Chapter 41
Luna
We’re past the last of the food stalls before I clock that the fiddle music has gone thin behind us and the crowd noise has dropped to a hum: we’ve reached the back of the festival, down to where the tents give out and a split-rail fence runs the top of the slope, the grass going gold all the way down to the creek.
She hitches herself up against the top rail and lets out a long breath, the blue ribbon’s still pinned crooked to her apron. Down in the shallows a heron stands one-legged, ignoring us.
For a minute neither of us says anything.
“So,” Maren says. “You want to tell me, or do you want to do the thing where I guess and you make a face every time I get close.”
“There’s no thing,” I say. “I’m a grown woman who met her scent matches and got a ribbon. I peaked. Even if things turn out to be all downhill from here, I’m living the dream right now.”
“Babe,” she says softly.
I look at the heron. The heron looks at the water. We’re all very busy.
“It’s stupid,” I say.
“Tell me anyway.”
So I do. I tell her my heat is impending—and as she well knows, that knocks me out for a week, give or take.
I tell her about the two-million-dollar December deadline sitting at the other end of the orchard, and how I highly doubt their production window has a spare week to lose, no matter how much the alphas swear otherwise.
“There are pills to push a heat down the calendar,” I admit, staring at my boots. “But if I take them, it cancels my heat leave, and I want to stay with them so badly. At the same time... I can’t help thinking it might be the best thing to do for their sakes.”
Then, I tell her that, even if they do meet their deadline, and even though I don’t doubt their intentions for a second, I’m terrified of what happens after my heat leave is up.
Maren listens to all of it without moving. Then she says, “Okay. And what do the guys think about you medicating your heat into next quarter?”
“I haven’t told them I was thinking about it.”
“Lun.”
“I know, but I—I didn’t have the heart to tell them,” I say, rubbing my fingers. “I mean, they said they’d help me through it, handle the timing, and all.”
“So why not trust them and let them?” she asks.
“Because they are biologically incapable of being objective about this,” I say, meeting her gaze.
“Maren, they’re scent-matched to me. You think any one of them is going to look his own omega in the eye and say, actually, sweetheart, your heat is wildly inconvenient this quarter, please go ahead and chemically delete it?
They’d say yes if I asked them to carry me up a mountain.
It doesn’t mean I should let them if I think it’ll hurt them. ”
The heron gives up and flaps off downstream.
“I mean,” Maren starts. “It makes sense. But are you sure that’s the only reason you’re hesitating?
Because the way I see it, you’d still rather take a pill that quietly shoves your own biology around the calendar just so nobody has to be inconvenienced by the fact that you exist.” She looks sideways at me.
“Sounds to me like you’re trying to make yourself small again, and you’re justifying it by deciding that because they love you, their desire to take care of you doesn’t count. ”
“When you say it like that it sounds—”
“It sounds like you’re trying really hard to override your alphas’ judgment,” she cuts in gently.
“Look, I’m sure it won’t be easy for them to manage your heat and hit that deadline.
But they aren’t stupid, Luna. They’re grown men with experience running a business.
Heck, they brought you to a festival today instead of working, didn’t they?
They don’t want you to be small. They want you to take up space.
That’s what love is. You just have to let yourself accept it. ”
That lands somewhere under my ribs and stays there.
The fortune teller comes back at me. She really was good, huh.
“... You make a compelling argument,” I admit.
Maren bumps her shoulder into mine, a light, teasing nudge. “Listen to me. I do this too, all right? I am the reigning, undisputed champion of ‘I’m fine, I’ve got it, don’t worry about me.’ So I get it. I really do. But that also means I am highly qualified to spot the error of our ways.”
“Maren—Is everything alright with you?”
“Yes.” She waves a hand, then lets it drop, giving a sharp, dry laugh. “I mean, no. Not really. I’ve got a mountain of my own crap right now, but I don’t want to make this about me, babe.”
I look at her intently and she keeps her eyes down on the creek.
“I just mean... I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately,” she says, her fingers coming up to nervously pick at the frayed edge of her apron ribbon.
“It’s been building for months. Ingredient prices are skyrocketing, the bakery’s margins are shrinking, and to top it off, some aggressive corporate holding company keeps trying to buy me out.
They send these incredibly polite, suffocating letters detailing exactly how much ‘easier’ my life could be if I just gave up. It’s fine. I’m handling it.”
She stops fiddling with her apron, her hands going still.
“But the point is, I didn’t tell you, did I?
Not for four months. Because some genius little corner of my brain decided that you already had enough on your plate, and the last thing in the world you needed was my problems stacked on top of yours. ”
“Maren. I would have—”
“I know you would have. That is the entire point, babe.” She finally looks at me, eyes wet, grinning anyway.
“That’s the whole thing right there. We do the math wrong.
We’re always doing the math wrong. We decide that other people loving us is a bill they can’t afford, so we go pay it ourselves, alone, in the dark, where it costs the absolute most.”
Down below the bank, the creek rushes a steady, cool murmur that feels completely detached from bombs she’s dropping.
“I’m only telling you that yes is a real answer, and you are completely allowed to take it,” she adds.
“And honestly, by telling you, I think I’m trying to tell myself, too.
Maybe if you find the courage to actually listen to your heat, it’ll give me the courage to stop facing my own problems alone. ”
I breathe out. Something I’ve been gripping for a long time eases off a turn.
“You’re right,” I whisper. “Maybe it’s time we both start being a little more brave...”
Maren pulls me in, and I let myself loose, face in her shoulder, arms tight. There she is again with the best hugs...
“Luna.”
The word comes from behind us, and every good thing in my body switches off at once... because I know that voice.
I turn around and see Derek, coming down the slope through the long grass with his hands in his pockets, easy, ambling, smiling.
“There you are,” he says, warm. “You’re a hard omega to find. I’ve been up and down this whole circus twice.”
You really thought you could just leave.
And there it is. The voice in the back of my head, awake now.
My mouth’s gone to chalk. Beside me I feel Maren go very still and alert.
“Hi, Maren,” he adds, pleasant as anything.
I feel myself start to do the thing. My whole body tilts toward smoothing this over, toward keeping my voice light and pleasant and finding the exact words that’ll make him calm.
“Derek,” I say. It comes out smaller than I want. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to talk. That’s it. You won’t answer your phone, you blocked me, which, fine, you were upset, I get it.
” He spreads his hands. Reasonable. So reasonable.
“Look, I made a mistake and I really understand you were mad... but it’s getting a little silly now, don’t you think?
Come on, let’s get you home and figure all this out. ”
Come home.
You don’t have a home without me. Look at you, playing farmgirl in the mud. They’ll be bored of you by Christmas.
The voice again. Helpful as ever.
Shut up, I tell it.
He takes another step down the incline toward us. His hand grazes around my upper arm, just above the elbow. “There we go,” he says. “Let’s just—”
“HEEEELP! ASSAULT! ASSAULT!”
This is the biggest, ugliest, most operatic sound my body has produced at the very top of my lungs, combined with an omega whine, pitched to carry directly up the hill to every last head at the festival.
I have never seen anyone back up so fast. He lurches back a full step, and his easy, reasonable face drops clean off to show pure, naked panic. He definitely was not expecting that.
Up the slope, shouting breaks out. Shapes begin breaking off from the crowd at the fence line, starting down toward us.
Derek makes it half a stride before Maren appears out of nowhere and puts one foot into his path.
He goes down full length, hard, face into the wet grass.
He comes up filthy and swearing and runs without one look back.
I’ll give him this much: for a man in good shoes, he vanishes into the brush along the creek impressively fast.
And a second later, I can distinguish Bram, Reed and Ash cutting down through the crowd at a dead sprint.
Reed gets to me first by a stride. He gets his hands on my shoulders, my face. “Luna. Beautiful, I knew it was you, I knew it.” His eyes go over me, quick and scared. “What’s going on? Are you hurt?”
“Derek,” I get out. “He—he was right here, he—”
“Did he touch you?” Bram, right behind him now, hands already coming up to my arms, my shoulders, fast and careful at once, turning me a little to look me over. Ash a half-step off his shoulder, very still, eyes going up the slope.
“Yes—he tried to grab me, but I’m fine, I’m okay—anyway, he bolted and I bet has to get his car so, “
That’s all it takes. Ash and Reed are already moving, the two of them tearing up the slope through the parting crowd, Reed half a step out front, Ash eating the distance behind him.
And then there’s a hand, light, at the center of my back.
“I’ve got you,” Bram says. “You’re safe now.”