Alpha's Legacy (Black Moon Saga Book 3)

17. Lee and Me

We’ve fallen into a comfortable silence, and at some point, he reached over to pull me closer to him so that now I’m leaning my back against the side of him, resting the back of my head on his shoulder. Since I can’t see his face, I don’t even have a clue of what he’s thinking about, but I can feel how he is lost in whatever thoughts are on his mind.

I hate to be the one to break the peaceful silence, but something is still bothering me, and he never did get around to telling me about it on his own.

“What happened to you?” I finally just ask him outright, turning my body so I can look at him and gauge his reaction. “When you called me over to that alleyway, you were bloody and wounded. How did that happen?”

He sighs, reaching up to rub the back of his neck as he gives me a conflicted, troubled look.

“Nothing that I really feel like talking about,” he says, deflecting my question again. “Just normal Alpha male stuff, but nothing that I’m proud of. All I can really say is that you should see the other guy.”

He gives me a tentative little smirk, though the smug amusement that he’s trying to portray doesn’t reach all the way to his eyes like it normally does.

“Who then? Will you at least tell me that?” I continue pressing him for answers.

“Well, you’ll see him at dinner, and unless he found himself a healer too, he probably won’t be looking too pretty.”

“Your brother?” I ask in astonishment. “Your own brother did that to you?”

“Yeah," he sighs again. "Max. I don’t know why he keeps trying because he’s never going to best me, but every now and then he just can’t seem to resist the urge to challenge me and try to prove that he’s stronger than me. I always win, though I never stick around to let anyone see how much it costs me. Sometimes he gets me pretty good, though, depending on the state of mind that he catches me in, but it would cost me too much to let the people see me as weak, even if only for a moment. So, I always slink off to lick my wounds on my own, not even bothering with the pack doctors or anything.”

He sighs again and reaches over to pull on one of the tufts of long grass that are spattered here and there over the dusty dirt ground.

“I left him unconscious in the dirt this time, though, because I’m about fed up with it,” he goes on. “I don’t like hurting my brother, but I don’t enjoy spending my day aching and in pain because of his little ego trips either. But I will say that I can’t wait to officially become Alpha so that I can throw that power behind it too. I don’t figure that he’ll stop challenging me, even after I’m his Alpha, so I’m fully prepared for the sort of public spectacle that I’m sure he’ll be itching for.”

He lets go of the grass he’s been playing with and turns to look at me, though he’s been avoiding my eyes up until now.

“I guess I ended up talking about it after all, didn’t I,” he says, giving me another crooked half-smile, though this one is a little more convincing than the first.

“I guess you did,” I chuckle, not really sure how else I should respond.

Any comments that I can come up with would probably sound like I’m lecturing him, and I don’t want to do that. I can tell that he doesn’t like fighting with his brother, and if he could find some way to put a stop to it, he would. Anything that I say isn’t going to be helpful to him because I don’t have any suggestions to aid him with that.

It isn't lost on me that he just said that he doesn't like to let people see him like that, and yet he called out for my assistance. He let me have access to him when he was at his most vulnerable, and he trusted me to take care of him. That means a whole lot, even if I don't have the words to tell him that.

“But speaking of family matters, I’ve heard that Beta Robert and his mate are kind of related in a roundabout way,” he says in an obvious attempt to change the subject, though I can also tell that he’s amused with himself. “Your aunt, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Of course you would think that,” I tease him, rolling my eyes but not resisting his change in topic. This might be fun, and I'll play along if it helps cheer him up again.

“But you’re wrong. They’re not related,” I argue, even though I already kind of know what he’s getting at. I’m even looking forward to disputing it.

“No? His mom isn’t like her aunt or something?”

“No,” I laugh, pushing on his arm playfully. “His step-mom is my mother’s mate’s ex-wife. They’re not related in any sense, not biologically or even by the sacred bonds of mating that are granted by the Moon Goddess. Even though Adam was once mated to his step-mom, it was as chosen mates.”

I’m feeling pretty smug about my explanation, but something about what I just said seems to sober him up and wipe the smile off his face. He gets quiet for a few moments before he says anything, and it concerns me that I might have accidentally said something that offended him.

“Do you really believe in all that stuff?” he asks, and I can tell it’s not to mock me. It’s a thoughtful, serious question. “Don’t answer the way that you think I want you to because I want to know your real answer. Are you a true believer?”

“In the Moon Goddess? Of course. It’s hard not to be when the evidence of her existence is all around us.”

He scoffs, and I realize he probably thinks I mean literally all around us, but I don’t.

“No, no, not like that,” I assure him. “I’m not meaning to imply that she had a hand in all this,” I gesture around. “But she’s had a heavy hand in everything concerning werewolves.”

“You don’t think that our kind could just be explained away by a simple theory of human evolution?”

That’s a surprising question coming from someone who was raised in Luna’s Grace, though I suppose it’s not all that surprising coming from Lee.

“No, I don’t,” I tell him firmly. “There are aspects of us that can’t really be explained that way. Take our mate bonds for example.”

“Those aren’t a real thing. They exist because people believe they exist. They wish the effects into existence.”

“What? How does that even make sense? You can’t wish into existence something like being able to smell your mate by a scent that reaches your nose before you even know who they are, or the way our wolves can identify their mates just by looking into their eyes.”

“Okay, well those parts are real,” he concedes, sighing. “But I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think that it boils down to evolution. We’ve evolved to have not just stronger senses than humans, but more of them. Our human brains just can’t make sense of it because we have no framework for doing so, but our wolves understand. They just can’t explain it to us because they can only use the words and experiences that our human brains provide for them.”

I can really only sit there and stare at him dumbfounded for a little bit because I have no words for him. Part of me that I can’t fully get in touch with wants that to make sense, but it just doesn’t. It doesn’t explain everything.

“Then how do you explain the tingling sensations, the way mates can feel each other’s moods and emotions and hear their thoughts, the way their life forces link together and become interdependent, the mind-linking?”

“Well, I mean, some of that can be chalked up to extrasensory perception,” he argues.

“You don’t believe in the Moon Goddess, but you believe in ESP?”

“I suppose that does sound kind of silly when you put it that way,” he chuckles.

But his expression quickly turns serious again, and he sighs heavily with the weight of something on his mind.

“I’m going to tell you something that I haven’t told anyone else, and I need you to promise that it stays between us. Okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” I assure him, trying not to freak out about him finally letting me in like this.

I’m sure it’s silly of me, but I’m flattered. It's incredible to me that he's opening up to me after also putting his trust in me when he needed a healer earlier. I suddenly feel special and valued in a way that I never have with anyone else.

“I know who my fated mate is, but I made her promise not to reveal it to anyone,” he confesses. “Because as soon as Alpha Magnus finds out, he’ll have us up on a stage mating in front of the whole pack in a heartbeat, and that will be that. She’ll be my mate for the rest of my life, like it or not.”

As much as it pains me to learn that he’s the type of guy to not only want to reject his fated mate, but also force her to keep it a secret because he’s so against the idea of her, I’ve also learned from my limited time with Lee that nothing is ever as it seems with him. I suppose I’m willing to hear him out on this.

“And you don’t like it,” I probe for him to tell me more.

“No,” he shakes his head. “And it’s not her per se, at least not entirely. It’s more that I hate that I don’t get a choice. There’s no option to reject her or to take a chosen mate as long as my father is Alpha, and when I’m the Alpha, there’s really no option to change anything without losing the favor of the people. Most of the people in my pack are devout believers in the ridiculous religion that my father’s family line has been touting for centuries, and turning my back on the traditions here could be perceived as turning my back on them. So, again, I feel like I don’t get any choice. I won’t have any real power because everything is already all mapped out for me. All I’ll be able to do is exactly the same thing as all the Ignacio men before me.”

He turns and looks directly at me again, and I can see the tears of frustration pooling in his eyes. But he laughs, although it’s a bitter, sarcastic sort of laugh.

“And that’s another thing,” he says. “Ignacio, the surname that my father and his paternal line are so proud of. Do you know where it comes from?”

I shake my head because I really only know it because of his family, and I’m sure that’s not what he’s getting at.

“There was once a very powerful pyromancer named Ignacio, and the name quite literally means fire. When I pointed that out, both my dad and my grandpa were outraged, claiming that if there was ever a caster with that name, it was because he stole it. They claim our family is called Ignacio because of our fiery tempers and the strength of our lineage, though neither had ever told me anything of the sort prior to that.”

“But he couldn’t have ‘stolen’ it. Casters names aren’t chosen, they’re bestowed upon them in the dreams of their parents,” I share with him what my father so recently explained to me. “If that was his name, it was because forces much greater than the minds of men deemed that it should be so.”

He smiles at me with fondness and reaches for my hand so he can kiss the back of it, and he doesn’t release it after that. He just sits there holding it and gently stroking my knuckles with his thumb as he studies me again.

“Why do you think your family took that as their surname?” I ask him, mostly because the silence and him just sitting there looking at me like that is starting to get to me, but also because I’m curious about what point he was driving at before I interrupted him.

“I honestly don’t know, but I can tell you that the first records of our lineage pop up sometime after Ignacio the pyromancer already had his name. My younger self wanted to believe that it was because we were his descendants and that maybe I’d grow up to have some magical gift with fire, but that never happened. I do have to wonder it all over again, though, since I’ve recently learned more about casters and their names.”

He smiles at me slyly, making sure that I appreciate that he's referencing what I told him earlier, but he only pauses briefly before telling me, “I couldn’t reconcile then why his first name would become our last name, but now I’m wondering if it wasn’t because his first name was his only name, and he mated with a she-wolf who took on his name for her last name or something, and then their children and descendants carried it on from there.”

“Interesting theory,” I have to admit, though I still don’t entirely know where he was originally going with this, or how it relates to his lack of freedom to choose.

“And that’s really all it is, though I’d love to see the look on my dad’s face if I could ever prove that we’re descended from a warlock. He’d hate that.”

He must read something on my face about how I’m wondering what Alpha Magnus really thinks about me, since I’m a caster, because Lee’s face softens, and he pulls me closer to him so he can drape an arm around me. I kind of like the feel of it, so instead of pulling away from him the way I’m sure Tian would want me to, I lean on him and let him hold me that way.

“He does like you,” he assures me, “but I will say that it’s despite the fact that you’re a caster, and not because of it. Honestly, he probably likes you because you’re your mother’s daughter, and he’s obsessed with her.”

“Obsessed how?”

I can’t imagine that Tian would be ignorant of this obsession, and yet he seems comfortable with Alpha Magnus.

“He’s her biggest fan,” he laughs, squeezing my shoulder a bit. “But you have to understand that she’s kind of a celebrity around here. No, actually she’s more like … well, I mean there’s no other way to say it but to use his own term. She’s ‘The Divine Luna,’ which to such devout followers of the Moon Goddess, is a pretty big deal. So, he likes you because you come from her without really taking the time to learn anything else about you. But it works to your advantage because you can do no wrong in his eyes. None of the Luna’s children can.”

“He must have never met Emerick,” I can’t resist commenting sarcastically.

His eyes darken and his jaw tenses in response to my comment, his hold on me tightening slightly as he says, “No, I’m guessing he hasn’t, and I don’t think I have either. But quite honestly, if I ever do have the pleasure, I plan to greet him with a firm right hook.”

I don’t think that’s a joke either, and the thought of it makes me squirm a little. Emerick may have turned on me recently, but he’s still my twin brother. On the other hand, it feels kind of good to have someone in my corner and ready to defend me like that.

Which is why I hate that I still feel a need to ask him a question that he probably isn’t going to like answering.

“How does your mate feel about keeping your connection a secret?” I ask him nervously, not wanting to ruin our bonding moment but also feeling like I need to know. It still bothers me that he’s left her hanging like that.

He inhales a sharp breath through his nose as though I’ve caught him off-guard, and I suppose I have. It’s quite an abrupt change of topic, though in my mind, our conversation never stopped being about that.

“She was as displeased and panicked to discover that I was her mate as I was about discovering her,” he reveals. “She’s not from this pack, and she has no desire to transfer here. By the time we met, she already had an ambitious life plan firmly in place, and our strict rules would force her to abandon all her plans and dreams to come and live here, where women are treated as subordinates, and she would never be able to achieve what she’s spent her whole life working toward at her home pack. Being an Alpha’s mate just isn’t worth it when it’s the Alpha of Luna’s Grace you’re mated to.”

“Oh, I see,” is my only response as I regretfully mull over the fact that my instinct was to assume the worst of him.

But it turns out that he had some good reasons for insisting that his mate keep their connection secret. I seem to have a bad habit of jumping to conclusions like that, though I’m glad to have withheld judgement this time.

“Quite honestly, Anna Jade, if it were somehow magically left up to me to decide, I’d probably pick you as my mate. I’ve never connected with someone like this, and never had someone treat me like I’m anything other than the Alpha’s son and the future Alpha. No one challenges and educates me the way you do, not to mention doing it while being so adorable.”

He reaches over to poke my nose and then my cheek playfully, while I just sit there in breathless, stunned silence. His words have left me warm and tingly all over, and I can’t help wondering if he’s mistaken about his fated mate. We really have connected and bonded like we were born to do it, and the way he makes me feel without even trying sounds an awful lot like the early signs of a mate bond. Could it be that he’s my mate? Maybe the way that he and his fated mate are both opposed to their union has caused the Moon Goddess to treat their bond as though it’s been rejected, and then she picked me for him.

“Y-yeah, I mean. Yeah, me too,” I stammer out, swallowing as I try to keep my cool. But then I realize that he said a few different things, so I should probably be more specific. “I’ve never connected with someone like this either, and I know what you mean about being treated only as what you are rather than who.”

“Yeah, and that’s the other thing. You get it, what it’s like being an Alpha’s kid. Not a future Alpha, of course, but I suppose people probably do treat you differently because you’re a hybrid, which is probably a lot like how they treat me. Different, untouchable. Someone to whisper about, but not someone to befriend.”

“That’s exactly what it’s like, though you’ve put it into words much better than I ever have.”

“Just one of my many talents,” he says smugly, leaning in close so that he can whisper it in my ear in a low, rumbly tone that makes me shiver.

I lick my lips, trying to come up with something to say to that, but my mouth has gone dry again and nothing comes to mind other than thinking about how he’s moving the hand of the arm he still has wrapped around me. His fingers are gently dancing over my shoulder and my arm in a way that makes me feel a bit tingly.

When I turn my head to look at him, I see the intense look that’s been on his face while he’s been studying me, probably enjoying watching me squirm in response to his words. My eyes meet his, and my breath catches in my throat as he turns himself, bringing his other hand up to cup my face and leaning in until he’s mere inches away.

“I really shouldn’t be giving into these urges,” he says softly, his voice still rumbling as I feel his breath wash over my face.

“But you’re going to do it anyway?” I wonder hopefully, cringing internally when I hear how choppy and ragged my voice comes out.

“But I’m going to do it anyway,” he agrees, chuckling softly as he closes the remaining distance between our faces.

And then his lips brush against mine, lightly and tentatively at first as he questions me with his eyes, wondering if I’m okay with him kissing me.

I shock the both of us by kissing him back, telling him with my lips and my body how much I want him to keep doing exactly what he’s doing. I’ve never experienced anything like the waves of pleasure and excitement that are rolling over and passing through me, and I’ve never felt the tightening and pulling low in my belly before, which I think are signals of my wakening arousal.

I find myself no longer worrying whether he really is my mate. I’m just enjoying and doing my best to move my lips along with his. He really is very talented, though I’m trying not to think about what it probably means that he seems so comfortable and experienced with kissing.

I can’t help gasping with surprise when I feel his tongue swiping across my lip and pushing against it as though he’s asking me for entrance. It happens so fast that it barely even registers that his tongue is inside my mouth now, and the flavor of him blends with the hints of mint leftover from my chewing gum.

But then he suddenly pulls away, a look of concern crossing his features as he looks at the sky.

“Uh, we have a problem,” he says, chewing his lip as he frets over whatever it is.

“What?” I ask him breathlessly, still stunned by the events of the past few minutes.

“The sun is setting, and it will probably be dark before we even make it back down this hill.”

“Okay,” I laugh, not really caring about the sunset right now. I just want to get back to kissing him.

And then it hits me. Tian. He said he wants me back before it gets dark, but we’re not going to make it in time.

“Come on, get up,” he commands, already in the process of rising to his own feet.

Then he reaches down and pulls me up, taking a moment to help me dust the dirt off my jeans. He crouches down and grabs one of my hands to position it on his shoulder, and I realize that he wants me to get on his back again like we did before.

“It will be faster if I just carry you,” he explains.

And he’s not wrong. I’m a slow and clumsy climber, while he’s strong, agile, and seems to know his way around this hill because he comes here so often.

It’s impressive how quickly he hurries us down the hill, but I don’t think it will make much difference. The darkness of the night is already setting in and the sun is barely visible over the horizon. We still have to get back to town and all the way to the packhouse, and I somehow have to try to avoid letting Tian see that it’s a motorcycle bringing me back.

Well, road trip, it was fun while it lasted, but I have a feeling that all the fun is about to come to an abrupt end. Tian is going to be so angry, and worse than that, disappointed. I'm really not looking forward to the look on his face that I know will be waiting for me when we get back, the look that I've earned by failing to keep pretty much all of my promises.

I'm so screwed.