.”

“She knows where I am.” I place the bookmark between the pages of my book and close it. “I am nothing if not predictable.”

He sighs. “I realize that. She just thought you’d spend today with us.”

I press the book to my chest. “Oh.” I tilt my head. “Well, she didn’t say that.”

He takes my book from my hands and extends a hand to help me get up.“She just assumed you would know.”

I blink in surprise. Though it had been over a year since the rejection and my less than favorable conditions at my old pack, I still found it somewhat hard to grasp that someone would actually want to spend more time than necessary with me. Eliza had been the first to introduce me to that concept, and some part of me thought that she would be the last. Surprisingly, she had not. Aaron and Allison somehow found me fun to be around with and stuck by my side despite knowing I belonged to another pack and would eventually be going back to it.

“My bad. We live together, I didn’t think she’d want to spend today together at school as well.”

“It’s symbolic, Claire.” He gestures towards school. “Last day at school with you. She thinks you won’t be spending your senior year with us.”

I frown as we continue walking towards the building. “Now why would she think that?”

He shrugs. “Not sure. You know how Allison is with her paranoia.” He looks at me for a minute longer, as if hesitant. “Well, are you?”

I stare back at him, confused. “Am I what?” 

“Spending your senior year with us?”

“Oh, that…” I grin, sprinting ahead before replying, “I don’t know, probably.”

“Hey, wait a minute.”

I turn to face him and begin walking backward.“Allison awaits for us and all you care about is the future!” 

He laughs, then his eyes widen. I am about to ask him what happened when I feel my back hit something solid. “Ouch.”

“Daydreamer, watch where you  are going.” 

Strong hands grip my shoulders to keep me from falling. 

“Landon,” I exclaim, a bit embarrassed. Landon’s had me pegged for someone with her head on the clouds since the day I first arrived in school. If I was being honest, I hadn’t done much since arriving here to disprove that theory. “Sorry, I wasn’t looking.”

He smiles at me. “Somehow, you never really are.”

I blink at him. Then, mercifully, Aaron snatches me away from his grip and faces Landon with a sheepish smile. “Sorry, I’ll be taking this one away. Your sister is looking for her.”

Landon nods. “See you later daydreamer.”

Aaron begins dragging me away by the shoulders after I wave goodbye at Landon. I notice him walk out the doors. “Where do you think he is going?”

“I don’t know, somewhere to do his little alpha things.”

“Little Alpha things?” As the ex-mate of an actual future alpha, I still wasn’t sure what he referred to when he said that. 

“You know pee on the front lawn, rub his fur through the territory.”

I laugh. “Sure, because that’s all that future alphas do.”

“Was your alpha any different?”

I feel my face grow hot because there was a slight teasing note to the way he said ‘your alpha’ that concerned me a little. Thankfully, Aaron was too busy looking ahead to really inspect my face. “I wouldn’t know, we weren’t close.”

This time he does look down at me with a frown. “Someday, you are gonna have to sit down and tell me what that’s about.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

Allison is waiting for us at the lunch table farthest from the door. Upon noticing me, she waves and gestures towards the food in the tray next to hers. I squint to make out what’s on the plate. “Is that pizza?”

“Yeah.”

“How did she even manage that?” 

The cafeteria’s food wasn’t exactly bad, but it didn’t have anything as good as pizza. It clung to the pretense of health while simultaneously giving us crap. 

Aaron shrugs. “She’s the alpha’s daughter. I think she could pull money out of her ass if she really wanted to.”

I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t think there was any need for that visualization.”

“I live off being extra.”

“Claire, you decided to join us.” Allison slides the food tray over to my side. “Finished with your book already?”

“Not quite,” I answer. Aaron nudges me. “I just thought you’d want my company.”

Allison looks at Aaron. “Did you bribe her with pizza?”

“I would have if needed.” He sits down next to me as I start biting into the pizza. “However, guilt-tripping worked just as good.”

“Always effective.”

“I try.”

I look between the two of them while eating my pizza, wondering if my presence was really needed here. At the moment, it really didn’t matter. The pizza was good.

“We stumbled upon your brother on our way back here,” Aaron says. “He just walked out of school right in front of us.”

Allison nods as if the information didn’t really surprise her. “He is checking on some things for our dad. Nothing to worry about.”

I swallow the pizza I’d been chewing. “Alpha things?”

“Pretty much.”

Aaron smirks. “See, I told you.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly deny your theory. You just weren’t really specific about what you meant.”

“How specific did you want me to be? I can’t exactly read minds either.”

“Well, I-”

“Guys,” Allison interrupts. We both turn to look at her. “Cut it out. Let’s discuss summer vacation.”

I bite into my pizza again, which causes Allison to narrow her eyes at me. “What are your plans for summer, Claire?”

Ah, so there were ulterior motives for getting me to come to the cafeteria. It wasn't just my company which they wanted.

I shrug. “Oh, you know. Driving here and there, visiting a friend, simple stuff.”

Allison raises an eyebrow. “You know even my answers to my history test weren’t so vague, and I flunked it.” 

“Well, I don’t exactly have it planned out so I wouldn’t be able to tell you.” 

Not a lie. All I knew is that I would be meeting Eliza somewhere. Shortly after getting together with my brother, Eliza’s father had sent her away to a school halfway across the country. Both Eliza and my brother had been very upset about it. Zack even more so as he hadn’t exactly revealed what we were to Eliza yet or what she was to him. Point is, it had been a very heartfelt goodbye in which my brother chickened out last minute and told her absolutely nothing. They were trying long-distance, and Zack would sometimes talk to me about her.

 Zack and I, another relationship in the works. Even though I had forgiven him, there still had been some awkwardness between the two of us. It had been made worse by me leaving, but Zack did his best to keep in touch with me and I allowed his efforts. It felt good to have my brother to talk to after so long.

“Are you sure you don’t want to join Aaron, Landon, and I to the family beach house? It’s a lot of fun and it’d be nice to have you over.”

I finish off the last of my pizza. “I am still not sure. My friend is..”

Allison cuts in quickly. “Your friend can come too. We have plenty of space.”

“She is human.”

Allison’s eyes widen. “Oh,” she pauses, “well, that’s unusual.”

She lets the information sink in for another second. “She can still come. I’ll just tell Landon to keep his claws pulled back.”

“What for?” 

Landon pulls a chair from the table closest to us. No one at that table dares to say anything to him. He places the chair next to me. 

Allison gives her brother an annoyed look. “I thought you were taking care of what dad told you to do.”

Landon waves offhandedly. “It’s taken care of. Nothing too big for me.” He places a hand in the table, allowing a partial shift to show a hint of his claws. “Now, sister, what do I need to keep the claws in for?”

Allison rolls her eyes. “I am trying to convince Claire to come to the beach house with us. She asked if she could bring her human friend with her.”

“Oh.” Landon’s claws vanish in an instant and he drapes his arm over my chair. “Yeah, I can keep the claws pulled in, see? You should come with us.”

I look at his arm in my chair pointedly. He removes it. I smile politely. “I’ll think about it. I need to ask my friend first.”

“Of course.”

Aaron picks up his bag. “We should get moving, the bell is about to ring.” 

Landon pouts. “I just sat down.”

“Well then, you should have taken care of your alpha things a bit faster don’t you think?”

He glares at Allison. She sticks her tongue out at him. 

I laugh at the interaction, yet at the same time, I envy their relationship. That’s how Zack and I should have been. If only…

I shake off those thoughts. We still had now. We’d get there eventually. We had already made a lot of progress compared to last year. I'll call him tonight, it's been a while. I suddenly realized that I missed my brother. The thought almost makes me smile.

“Come on, Claire,” Aaron nudges, “we can’t be late.”

“Alright.”

“I am just saying,” Allison says, opening the door to our shared apartment. “We went through a year of school. You got perfect marks. I passed. We should go out to celebrate.”

I look at her, amused. Allison seems to find any possible excuse to go out to celebrate. Last week she had finally been able to paint her nails perfectly. We had gone out for chicken wings. 

“Sure.” 

Allison blinks at me, obviously shocked I had agreed so quickly. Normally, it would take some convincing to pull me out of the house. Today though, I felt a bit more outgoing. “Alright. I’ll tell the guys and go get ready. You should as well.”

I nod and begin walking toward my room. The apartment Allison and I lived in was not small, but it wasn’t exactly a penthouse either. Living with Allison had been an agreement I had with the alpha of the pack so that I could settle down here for a while. Allison had come up with it and I didn’t exactly have anything against it so it worked out in the end.

I quickly pull off my clothes and get into the shower. Showering before Allison does is always a wise choice. She tends to stay in the shower for an hour and use up all of the hot water.

Once I am done, I walk out of the shower while drying my hair with a towel. I open my closet and begin searching for a suitable outfit. That’s when my phone rings. 

I drop the towel I was using to dry my hair on top of my bed and pick up my phone. The name ‘Jake’ flashes across the screen. I freeze for a second. Jake rarely called. He had let me go, and he understood everything that entailed. Having him call me was a bit unusual. I was normally the one that called him.

I take another moment before I pick up the phone. “Hello?”

There is breathing on the other line, then a hesitant, “Claire?”

I frown at his voice. It sounded shaky, almost fragile. “Jake is there something wrong?”

“Claire,” he repeats again, and there is something in the way he says my name as if saying it is all that’s holding him together at the moment, that silences me, “come home.”