Chapter 16 Orion
I find Mona in the cafeteria looking worse for wear. Andrea hasn’t left her post. She leans with her arms crossed against the wall and watches our omega like a hawk.
Bangles clang up and down her arm as she absentmindedly rubs her hand along Mona’s arm. Mona keeps trying to extract herself without success.
It’s rare I use my alpha voice, I never bark, but I let it seep in now. “Alright, that’s enough. Our omega is tired, she needs rest.”
I hold my hand out, and the moment Cora releases Mona, she runs into my arms.
Her warmth is everything, and I soak it up as I hold her tight, then pull her from the dining hall.
“Did you get to eat?” I ask quietly.
She shrugs. Her indifference is fanning my quiet rage. I nudge her arm gently, hoping she’ll answer, and she does.
“Sort of. Everyone brought me food, it was very nice of them.”
“But…”
“But then they wanted to talk so much and kept holding my hand, I didn’t get to eat.”
Andrea snorts in amusement behind us as we walk toward my truck. I turn and glare at her. “You’re supposed to keep an eye on her.”
She stands a little taller. “Mona needs to learn how to deal with them herself. She needs to set boundaries. She has all this power, and she doesn’t even attempt to use it.”
“That was a lesson?” Mona cries.
“In more ways than one.”
Mona buries her face back into my chest as I tug her closer. To Andrea, she mumbles, “Your methods suck.”
Andrea opens the truck door for Mona. Mona eyes her suspiciously, waiting to see if it’s a trick. What the hell happened between these two today?
“Maybe next time fifty people crowd you, you’ll actually put effort into taking care of yourself rather than letting everyone swallow you whole.”
Mona looks like she wants to strangle Andrea. Instead, she mutters insults under her breath, which we can hear perfectly, and slams the door in Andrea’s face.
“Same time tomorrow, boss?” Andrea turns brightly to me.
I grumble, “If she lets you in the door.”
Andrea salutes me, gives Mona a sardonic grin, but before she takes off, she pauses a few steps away. “For the record, I don’t think she’s upset about being crowded.”
Knowing Mona can hear every word we’re saying, I ask, “And why do you think she’s upset?”
Andrea says the last thing I expect. “Wolves have long memories. Maybe they don’t hold grudges, but the time when Silas went missing, making everyone worry, is in the past. He’s home, in one piece. So they all wanted to reminisce about the good times.”
There weren’t many good times when it came to Silas, not in the most recent years—and I realize what she means.
Climbing into the driver’s seat, I find Mona, her energy even sadder. Her scent is dim, even the bright jasmine floral, slightly faded.
“Can I take you somewhere?”
She looks over, surprised. “Yeah, of course. Where?”
I start the truck and head toward the cabin, but instead of cutting around the bend, I take a left onto one of the little side roads that leads further up the mountain.
“Is it safe? That we separate from everyone, I mean?”
“I promise, I won’t put you in jeopardy.”
She softens. “I know Orion.”
“Yes, it’s safe. Have you been up here yet?
” The witches came onto our land from West Creek, which is still on the mountain but it rides west, closer to the human town.
That’s how they got on our lands. Not only have patrols tripled, and the witches no longer have the element of surprise with Stance or other rogues working with them—we haven’t caught that little fucker yet, but we have some enforcers out looking for him—but we’re headed higher up the mountain.
Unless the witches airdropped, we’re good.
“No, I haven’t. You know, I’ve really only been around for a month. Less, even.”
My mouth drops open in shock. “How can my entire life rearrange so drastically in only a month?” I wonder aloud.
“Right?” she laughs lightly.
The dirt road comes to an abrupt end, with a massive boulder blocking the way. It’s hand-painted, a little primitive, with a depiction of the lake below, wolves, bears, and hawks surrounded by trees.
The painting has been here for decades, and someone—I don’t even know who, but I think it’s some of the wild wolves—refreshes it every few years.
We climb out of the truck, and I take Mona’s hand, following a hiking trail through the woods. “You know about the wild ones?” I ask.
She nods slowly. “They prefer to live in dens like actual wolves, right?”
“It’s not that they don’t use their human forms. But they try to live more in tune with nature. In wolf form, they hunt. In human form, they gather. The sleep as wolves, fuck as humans. Mostly.”
Mona wrinkles her nose at that. I laugh and keep going. “They’re still a part of Silent Peak. There is safety in numbers. A lot of them are enforcers, actually. They know this land better than anyone. Eli was raised out here. Cynthia, too.”
“So when that thing happened… when I joined the clan, officially, and all the wolves felt it. They did too? The wild ones?”
“Of course. Eli told me they were thrilled.”
“You make it sound like they’re separate from everyone else.”
I shake my head. The trail is getting denser.
This is about where the wolves would drop their human forms and shift.
As if on cue, a small chest comes into view.
There will be piles of clothes in there for people to take when they’re heading into the heart.
It’s not unusual to see a person walking around naked, but when in human form, we tend to stay dressed.
I reply, “Not separate. But different, yes. I like sleeping in a bed. They prefer dens.”
The trail thins out until we’re stepping over roots, ducking beneath thick branches. I hold the tree brush back for her. The elevation rises rapidly, but our wolves regulate our breathing.
Mona doesn’t ask more questions, and she follows me silently until we get all the way up to the peak. Climbing up onto the final boulder, I reach down and grip her hands, and pull her up.
She stumbles into my arms, but rights herself and looks out. And gasps. She’s quiet for a minute until finally she says, “I can’t believe I get to live here.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve been on these lands for a very long time, and I never tire of this. It’s why I didn’t follow my family when they moved out west. My sister met her mate at a clan gathering, and she followed him home. My mom couldn’t bear to part with her youngest and followed.”
I wouldn’t have left Grayson and Silas, either, but I could have moved away for a little while before we settled down and started looking for a mate.
Mona can hear the affection in my voice. It never bothered me that my mom left. I still see her from time to time, and we talk occasionally on the phone.
But this was always my home.
Especially now.
I pull Mona down to a seat and tuck her closer, between my arms and legs.
It’s peak summer, August is around the corner, but this high up, the air is thinner, much cooler.
There are streams and waterfalls on various parts of the mountain, and I decide I’m going to take her to every single one of them before summer’s out.
Witches may be hanging over our heads, but I won’t let that bitch stop us from living.
“Are you sad?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. Her scent is so clear, her omega is sensitive and incredibly sweet.
She shakes her head. “Not sad, exactly. I don’t like what they were saying about Silas. But I’m mad at him, too. He’s going to leave, you know. As soon as the witch business is over.”
Hugging her close, I close my lips to her temple. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“But he said—”
“Mona, how can you think, for one single second, that he would ever leave you?”
She sucks in a sharp breath. “But he—” she sniffles, “he said he was leaving. He called me a shit show.”
She’s crying, and I should be more sensitive to that fact. But I snort. Then, I can’t help it, the chuckle spills out of me. Mona turns in my arms, part shock and outrage, part amusement on her face.
“Sorry, sorry,” I say, before laughing again.
“What the hell is so funny?”
I shrug, tucking her back into place between my arms. “Silas, calling someone else a shit show. He’s a hot mess if I’ve ever met one.”
Mona dims. “That’s what everyone says about him.”
“What they say doesn’t matter. What he is, what he was…
we still love Silas—not out of obligation, but because he’s ours.
Wild and reckless, sure, but he has a good heart.
He does completely outrageous things without remorse.
Yeah, that used to get him into trouble a lot.
But people only remember the bad. One time when we were kids, there was this delta girl in our schoolhouse—it was tiny back then, only ten of us total.
Anyway, this girl, she could shift but mostly presented as human, even wore glasses.
“Silas teased her, flirted with her. Meanwhile, the other guys claimed he wasn’t serious, pushed her around about it.
One day they convinced her that Silas was just mocking her behind her back.
She was crushed. She thought he really liked her, or that they were friends at least. And you know what Silas did? ”
“What?” Mona asks.
“He told everyone she was his girlfriend. Started walking her to and from school every single day. Brought her flowers. Flirted with her in front of everyone.”
“So he pretended to like her to save her feelings?”
“No, he did like her. That’s the thing about Silas.
He likes everybody. It may not seem like it, especially right now…
but he thought she was great. And he hated that everyone thought, because of his status as Lune’s son, and because of how dominant his alpha was, that he couldn’t be attracted to a girl like that.
It pissed him off so much that he made sure everyone knew how special she was. ”
Tears prick at Mona’s eyes as I hug her closer. “That’s really sweet. Kinda macho, but sweet.”