3 – Ginny
I t was early and the pack streets were still quiet while I walked to my office to catch up on work. Luna duties were no joke – there were supplies to be ordered for the school, the pack hospital, and the kitchens; there were countless vendors to be dealt with, endless invoices to be checked, and accounts to be balanced. On top of that, I had to plan weekly menus for the pack kitchen, organize and be on the roster for visiting old and/or sick pack members, accompany Henry on official visits and photo ops, as well as keep correspondence and diplomatic relationships with the Lunas of our ally packs.
I was almost afraid of the mountain of work that I’d been neglecting this past week. Not that I didn’t have a good reason for it. I didn’t want to think about that reason though, I wanted to focus on the mind-numbing paperwork and just go through the motions until I recovered enough emotionally to find another solution to my problems.?
I never really grew to love the Spruce Mountain pack center. Despite the breathtaking nature surrounding it, the buildings were drab and utilitarian. The central pack house was reminiscent of military barracks, which was in line with the reputation the pack prided itself on – conservative, isolated, fierce. It housed the communal dining hall and pack kitchen (ground floor), pack leadership offices (me and the Gamma on the first floor, Henry and Calum on the second floor), dorm-style rooms for unmated pack warriors and enforcers (top floor), and big conference rooms and pack halls on both the first and second floors. The basement was divided between the pantry and several large storage units.
The central pack house was surrounded by smaller buildings that were used as guest housing and temporary solutions for newly mated couples while they waited for their family home to be built, and directly behind it was the gloomy dungeon. It was truly a dungeon and not a prison. Full-scale pack wars were mostly a thing of the past, but trespassing rogue wolves, captured human hunters, and the occasional vampire who broke the treaty between our kinds would be detained and, more often than not, tortured there.
I had just finished checking another invoice when I heard a knock on the door, and the pack Gamma’s scent reached me.
“Come in, Liam.”
“Hello, Luna,” he smiled at me in that boyish way of his. He was only 20 and new to the role, but both Henry and I had high hopes for him. “I’ve come to check on you after, you know, everything,” he made a face but seemed determined to get through the uncomfortable parts of the situation for my sake, and I found it admirable. Gammas were traditionally the protectors of the Luna, and I could see, through many of his actions, that Liam took that duty seriously.
“To be honest, I could be better,” I admitted and he nodded thoughtfully at my words. “Were you there for the selection yesterday?” I asked, indicating a chair he could sit on that wasn’t full of binders and files.
“I was,” he said while sitting down. “There were only two candidates, so it went quickly.”
I didn’t know why that made me feel better. Why was the fact that only two of my pack mates were willing to come between me and my mate, or rather get under my mate, a comforting thing?
“Who is she?”
“Hannah Roger’s, former Beta Zeke’s daughter.”
“I don’t know her very well, we’ve never interacted much. I guess that makes it easier for her,” I said bitterly and Liam grimaced.
“Who was the other one?”
“Amelia Dawson.”
“The teacher?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, wow. But her I can understand, she’s 26 and was widowed at, what, 19?” He nodded. “This might be her only chance for a pup.”
“And that is precisely why she was rejected. The Council didn’t think she’d be ready to give up the pup when the time came.”
“It is all so awful, and we’re sitting here talking about it as if we were discussing the weather. Can you believe that this is my life now, Liam?”
“I can’t even imagine, Luna. This whole thing is a mess. But the Council seems confident that this is all by the book.”
We were both silent for a moment.
“Do you know her? Hannah?”
“She was two years ahead of me in high school. Other than telling you she was outgoing and popular, I don’t really know much. I know her step brother better, he’s one of the pack enforcers, decent male.”
So, she was 22 and thus too young to have been an ex of Henry’s from before he met me. Hopefully. He was 21 when we met, she would have been 18, still in high school. Another thing that comforted me when it shouldn’t have.
“Well, I’m meeting her later today, and then I can fill you in,” I said sarcastically, and Liam’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Why are you meeting with her?”
“All three of us – me, my mate, and our pupmaker, have to go to Doctor Warren’s office to go over this entire dreadful humiliating process. A lot of different herbs and drugs and bodies will be involved, so, you know,” I said with an exaggerated Gallic shrug.
“Oh, wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Let me know if there is anything I can do,” he said compassionately. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Bye, Liam. Thanks for stopping by.”
“Any time, Luna.”
Sitting at the doctor’s office with my mate and his concubine was worse than I’d imagined. Her cloying vanilla scent and her proximity to my mate both had my wolf on edge. As we waited for the doctor to come in, she turned to me and, sweetly batting her eyelashes, said:
“Luna Regina, can I just say, what an honor it is to serve our pack. Thank you for this opportunity -”
“Don’t address her!” Henry bellowed at her while my half-shifted claws gripped the armrests.
I could feel the fur taking over my arms and, in my rage, I started turning toward her, when Henry grabbed my hand and whispered in my ear: “Don’t harm her,” leaving me stunned.
Two commands in two days. The unforgivable had apparently become mundane in the Giles household.
I yanked my hand out of his just as the doctor was entering.
“I apologize for the wait, Alpha. Luna,” he bared his neck slightly.
“The purpose of today’s meeting is to go over all the different things we'll need to do with each of the three of you to make this process as quick, painless, and productive as possible. Some of these things you two are already familiar with,” he said while looking at me and Henry, “but Miss Rogers here is not.”
“Please call me Hannah,” she said in that breathy voice that couldn’t have possibly been her everyday speaking voice. The good doctor just ignored her.
“Starting today, Miss Rogers will start injecting herself with a mixture of heat-inducing fertility herbs – chasteberry, red clover, and red raspberries primarily. The nurse will later demonstrate how you can inject yourself at home. You should go into heat after two weeks of daily injections, at which point the Alpha will use one drop of this wolfsbane tincture,” he said, taking a dropper bottle from his desk drawer and handing it to Henry, “Maybe in a glass of water. And the Luna will have the choice of coming here to the hospital to be sedated, or she can inject herself at home with these,” he said as he held up a pack of ready-filled syringes to show me.
“What is that?” I managed to croak out.
“A poppy seed tincture, very effective. We use it to anesthetize wolves when operating on them. One hundred percent pain-free,” he smiled at me but it was sad. We both knew what kind of pain I needed to be free of.
“What happens if I don’t use the painkillers?” I asked and, from the corner of my eye, I saw Henry turn towards me abruptly.
“It’s hard to say, Luna. This is not a very common scenario,” he started apologetically but I raised my eyebrows at him and he sighed. “You'd be in unbearable pain. Maybe you would pass out, maybe you would claw at yourself to relieve it...” he looked away as he trailed off.
I looked at Henry and I saw a glimmer of shame in his eyes before he schooled his features back to determined.
“We’ll take the painkillers, Doctor,” he said and took the syringes.
???
Over the next two weeks, I busied myself with work, spending time with Lucy and Dotty, and visiting pack members as usual, all the while mentally counting down the days to her heat. Lucy told me they moved her into one of the guest houses next to the pack house. It still felt unreal, and I kept waiting for Henry to change his mind, to see the irreparable damage he was doing to us, but nothing of the sort happened.
We shared a house during breakfast and dinner, but I was no longer sharing a bed with him. Luckily, he wasn’t making any sexual advances towards me. With the mate bond I wasn’t sure I'd be able to resist him, as disgusted as my brain was with his actions. We’d never gone this long without having sex before, but luckily, all the herbs and the messing with my heats had done a number on my sex drive, so I wasn’t really missing it.
What I did miss was the closeness and affection that we once shared, the hugs and the kisses and the random touches, but the decline and the deterioration of our relationship happened so gradually and so slowly that I was now used to this new normal. Unfortunately.
“I have to go,” Henry announced behind me while I was stirring the tomato soup on the stove. “It’s time.”
He took a glass out of the cabinet and filled it with water. Then he took the dropper bottle from his pocket and I looked away. The soup was bubbling violently, threatening to ruin the entire stove unless I turned the heat down, but I just stood there, motionless. I heard Henry chugging the water. He smelled freshly showered. I was suddenly terrified.
“Henry,” I said in a small, weak voice and hated myself for it. ”Don’t go.”
“I have to.”
After I heard the door close, I turned off the stove and went upstairs. I sat down on the bed in the dark room and waited for the pain to begin.