The Luna's Betrayal

Chapter 3

Aaron's POV

I had just hung up the phone with Sierra to answer another call. I saw it was Heather, one of the fiction editors who worked for our partner company out in Chicago. She was also a werewolf and the daughter of their pack, Blue River's Beta. Almost everyone at her publishing company was a wolf from that pack.

"Hey Heather," I said, answering.

"Aaron, hey! Good, you're still awake. Listen, since most of us don't have any meetings tomorrow, we were going to hit up the hotel bar as a last night celebration. We'd love it if you could come down for a few minutes."

"Oh, I’m not sure, I have an early flight back to my place tomorrow."

"Come one, this is our last night here for probably another year!" she said enthusiastically. Contemplating it for a minute or two, I decided a few minutes couldn’t hurt anything.

"Sure, I’ll be down in five minutes."

"Awesome!" I pulled myself off the bed, laced my shoes back on and started for the door. Making sure my black wedding band was on full display. Heather was the daughter of her pack's Beta. I had only met her a couple of times at conferences and the occasional Alpha Summit. She seemed nice enough, but she also seemed a little too friendly at times. She hadn’t met her mate yet, and she let people know that whenever she could. When I got to the bar in the hotel, I saw a group of people already standing around with drinks in hand.

"Aaron!" Heather called, waving me over. I waved back, making my way towards them. Heather was at the bar, along with Amanda, who worked at the same company as Heather, plus another woman and 2 men I didn’t know. Heather met me halfway to the bar and grabbed my arm, pulling me to the group of people.

"Everyone, this is Aaron Bennett. He’s the CEO and owner of Bennett Publishing outside of Pittsburg, he also owns the company I work for," she said with pride, still holding on to me. "Aaron, this is Stephanie, Jack, and Leon. They’re all editors at GMP Publishing in Washington. And of course, you know Amanda," she smiled, gesturing towards her friend.

"Yes, it’s nice to see you again. And it’s nice to meet you guys," I told them, attempting to shake her off.

"It’s good to meet you, Heather has told us all about you." I wasn’t sure how that was possible, seeing as we hadn’t spent that much time together. Shaking hands, the bartender came over and I ordered a beer. It was clear that Heather and Amanda were werewolves, but the other three smelled like humans. I needed to keep that in mind when I was talking to them.

"Do you really think being here right now is a good idea?" Cole asked, eyeing Heather through my eyes.

"I'll have one drink. One drink won't hurt." Cole looked at me with a 'are you sure about that?' sort of look.

"Aren't you guys excited we managed to get done a day early?" Amanda said.

"I know, I think that's a first," Leon added.

"Is anyone doing anything fun with the weekend?" Jack asked.

"I've got a trip planned with my sister," Heather chimed in. "Aaron, what about you?"

"I'm not sure actually, we're not planning a lot right now because my sister's about to have a baby."

"That's right!" Heather commented, touching my arm. I grabbed my beer and took it to my lips for a drink, taking my arm out of her reach. "How's she doing?"

"Good, from what I last heard from my wife. My be... brother-in-law has been trying to help her any way he can, which is driving her insane. She hates people doing things for her. She’s usually really active but hasn’t been able to do a lot these last few weeks."

"Nice near slip in front of the humans," Cole said. I rolled my eyes as Heather drew my attention again.

"I completely forgot you're married!" she said, looking down at my ring with an odd expression. I watched as she then raised her glass to for a quick sip through pursed lips. Changing the subject seemed like a good idea, so I threw out a question to the group.

"What did you guys think of that last lecture today?" Before anyone could answer, Heather did for everyone.

"We're not here to talk business, we're here to celebrate it all being over!" Heather raised her glass into the air, and quickly drained the last of it into her mouth.

"So, Aaron, what does your wife do?" Stephanie asked.

"She's currently a junior editor at my publishing company. She was an editor's assistant when we first met, but she left that job and moved back to Pennsylvania with me."

"Only a junior editor, I would have thought she had more experience than that," Heather remarked.

"She has a lot of experience," I said, trying to stifle Cole's loud growl threatening to rip from my lips.

"Then how come she's not here?" Heather asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"She's had too much work to do. Plus, she's keeping an eye on Danny, since she's about to give birth any day now."

"That's so sweet of her," Heather responded, though her response didn't sound genuine.

"Sierra always does whatever she can to help everyone out," I said.

"You’ll have to bring her to the next conference," Leon told me.

"That’s actually where we met, last year at the nationwide conference." Heather was ignoring this part of the conversation, busy ordering another drink. After about an hour, I decided to call it a night despite Heather’s whines of protest. I said goodnight to everyone and headed back to my room.

"How desperate can you be?" Cole asked.

"At least this is the last time we’ll see her for a while." Going back into my room, I got ready for bed, and sent one last good night text to Sierra.

I was awoken by loud banging on my door. Jerking to a sitting position, I looked at the clock, it was three in the morning.

"What the he**?," I mumbled, throwing back the covers and going to the door. Checking through the peep hole, I saw what looked to be a be a very drunk Heather leaning against the wall of the alcove my door was in.

"This can’t be good," Cole said. Not wanting to just leave her out there with her being so drunk, I opened the door.

"Heather, what are you doing? Is everything okay?"

"Of course, silly," she said, slightly slurred. "We couldn't really talk openly in front of the humans. Can I come in?"

"Heather, it's three in the morning. Why don't you go back to your room?"

"No, I don't wanna go back to my room," she said, pouting.

"Moon Goddess have mercy....." Cole laughed.

"I'm glad you think this is funny."

"Sierra would send her flying if she was here right now."

"Heather, I'm sorry. I have to be up early for my flight, you have to go back to your room."

"But I walked all the way up here to talk to you!" She swayed slightly, before stumbling forward, attempting to enter my room, but fell into me instead. I caught her out of instinct and not wanting her to smash headfirst into the floor. Even though she would heal quickly, being a wolf.

"You're so hot," she cooed, looking up into my face, before closing her eyes.

"I'm sure all three of me are," I told her. She was starting to go limp, so I picked her up.

"What the he** do we do now?" Cole asked.

"I'll just take her back to her room. She told us about ten times downstairs which one she was in." I carried Heather down a few flights of stairs until we made it to her room. Shifting her weight, to free one of my hands, I used my strength to pry the door open. I might have broken it slightly, but she could pay for it later. I sat her down gently in bed, hoping she wasn’t going to remember any of this in the morning. Mumbling in her drunken sleep, she rolled over. Once I was back in my room, I made sure to lock the door before I got back into bed.

"Planning to tell Sierra what happened?" Cole asked.

"Of course, nothing happened, and I think she’s gonna find it hilarious. It’ll make their first meeting, if that happens, pretty interesting." "

"You’re braver than I am. Brooklyn’s gonna wanna claw her eyes out."

"You’re not wrong there," I laughed.

I woke up early the next morning and packed my things quickly. If I could avoid running into Heather after last night, that would be best. Heading down to the front desks, I checked out of the hotel and when to the waiting SUV outside. This conference has been held in Arizona, so the flight back to Pittsburg would only take about 4 or so hours.

I climbed onto our jet, and was greeted by the pilot, Nina.

"Good morning, Alpha," she said brightly.

"Good morning, Nina."

"Are you looking forward to going home?"

"You have no idea; these conferences are getting longer and longer each time I go."

"Luna Sierra will be very happy to see you. If you take a seat, I'll have us off the ground in just a few minutes." She walked into the cockpit, while I sat down and buckled in. We took off shortly after that, and once I was able to, I got up and made myself some coffee. I set up shop on my laptop and tried to get as much work done as I could before going home. I hadn’t seen Sierra in five days, so I wasn’t planning on doing anything else except shutting us both up in our bedroom.

"You know, I’d enjoy some alone time with Brooklyn too," Cole whined.

"Alright, I won’t hog them the entire time." Maybe I wasn't being entirely truthful, but he would just have to wait until I was done with my mate to enjoy his fun. Since we had such a long flight, I took my laptop out of my bag and set it up to try and get a little more work done. That way I could spend as much time with Seirra when I saw her as possible. Cole was jumping up and down restlessly, with anticipation of seeing his mate in a few short hours.