The Luna's Escape

Chapter 7 - A Threat

Conan

I just had to offer to pick up Dominic’s tablet from his home on the way to his office. Jasmine shouldn’t have even been here. She was supposed to be looking for pup things, ‘feathering her nest’ the Alpha called it.

She never left the f*****g house! So how did she know about the one minute I gave into temptation when I surprised Rafe with some lunch?

‘It wasn’t the window shutter that slammed,’ my wolf, Ciimaq, prompted.

The dread sank like a brick. Jasmine wasn’t pulling this out of nowhere. Her threat was real, but why the hell was she throwing it down to begin with and hiding money away in secret? She was up to something behind Dominic’s back; the guilt was stamped across her forehead.

“Everyone already knows about me and Rafe. We’re not in some secret relationship, so where’s the threat?” I swallowed my heart rate and the brick with it, deciding to be stubborn and call her bluff, knowing full well it wasn’t a bluff.

He wasn’t my fated mate, but Rafe and I shared a deep connection that transcended simple infatuation. I loved him and had done since we met in one of the training classes as a newly shifted wolf of nineteen. He was two years older, with sandy gold hair, tanned skin, hazel eyes and a killer, dazzling smile that made me question everything about my sexuality. As we got to know one another, my secret crush for him grew and drowned me, leaving me thinking the attraction was a one-sided affair. Until the day he kissed me and made me feel like an i***t for twisting myself in knots over him for months.

Wherever my fated mate was, I knew deep in my bones that if anything happened to them, Rafe could well be my second chance.

“You distracted a guard that day because you couldn’t keep it in your pants.” Jasmine’s fists bunched, turning white around the money she crumpled. “Anything could have happened.”

“Like what?” I scoffed, staring her down – a difficult feat because her unnaturally blue eyes were freaky.

Ciimaq shook his head in my mind at my obstinate and pigheaded course. ‘I told you. You were playing with fire by putting Rafe on her security rotation.’

‘You liar!’

He may have voiced a worry that it could be a distraction, but my wolf soon rolled over like a pup, happy to have our chosen mates, Rafe and Roul, so close. Guarding the wiccan Luna wasn’t exactly a dangerous assignment, but it would have brought him praise for his duty. Nobody was stupid enough to try anything with our pack, and I patrolled our borders regularly myself to maintain their defence as part of my people’s obligation to the wolves we were bound to. The Luna was beloved by our entire pack, and no member would wish her any ill intention. She also kept herself in the house all day and had guards accompany her constantly whenever she left.

None of these points would make a convincing argument in front of Dominic. He was beyond protective of his wiccan mate and would not take any lapse in her safety lightly. After his first mate’s accident that the previous i***t Beta let happen, I couldn’t blame him. If the Alpha knew I distracted Rafe from his job, even for a minute, I would be up a brown river of rapids with no paddle to pull me out.

Dominic took a wild gamble by appointing me as his Gamma last year while I was so young, despite proving I was the best of my Yup’ik people to take the position left vacant for decades. They all wanted me to wait until I was older, especially my mother, the last Gamma, Aurora Moses. But I was determined to prove them wrong. Dominic agreed to take me under his wing and teach me himself, like the father figure I hadn’t had since I was eight years old. I couldn’t let him know I had violated the confidence he had placed in me.

“I almost ran that day.” The money fell from Jasmine’s grasp, the majority of which spilled out of the sleeve she was holding. “I saw my opportunity, and I took it in a fit of madness. And then I spotted you and Rafe, and I ran back inside before you noticed me. It was a stupid idea anyway…”

She swiped at her eyes, clearing away the tears before they fell. I hadn’t spoken with her often, and when I did, she was usually all polite smiles and quiet, but with kind and encouraging words, content while holding her mate’s arm. She was a stark contrast to the previous Luna and a welcome change.

Why would she ever want to run when she was pregnant and due in six months?

“I don’t like resorting to blackmail; it makes me sick. But I’m desperate, Conan.” She shook her head, tears flowing freely. “I can’t do this anymore.”

She sank to her knees, more defeated than I had ever seen a person be, and I was left more clueless than ever. The growing resentment that she would hold a mistake over my head softened, but it hadn’t vanished. Her threat not only put me in the firing line; it placed my people in it, too. It had taken us years to restore the trust that was broken when my mother and a few others assisted some strange Russian rogue wolf escape with his mate from this pack. It was forbidden to abandon the pack, and it was considered the most disgraceful act a wolf could commit. And my mother not only helped them flee, she helped them flee to a former rival in the north of Alaska, White Cloud pack. I understood she had her reasons, but she put our people in danger, and all for just a pair of wolves.

“What can’t you do?” I crouched beside her. “If you’re having any worries, why don’t you tell Dominic instead of sneaking around? He—”

“Dominic?” She barked a bitter laugh, roughened by a choked sob. “He is what I can’t do anymore. You don’t know what he’s like… he’s a monster.”

“Monster?” I snapped to my feet and backed away from her a step. This was ludicrous, and Ciimaq wasn’t best pleased to hear a bad word about the man who had helped us through our first shift. “He’s the best Alpha we’ve ever had. He’s opened up our pack to the outside and deals with other packs. He helps all the young members he can through their first shift, no matter the time of day it happens for them. He saved you—”

“He bought me… I saw it when he hit me.”

I didn’t know which bombshell to unpack first.

‘No… It has to be a lie.’ My wolf couldn’t accept what he was hearing.

“When has he ever hit you? I’ve never seen you with a single mark—”

“Last year, when I… when I…” She rubbed her palm over the small mound poking under her top.

… When she miscarried.

The realisation must have shown on my face because she nodded and continued.

“I wasn’t locked away because I was recovering from losing the baby. It was because I was healing from the massive bruise he put across my face. He blamed me for the miscarriage, but he knew it would’ve ruined his image and reputation if anyone saw me injured like that. He’s been careful about not laying a hand on me again. I’m too easy to bruise under an Alpha.”

I thought it was excessive that Dominic hid her away for so long, but he was always so protective and extra about her welfare. Now? I wasn’t sure what to think.

Ten minutes ago, Dominic was the man I looked up to, who I went to for guidance, who trained and treated me like a son. I couldn’t reconcile that version with the one I was being told about but had never seen.

“This can’t be real…” I sank to the arm of the couch before my unsteady legs caved out, or I threw up or both. “He’s… he’s a good man…”

“No, he's using you. Because you’re young, and he can manipulate you. It’s what he does. He’s done it to me, making me think he saved me, that he loved me. And he’s doing it to everyone around him. That’s why I need out.” Jasmine slowly began raking the money she had dropped towards her and stuffed it into the slip, which I spotted was a sock. “I had a vision the night I found out I was pregnant. I saw what happens to my son, and I’m not letting him turn out like his father.”

Like everyone else in the pack, I knew about her vision. Dominic wasted no time announcing that they were expecting a son and that the Luna had seen him in a vision. It seemed as though there was more to it than Jasmine had divulged.

“What exactly did you mean when you said ‘he bought you’?” I remembered the prior comment that I was still trying to wrap my head around. “You’re his second chance mate. Didn’t he find you?”

She shook her head, clutching the money wadded up in the old sock and twisting so hard that I feared she might rip it apart. “There’s no bond between us; he just let everyone think there was. I thought he saved me too… and I did love him… for the longest time. I still lo—” She sighed before she said the word, shaking her head and taking deeper breaths. “It’s complicated how I feel about him. When he hit me, it triggered a vision of his past. He has no idea I’m aware of the truth about my rescue or his Luna’s death. If he finds out I know this… he’ll probably kill me. He’ll kill you for knowing too; that’s why your old Beta is dead… he knew the truth.”

“Niven, the old Beta… the Luna’s death wasn’t his fault?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“No, I don’t want to hear; I need to hear.”

‘How much worse can it get?’

I feared Ciimaq was about to eat his words and possibly choke on them.

“The vision showed him speaking on the phone to someone, but their voice was distorted, and I couldn’t make out much of what they were saying. Dominic said he needed a new Luna because the one he had was too willful, and she’d had twenty years to give him a pup and hadn’t.”

I grew up with the former Luna, Claudia, in the picture as Dominic’s mate. She didn’t win herself many admirers and was known for being difficult, highly critical of others and disliked the fact that she had no authority over my people. She and my mother came to blows on more than one occasion. Nobody knew how Dominic could tolerate her, saying the only reason had to be the mate bond. It made me anxious about the prospect of finding my own fated mate. What if the bond made me so enamoured with a terrible person that I would prefer to tolerate such toxicity rather than reject them?

It was a double-edged blessing, and it wasn’t until I met Rafe that I began to change my mind.

It was Luna Jasmine who cemented that change. She was quiet yet kind and brought a nurturing hand to the pack, which was a breath of fresh air. She and Dominic were always so smitten and all over each other; he looked at her as though she was the sole person in his universe. It made me believe there could be a benefit to allowing a mate into my heart.

… And all of it was a lie.

Hiding her stash back in the small hiding spot she had created in the window seat, Jasmine slid the thin cushioned pad back and perched on the edge, staring down at her bare feet poking out of her jeans.

“Dominic gave a list of attributes he wanted, namely obedient, docile and young, so that his new Luna could give him heirs. The voice said they had someone perfect, me, so long as he didn’t mind a non-wolf. He seemed to like the idea of a foresight wiccan giving him hybrid pups. The person he was speaking to must’ve sent him my picture, because my face popped up on his computer screen… and I still remember the way he touched the surface of it, growling.” A visceral shudder passed through her, from the round of her shoulders down to the tip of her toes. “He wanted me, and he didn’t care what my price tag was. The voice told him all he had to do was present himself as my saviour… and I’m disgusted with myself that they were right. I fell for all of it like an idiot.”

She closed her eyes, tilting her head back, as though she was so tired of going through this and had run out of tears to shed a while back. There isn’t a thing I can think of to say to any of this. My stomach had dropped out of my ass around the point of hearing that Dominic laid his hands on a woman, a non-wolf who could have been killed by his strength. And it had walked itself out the damn door, never to be seen again around the juncture where he paid money and bought a female, as if he were ordering a slave.

To replace my stomach, a pot of guilt had begun stewing, silencing even my wolf because we had both jumped to the defence of a man not worth it and branded a woman who needed help a liar.

“I know that look,” Jasmine’s voice drew me out of my head. “You don’t know what to believe, and part of you still wants to think I’m lying. Because if I’m not lying, then it means everything you’ve been living is a lie… and that’s the scariest thing to face.”

‘She hit the nail on the head,’ my wolf muttered, trying to make sense of everything.

The only trouble was that it was our head that was hit with it.

“This is insane.” I leapt to my feet, swiping my hands down my face and regretting ever offering to pick up Dominic’s tablet to be helpful to him. My head was pounding, and a hammer was striking my temple, growing in its force.

“Dominic killed Luna Claudia. There was no hunting accident.” My hands fell from my forehead like they’d lost all their bones to keep their strength as Jasmine spoke. “He did it because I was being held for him, and he needed his Luna out of the way for me to take her place, with enough months in between to grieve so it wouldn’t draw attention. She wasn’t mauled by a wild animal. Beta Niven didn’t abandon her. It was all Dominic.”

I swallowed. “You saw this? In the vision you had of Dominic’s past?”

“All of it,” she said with a grimace, practically turning green, “like I was hovering over him as he did it. When they separated in their wolf form to track down their game, he told Claudia to stay behind while he and Niven chased the game her way. He circled back when he and his Beta split up, and that’s when he did it. Dominic slaughtered his own mate to make it look as though it was the game they were chasing, thinking he had no witnesses. Only, Niven realised something was wrong and circled back too, where he saw the whole thing. He refused to keep Dominic’s crime silent, and was killed before he could mind-link a soul. The rest, you already know.”

It was my turn to spin green under my dark-tan skin.

Everyone knew of the tragedy surrounding the former Luna, as well as the disgrace of the former Beta who left her side, which resulted in her death. Dominic was covered in blood that day from trying to save his mate, and it was all anyone could talk about, expressing their sympathy for the man. I was still in high school at the time, but it had spread throughout by the end of the day.

Hunting accidents in our pack weren’t uncommon, and unfortunately, neither were deaths. It was part of our pack’s tradition that once a year, each shifted member of the pack held a responsibility to catch and give the pack the game they had hunted. It didn’t matter when they completed this duty, just that they accomplished it. The act represented the individual’s willingness to provide for the pack and care for the wolves we were born amongst. One of the most significant prey we could bring back was our first as newly shifted wolves, and it had become somewhat of a competition over the generations for who could bag the biggest on their first hunt.

As the Alpha and Luna, they were expected to bring back the largest game for the pack, a bear. A werewolf against one of those giants wasn’t an impossible match, but it was a hell of a fight. Nobody questioned Dominic’s word or his account, because why would we? He had earned the pack’s trust completely and ended the archaic mindsets that past Alphas and old pack members had turned a blind eye to. Why would he have committed the very crime – killing his fated mate for the chance of a stronger one – when he outlawed it?

I realised now that everything I knew about Dominic was based on what he said, not what I had seen.

Was Jasmine even the lone survivor of her community? Were they out there somewhere, wondering where their daughter had disappeared?

“Your wiccan Family; are they really gone?”

Her shoulders rose in a shrug. “I found a small article online about an established wiccan Family that had abandoned their site near Hudson Bay. Whether that means they’re out there somewhere or they’re gone, I don’t know.”

‘We should help her, right?’ I looked to my wolf.

‘How?’ he echoed my worries.

Ciimaq fell silent, like me, going over every route out of the pack that existed. I patrolled our borders and knew them blindfolded. There weren’t any weak points to cross in secret. Passing the borders for a day excursion somewhere, however, that could work. The trick was doing so without raising questions, and the pregnant Luna leaving the pack borders would raise a query or ten.

My mother’s words came back to me; the qanruyutet (wise words) passed down to each Gamma.

‘Serve the pack, not the Alpha, and work for the wolves to protect them and the land. The Alpha is replaceable; the pack is not.’

But what if, in aiding an individual who needed it, I put my people at risk? My mother knew the penalty well after our people were excommunicated from the rest of the pack because she helped her friend and a rogue wolf cross pack borders to White Cloud in the north. It was almost fifty years ago, and it was only in the last few decades that that rift had started to be repaired. Could I risk all that for Luna Jasmine?

A slam from the front door shuddered the dust floating in the air, and a crackle ignited it from the invisible aura of an Alpha wolf.

Oh f**k…