It’s been four days since Leyanne got here, and I still cannot get any kind of read on her. She’s annoyingly distant and still likes to play vague, and although she gives us zero indication that we can’t trust her, it’s always swirling around like an underlying coldness. I don’t know if it’s like Carmen's wall of explainable hostility to keep people at bay. Or if her magic gives her this aura of power and distance, I get severe lonely and empty vibes from her that I can’t quite decipher.
Not much has happened while we go through the motions of current daily life and plod along. Carmen isn’t showing face often, only in brief passing, and seems to stick to her room which is understandable. Given how much she now has to process while we have downtime. She asked for time to grieve, absorb, and be alone with the pangs of missing her newfound mate and losing her family, and I let her alone. She needs time and understanding. I want to give her two things I never had when I suffered similar things. I feel it’s the least I can do to soften her pain somehow because I feel responsible for all of it even though I know I’m not.
Meadow oversees the patrols, the sentinel shifts, and the village to make sure no one ventures beyond the rune line, and we are trying to present normal as much as possible. All while, Leyanne and Sierra lock themselves below the house and pour over grimoires to figure out the best way to combat this damn fog. On the surface, everything seems fine, despite what we all know but don’t talk about, but it’s not, and their absence invades the air more by the hour every day.
I am under orders to rest and retain my energy, and everyone in the house treats me like fragile glass. Sierra stopped pushing me to confirm the pregnancy as I decided I would wait for him. To let him be part of that confirmation when he comes home. I need to give him something in this news, a sweet way to remember the moment, seeing as the discovery was not sweet.
I miss him so badly that I find myself wandering to the border to catch glimpses of him, even if it’s fury filled and he’s looking at me like he wants to devour me and throw my carcass into his pack. He still doesn't recognize me and views me as something to kill.
I’m in agony, broken without him, pining for him more as the days stretch into endlessness. I’ve cried myself to sleep so many times, only to wake an hour later at the loss of his heat beside me and start all over again. My mind is eternally muggy with tiredness and loss. I can't stand waking alone, missing his hugs, needing his voice and safe presence. I need his stability, his wisdom, his gentleness. I want him so badly it's destroying me mentally that I have no way of combatting it. I feel like I’m suffocating without him, without them. So close yet so unreachable, and seeing him does nothing to alleviate the despair of being unable to talk to him, touch him, or get close. It kills me to look at him, but not seeing him is just as bad.
The sub pack, the rest of our sentinels, and our people too. All out there staring inward and hell-bent on getting their chance at coming for us as soon as they can. I feel their loss, like grieving my family all over again.
What they don’t know is that it’s coming. It’s the one thing I know for certain, whether she finds a way to dissolve the fog easily completely or with extra effort. She is adamant she still has to get into the mountain to do it, but she is confident that she will break this curse. We need to get her through our wolves and those vampires to find the witches and deal with what they have done. We won’t abandon our people and leave them to grow old and lost in the forests around their home.
“You know that whatever the plan is, you can’t come, Chica.” Meadow breaks into my thoughts as we walk the perimeter together near dusk. Some nights I need this to be able to sleep, just to glimpse him before I go to our room alone. Meadow and I are taking time together to escape for a few minutes and forget everything weighing on us for a second. It feels like the responsibility has been suffocating these past days, and times alone and away from the house to take a breath is all that is getting us through. Meadow is suffering Cesar’s loss as I suffer Colton’s, and she’s getting weary and low as the days drag on. Her fighting spirit is barely holding on.
“You know I have to. Meadow, I’m still the strongest of all we have, even if I cannot turn. I’m a better chance of success than ten of the land wolves from the village. I can’t let others do what I can do better.” I try to hold my ground, even if I know where her concern comes from.
“You can’t turn… What if you get hurt? What if you need to heal?” Meadow stops me with a hand on my wrist and turns me to her, seriousness etched over her face and her eyes gleaming with worry.
“I’ll have to make sure I don’t get injured, won’t I? With my gifts, it shouldn’t be hard to build a bubble around myself if I get cornered. I need to lead and be there with my pack to fight through what we have to. They need to see me lead.” I lift my hand and run gentle fingers across her cheek to try and convince her that this is what’s best, but Meadow grabs me with force and hugs me against her somewhat aggressively. Meadows’s voice breaks with sheer pain against my hair as her emotions spill out.
“I promised him that no matter what, I would always protect you for him…. I swore, Chica. So many months ago, if anything ever happened and he couldn’t get to you first, I would. This isn’t protecting you.” Her croaks turn to sobs, burying her damp face against my hair, and our cheeks lay side by side. Her agony seeps out, and it almost breaks me in two. Bringing him up this way, knowing he made her promise something like that way back then, and the ache of my pain at longing for him brings tears to my own eyes. He always thought of me above everything and always put me first. Even not here, his influence is Meadow, and she speaks for him.
“I can’t be a Luna and yet hide behind everyone else. I need to be the one to protect my people, even you. Even him. I’ve been sheltered for too long by him, by you, by everything he has in place to make sure I never have to really put myself out there. I must be the one to do this, to lead all of you. I must be worthy of being his mate when it’s called for.” My words are not just for her, but for my heart too and the doubts I have circling inside like a brewing storm. I could easily use my children as an excuse to stay here and let them go out and fight in my name, but what kind of Luna would that make me? I know I have gifts that others don’t possess, and I know that the fates will only be happy when I fulfill the role they have asked of me all along. I need to do this.
“You have more to protect than just you… you heard what she said that night. About getting weaker, being vulnerable with your gifts. I’ve seen it with my own eyes these last few days. It’s happening so quickly. Lorey, you’re not invincible, and I see you fading.” Meadow’s stubborn tone only softens my resolve a little, but I know I can’t give up.
“Then we need to do it sooner rather than later before I worsen. Part of this is my broken heart and emotional exhaustion from being apart, and it won’t hinder me out there when I know it’s to save him. Right now, my gift is still strong enough… and I have no choice.” With no word from Darrius and no sign of the vampires receding… we have to do this. I don’t want to wait for something that may never come.
There was no guarantee that the high lord would do anything when he found out I lived, and Meds is right. I am weakening much faster than I ever anticipated. These past days my tiredness has been severe, my skills at harnessing energy have dampened a little, and I seem to wear out so quickly from even menial tasks. We have to break the spell ourselves and bring them home before I end up completely useless. Leyanne suggested that being twins, and hybrids, is why it’s so much harder on me than expected. I’m feeding all my energy to two little powers in the making, and my body is trying to keep up.
“There’s nothing I can say, is there? I can’t lock you up or even have Sierra hold you captive. You’re stronger than us, even when you’re pregnant.” Meadow sighs, knowing defeat when she feels it, and I hug her tight. Wrapping her in a maternal embrace and stroking her hair lovingly.
“Exactly…. So, all the more reason I should be the one to lead and take Leyanne to the mountain with you. We can’t leave our people alone without anyone, so Sierra must stay and watch those who truly cannot come. So must the ones who may need to continue protecting them if we fail.” The plan was always to assemble our strongest few, a small army, and march together in hopes we’ll be enough. Leaving behind enough of the Santo pack that their bloodline will live on.
“You realize if we fail, that means you don’t come back either… and if you die, so does Colton, so does the Rema.” Meadow pulls back, blinking at me through misty eyes, and wipes her face. Unable to shield me from her genuine fear. The air between us heavy with so many swirling emotions, and I can’t fight the growing anxiety from knowing all that could happen.
“I’ve thought of that… it would mean that so does Juan. So at least in some way, the others can return to the mountain when the spell finally fades. They can rebuild and elect a new alpha, and life will continue. I’ve already asked Leyanne to help me leave instructions for the villagers should they need to move on without us.”
“I don’t like this. You’re talking like you don’t expect us to succeed. So, what are we even doing, huh? If you’re leaving secret plans for the people to forget us, why don’t we wait and find another way.” Meadow falls back into open crying, her lip trembling and her voice faltering. The strong and sassy warrior crumbles when faced with the possibility of losing so much more. Her heart has always been bigger than her fierce, and only those she loves most ever see this side of her.
“I’m being smart…. it’s not that I think we’ll fail! I have to ensure that if we do, the pack has a plan to have someplace to aim if everything goes wrong. I need to pay attention to the details in the way Colton would. He always has a backup plan, always covers all bases.”
I’m doing what Luna does. Preparing for the worst. Putting provisions in place should my people be left without Luna, Alpha, Rema, or any of the strongest who have protected them most of their lives. I have chosen a wolf as a beneficiary to stay behind and oversee the pack's financial security, ensuring they have all they need. They will be the one that is left with my instructions to carry out should we perish out there.
“It feels like tempting fate and signing off on our death certificates.” Meadow breaks loose, walks away from me, and stalks to the tree line, gazing out into the fog. She shudders when the dark shadows that always linger and wait out there flash past eerily, her face paling as she recognizes the one she can’t bear to look at. Unlike me, Meds actively avoids seeing her mate out there. She can’t handle it and wants to pretend he’s asleep somewhere, not here like this. They are always watching, always waiting, poised for our takedown, which adds to our homestead's growing unease.
“The fates are on our side. They wouldn’t have sent us to fetch Leyanne if they weren’t. I have faith in what they plan…… please Meds, have faith in me.” I ask of her, my voice laced with conviction that I don’t truly feel, and Meadow slumps down into the grass, tugs at stems, and throws them into the airless space around her.
“You sound more like him every day. He even said the same thing to me the day he defeated his father…. ‘have faith in me’…. Look where that got us, huh? God, that boy… I miss him so much. I miss my Cesar. I miss all of them. Even those stupid twins and all their frustrating antics. I feel like my heart is ripped apart, and the pieces were left scattered someplace cold.” Her tears fall fast, a watery smile appearing on her face as she reminisces over our sub pack and then frowns as the pain of their memory aches again.
Her words warm me though, and somehow give me some pride. That maybe Colton would be a little proud of how I was holding this together. That enough of him rubbed off on me that it’s somehow getting me through even though he’s not with me to hold me up. Colton is a leader to the core. I learned from the best; I will never fail if I can only be a fraction of what he is. Our sub pack and boys will come home if I can be anything like him.