Eero's perspective
It was already two in the afternoon when I woke up the following day. I was literally murmuring sermons to myself as I made my way downstairs.
Miss Cielo preparing dessert for dinner was the first thing that I saw since I opened my eyes.
“Luna,” she greeted me. I froze on my spot. I looked behind me to check if she was talking to someone else, but it was really just me.
“By Luna… did you mean me, Miss Cielo?” I asked. I needed to have that clarified. I overslept, and now I felt my head was in the cloud.
Cielo, the female butler of the pack house nodded her head to me.
“Yes, I was talking to you, and please refrain yourself from calling me Miss Cielo. You can just call me Cielo.”
I blinked my eyes. She was about to hold and guide me towards the dining table when I held out my palm in front of her, asking her to stop, which she immediately did.
“Woah, woah. I need a minute to process what is happening right now,” I said.
Miss Cielo only smiled at me.
“May I know why you are calling me Luna? And why do you suddenly want me to drop my honorifics towards you?”
“Luna—”
“Eero. Can you call me that? Before I heard a proper explanation, do call me Eero.”
“Alpha Claudius has marked you. He claimed you as his mate, and all Alphas' mates are called…" She trailed off. It was like she wanted me to tell her how the Alpha's mate should be addressed.
“Luna?” I muttered.
“Right. Unless you want the Alpha to hang me at the common ground for being disrespectful to you, allow me to call you Luna.”
How could I possibly be comfortable with that when I knew that Claudius and I hadn't had our mating ceremony yet? We needed that ceremony, so that all lycans in this town would acknowledge me as their Luna.
I glanced at Miss Cielo again. She flinched as if she’d be in a trial for forgetting something.
“And given that you are the Alpha's mate, you hold the great power and authority, next to him only. It means that you no longer need to call Beta Caspian as Beta Caspian. Caspian would be enough; and me, just Cielo.”
I closed my eyes. All these changes happened so fast. It made my head dizzy. I needed to discuss this with Claudius.
“Where is the Alpha? I really need to talk to him,” I said. I expected to hear her talk right away, but she didn't. Cielo was holding back.
Our eyes locked in and my dominating wolf pushed hers to give me the answer.
“Alpha Claudius and Beta Caspian are in the dungeon. They are dealing with all the warriors and deltas who had slept with women that were forced to become breeders,” she said.
I nodded my head. Cielo wanted to stop me. But knowing that I wouldn't listen to her, she chose to keep her protest all to herself.
“Good afternoon, Luna Eero,” greeted a man on my way to the dungeon. He looked so familiar, even when I was quite sure that it was my first time seeing him.
Those pair of gray eyes. I'd seen it with someone I definitely knew.
“Sorry, but am I supposed to know you, sir?” I decided to ask.
“Oh, I’m sorry about that, Luna. I’m Logan, Logan Hugo. I’m Averi's father and the newest Captain of the Deltas around the boarder. Thank you for aving my daughter from the misfortune of a breeder,” he said.
“That's why your eyes looked familiar. Averi got them from you. How's Averi anyway? I hope that she will get better.”
“We hope so too, Luna. My mate and I will do everything that we can to make sure that Averi will recover from this misfortune.”
“It won't happen again,” I said to him.
“Huh?”
“Your Alpha and I will make sure that it won't happen again. No more women, young girls especially, will be forced to become a breeder in this pack.”
The other side of my mind immediately argued with me. How the hell was I supposed to do that? I didn't know, but I would make it happen.
I walked past him towards the dark tunnel that would lead to Blood Moon Pack's dungeon.
My gut twisted and the hair all over my body spiked after I saw countless body hanging inside the cells. Some of them were beheaded, but mostly were hanged.
I immediately turned back my body against the gory scene that one would think only exist in nightmares.
Captain Logan tried to catch up with me, but I guessed I was going too fast and he was left behind. I already saw everything inside the dungeon.
Vomiting and clutching my stomach, I tried to wipe my mouth with the back of my palm before I looked at Captain Logan.
“Did Alpha Claudius do all of this?” I asked.
There was a hesitation in his eyes. That alone was a confirmation that Claudius was the one behind all of this.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“At the greenery, Luna. These are all those who had betrayed the Alpha, Luna. There was nothing we can do to save them,” he said to me.
Logan knew that I didn't like what happened in the dungeon, and he was trying to explain why Claudius did it before I could even confront him.
A few meters away from the Greenery. Claudius came out from the barn, which was used to burn all the dead bodies. A smoke was coming out from the chimney.
“Eero, what are you doing here? You shouldn't be here.”
I looked behind him. I wanted to know what else he was doing.
“You've been to the dungeon.” It was a statement rather than a question that he wanted me to answer.
“There were at least thirty bodies, lifeless bodies, in the dungeon. You killed them all?”
“They left me with no choice, Eero. They had it coming. They deserved that for betraying me. It's their choice that led them to their demise.”