Her eyes glazed over, and then she snapped her head sharply towards me. “You left my son in the middle of the woods with hunters shooting at him?” she growled.
“I did what I was told,” I said back fiercely.
“Nice to know we’ll have a Luna who runs away from her enemies.” Her voice was sharp like her tongue as she walked away from me.
“I did what my Alpha told me to, I was following orders. I’d follow Rush anywhere,” I fought back, intent on proving that I wasn’t the weak, frail, girl she thought I was.
“You’ll follow him anywhere.” She smiled condescendingly. “That’s a sweet notion, but it’s not realistic, Sloane.” The way she said my name made it sound like a curse.
“My mate is in danger, so if you’ll excuse me,” I snarled, brushing past her. Her hand came and gripped my arm.
My back remained to her, but she pulled me closer.
“If my son is injured, so help me, I will end you.”
“Well, then you better let me go so I can find him, huh?” I rolled my eyes. The door was still open, and I walked quickly outside. I threw the towel on the ground, next to the gardener, and shifted quickly.
Four other wolves were running in front of me, I assumed one was Beckett, and the rest were Warriors.
They ran expertly, dodging the trees at just the right moments, jumping over fallen logs as it didn’t faze them. I trailed behind clumsily. As we approached the cliff where Rush and I had gone, I noticed he was no longer there.
My stomach dropped inside me, terror filling me. I only had one day with him. One day was not enough, one day was nothing, it was torture, it was a tease; and then his wolf slowly emerged from the trees on the south side of the cliff.
I nearly cried with happiness. He strode over, carefully stepping over the rocks and a human body that was covered in blood, I prayed it was not his blood.
He shifted back into his human form, pridefully splayed out in the sunlight. I tried to avert my eyes, but I was fixated on my mate’s naked body, reveling in the lines and contours.
The four wolves shifted back as well, but my eyes never strayed. Rush bent over and picked up the small blanket we had brought for our picnic; he tossed it to me, unhappily. I grabbed the edge in my mouth and dragged it behind a tree where I shifted and wrapped myself in it. As I nervously stepped out from the trees, I was instantly confronted with Rush’s large frame.
He slammed my shoulders aggressively against the rough tree, ignoring my wince in discomfort. “When I tell you to run, you run Sloane. You don’t run and then come back. I am the Alpha, I don’t care if you are my mate or not, you never disobey an order, am I clear?” His husky voice rasped in my ear, out of breath but full of promise.
His lower body fluttered across me, and I blinked to clear my thoughts.
“Sloane, answer me.”
“Yes, I understand,” I said sullenly, still trying to sound harsh. His head stayed close to me for a breath, and then he pushed himself off me and turned to his Beta.
“They were hunters,” he informed his pack mates loudly. “Equipped with guns, one bow with seven arrows. They were prepared, there was no way they could have known where I would be. They must have been following me.”
“Did anyone else know where you were going?” the tallest man asked Rush.
“Only Sloane and I knew,” he said, running a hand through his hair.
The man’s eyes shifted to me slightly.
I staggered back at the implication. “You think I did this?” I shouted, pulling the blanket tighter around my chest.
“No,” he said, not convincingly at all. My eyes were daggers.
“Don’t accuse my mate of being a traitor,” Rush warned lowly.
The man bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Rush. We just don’t know anything about her,” he offered.
“She’s been here for one day, Beckett, one day, and you’re already accusing her of betraying me?”
Beckett opened his mouth, closed it, blinked, shook his head, trying to come up with something to say. He shook his head, looking down, and stayed quiet. Rush stepped towards him, heads so close together, seething.
“She’ll be introduced to the pack in the next three days, and then she will go through the ceremony to become my Luna, and when she does, you will be kneeling at her feet, or you will be exiled from this pack. Am I clear?”
“Yes.” Beckett’s sharp voice snapped, and he looked at me.
“Good.”
Ceremoniously
Rush went back to his Alpha duties for the next two days, and I was left to wander the packhouse, alone and disliked by two of the three people I had met so far. I didn’t really talk to anyone that I came across, or rather, no one spoke to me.
Rumors had spread through the pack that I was a traitor and that I had left Rush to die. There was no truth to them, no support, but people still look at me with hesitation.
The only person who showed me any kindness was one of the Warrior’s daughters, Kenna. She offered to show me the pack grounds after she saw me wandering aimlessly. She was a small girl, I wondered how she could come from a pack warrior.
“My mom was tinier than me,” she flittered happily, short curls bouncing on the top of her head; the sides were shaved short. “She died about six years ago now, I think, in September.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said empathetically. She waved her mocha hand and smiled.
“She was a good woman; she was always so happy.”
“Well, she definitely passed that down to you.”
She smiled, blushed at my compliment,
