Chapter 48
"You're my end and my beginnin', Even when I lose, I'm winnin' "―John Legend, All of Me
Aiden's POV
The sun peeked over the horizon as I awoke to the sight of my luna, naked and glorious in my arms. Rose was laying next to me in her bed and my hand splayed possessively over her bare stomach, holding her so that her back firmly pressed against my chest. She shimmied backwards, deeper into me and my hand reached for her breast. She giggled, eyes fluttering open as she turned to look at me. Emerald green shining with warmth.
“I love you so much.” The words spilled out of my mouth without any expectation of Rose to respond in kind. “I love you and I need you like I need air to breathe.” Caught up in the ferocity of my feelings, I gripped her tighter and kissed her softly on the lips from behind.
“I like you best like this,” I breathed against her lips, giving her breast a light squeeze. “Naked and lying next to me.”
Rose smiled. “I won’t be lying next to you for long. Come on. Get up.”
She got up from the bed, pulling my naked form up while smirking at the fact that I was wearing socks. Next moment,she was pushing me towards the passage between our rooms.
“Go get dressed. We’re going to the temple of the Moon Goddess,” Rose urged.
So a quarter of an hour later, I sat outside the temple in my sweats while Rose was inside. She’d asked me to wait outside while she tried to converse with our ancestors.
Rose's POV
I was drawing runes in white chalk on the gray stones around the pewter bowl that contained a crackling fire.
Then Isat down cross-legged, eyes focused on the small fire.
When I said the incantation, a flare of heat sparked from my fingers, automatically casting an eerie yellow glow inside the temple.
At once, my brain was abuzz with voices.
So many voices of so many people welcoming me, congratulating me.
They all clambered for precedence, each louder than the other, welcoming the new luna.
“I’m so happy you and Aiden made it, Rose.”
It was a very masculine voice.
“Alpha Austin?” I asked reverently.
I looked around the empty room awash in pale yellow light. But there was no one around. The voices were all in my mind, in my brain. If it was Alpha Austin, then this was the man who had done so much to keep me safe, devoting pack funds for me while I lived in seclusion for so many years.
“Tell Aiden I love him and I’m proud of him.”
Then the voice disappeared into the whirr of the background noise as another voice came to the forefront. It was that of an elderly lady.
“Child, you must let your wolf submit to your alpha. Complete the process. We can sense it’s not complete. Go now.”
And the voices disappeared almost as quickly as they had appeared.
The yellow sparkle of the temple dimmed.
The stones reverted to their normal gray tinge.
The warmth emitting from my fingers flickered out.
So it seemed that they weren’t at my beck and call.
Josie had warned me that the ancestors were not a helpline and there were times that they never answered questions at all.
Most of their guidance was cryptic but my first encounter had been quite straight forward.
I got up carefully, going out into the morning sun to see Aiden leaning against a tree.
“Your father says he loves you and he’s…proud of you,” I said with a smile as I encased myself in Aiden's arms.
He looked at me stunned, arms wrapped around my waist.
“So it worked. It worked and my father reached out to me.” Aiden chimed.
“Yes… but they also said that we need to complete the process. My wolf needs to submit to yours,” I stated. I stepped away from him and began to divest myself of my pants.
“Rose, wait.” Aiden brought his hands up to run up and down my arms soothingly. “You should know that they mean mating. Your wolf needs to let my wolf mate with her. Are you OK with that?”
I nodded off-handedly. It really wasn’t as big a deal as Aiden was making it out to be. “I’m familiar with the process, Aiden.” I gave him a cheeky grin as I took off my hoodie and shimmied out of my underwear. “You have to catch me first.”
With quick successive pops, I changed into my wolf form and bounded into the woods.
“You’re on.” Aiden laughed, changing into his wolf.
not caring that he had just destroyed his clothes in his wolf’s rampant need to mate.
The ground was still damp under his paws as he sniffed her out, running towards her.
Only one thought ran through his wolf's mind. I could hear it through our mind-link
Finally.
"Is this the right way to do the ceremony?" I queried after I'd read the text for Dylan's ceremony to the ancestors. The temple was awash in yellow, and the cacophony of voices was silent while I had been speaking.
“What about his luna?”
"He hasn't found her yet,” I replied to the elderly lady I'd realized was named Diane.
“Have you asked him? His luna is integral. Do not bind the land to an alpha who's luna will not look out for it. It is why the land's magic only marks a luna born on our pack soil. We cannot divert from the old ways.”
"I can ask about his luna but there's not much we can do if we don't know who she is. He just turned eighteen. If he had found his luna, he would have told us,” I said hesitantly.
But I wasn't sure if what I was saying was a hundred percent correct.
There had been so much going on, maybe he had found her but was waiting until things were more under control to tell everyone? The elders sensed my uncertainty.
“Ask him.”
And the voices disappeared. The room was no longer tinged in yellow. I had been dismissed.
I walked into Dylan's private room at Dr. Danvers clinic. I stopped up short when I saw Lexia sitting in his room. What was Lexia doing here? Lexia quickly stood up, a guilty expression on her face when she saw me.
"I was just leaving,” Lexia murmured, getting up to brush by me.
And then Lexia froze a hair's breadth away from me, her neck snapped from the rapidity of the way her head turned to look at me.
I knew what was going on. My scent had mixed with Aiden’s.
His smell was all over me. Lexia could most likely tell we'd finally mated. I looked back at Lexia with a single raised eyebrow as if to ask, ‘Do you have a problem?’ Lexia’seyes widened in understanding, a hint of alarm coloring her light blue eyes.
I stared at her, refusing to budge an inch.
I was the luna, this was my land, my pack, and my pack's clinic.The waves of dominance were radiating from me, the newly mated Luna of Bloodfire Phoenix Pack.
So, Lexiabowed her head, hurrying out. She must have sensed my dominance and didn't create a scene.
"Her mom's a few rooms down from me,” Dylan said by way of explanation when I looked at Dylan quizzically, wondering why Lexia had been in here.
I looked at him. He had bags under his eyes and looked like he hadn't had a decent night's sleep in months.
"So she came to see how you were doing?" I hedged. I had to know. Had Lexia come in here to ask around about Aiden?
Dylan gave a bitter laugh. "She tried. Told her I was surprised a self-absorbed bitch like her would even care what happened to me."
I gave a start. Dylan was always pretty easy-going. The laugh, the cynicism, the cursing. This wasn't him. I decided that the stress of everything was finally getting to him.
"Hey, everything is going to be OK,” I assured. "We're going to fix this. We have the translated text. And we'll figure out an antidote for this poison laced with magic too. Let's hope the ceremony is able to heal you."
Dylan gave me a half-hearted smile. "Aiden's so lucky to have a mate as kind and selfless as you."
I smiled back at Dylan. "Speaking of mates—” I began primly, not noticing the way Dylan's hands fisted in his lap. "I have to ask. Have you at all felt your mate? Maybe a girl in high school? The ancestors were asking me about it."
Dylan's face hardened, eyes becoming two shards of dark coal. He looked so much like Aiden in that moment that I couldn't help but feel relieved that Aiden never looked like that at me anymore.
"No." The word was stated emphatically and forcefully. "There's no one. I don't have a mate."
It was said with a tone of finality as if signing his own execution.
"Because if you did…" I began warily. "The ancestors don't want you bonded to the land if your luna isn't loyal to it." I brushed my hair away from my face so that it fell behind my shoulders. "It's one of the reasons they always want their Luna to be born on pack soil."
"I can reject my mate and pick someone else,” Dylan cut in.
My eyes widened. Was he talking about a hypothetical scenario or...?
"You'd do that? Wait, have you found her?”
Dylan shook his head fiercely. "I don't have a mate.
But let's say I did find one who wasn't...worthy according to the ancestors, I could reject her.
I could mark someone else." His eyes suddenly became bright, like a child learning about Christmas or Santa Claus.
"If I mark someone else, it breaks my mate bond.
I could reject her and then mark someone! Anyone!" he nearly crowed in delight.
I looked at Dylan assessing his reaction. I wasn't stupid. He'd found his mate but apparently he was not happy with whoever she was.
"Dylan, you will not reject some poor girl in high school simply because she isn't pretty enough or popular enough,” I scolded.
"Oh, she's popular enough. Pretty enough too,” Dylan bit out.
"So you have found her!" I said latching on to this piece of information.
Dylan looked away.