Chapter 30

Elena

I woke up tangled in the sheets, sweaty and irritable.

After rejecting Killian at the door, I decided to crawl into bed without eating his food. Let him make his attempts to woo me, I didn’t need to accept them.

Two hours later I was starting and wracked with guilt. What kind of Luna let’s good food go to waste? The stew was cold and a bit congealed, but it tasted better than it had before. He must’ve listened to my advice and paid more attention to the ingredients. I fought against how impressed I was.

“Anyone can make stew,” I chided my bowl.

After eating two quickly, I lay awake on top of the bed for what felt like an eternity. The image of Killian’s sullen face in the hallway was burned into my mind, and I let my imagination fill in what happened next.

Maybe he yelled at the maid, and anyone else in his wake, and slammed doors as he made his way to bed. Maybe he stayed in the hallway all night, mewling for me, his head pressed against the door as if he could hear me through the wood. In my head there was snot running down his face, and that made me smile.

I took my time getting up and getting dressed while I planned the ‘tasks’ I would make Tiffany help me with. There were some things I really had to do, but I would drag out the timeline with tedious things just to keep the Beta woman in line. It didn’t seem hard for me to provoke her, and the more Killian grew to respect me as Luna, the less he listened to Tiffany’s words against me.

Our day in the fields had been exhausting but exhilarating for me, so I decided our main excursion would bring us back into Nature. I almost dressed in an outfit appropriate for the outdoors, then grinned as I thought of adding extra steps to our morning routine.

I threw a simple shift dress over my head and made my way downstairs to the dining room. Breakfast foods lay spread across the center of the table, steam rising off the roasted potatoes and condensing on the bowl of fruit. The berries glistened in the morning sunlight like they were made of us.

Killian sat one end of the rectangular table, and Tiffany sat directly to his right. It almost looked like she had moved the chair closer than the layout prescribed. I kept my face still while inside I was amused at her display of affection.

She really thought she was subtle, one hand gently stroking the necklace she took for me as she leaned towards him. His face was stern, a stack of papers on his left taking up much of his attention.

“Good morning,” I said coldly, standing in the doorway.

Killian’s face tightened as he looked up at me, then opened wide in recognition. He got to his feet, hands on the table, watching me as I pulled out the chair and sat at the opposite end of the table. His jaw tightened as I deliberately took the seat farthest from him, but he didn’t let his emotions take over.

“Good morning, Elena,” he said, “I hope you slept well.”

“I did not,” I replied quickly.

Tiffany made a small noise of disbelief that I was speaking this way to Killian, but I ignored her. I gestured to the butler, Simon, who came to help me fix a plate. This happened everyday, but lately it seemed silly that we had servants put food on our plates as if the task were beneath us. For years I went along with it, not wishing to question tradition. Now, as my perception shifted at everything around me, it felt absurd.

“Thank you, Simon,” I said graciously as he handed me a plate. “I can get the rest of myself.”

The butler looked affronted, glanced briefly at Killian, but nodded and stepped back to his idling place on the side of the room.

I stood and came around the side of the table to add fruit to my plate, and I thought Tiffany’s jaw would disconnect from her skull. Killian’s eyes were hot on me, and with a sideways glance I could tell he was staring at my backside as I bent over the table. I looked up, catching him in the act, rolling my eyes as I walked back to sit down. I made sure to add an extra swish of my hips, just to torture him. My new self-assurance made me a little petty, but I didn’t care.

“So, what’s on the docket today for the Alpha?” I asked sweetly. “Kissing babies on the campaign trail?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tiffany said before he could. “We don’t do that anymore, it’s unhygienic and the babies don’t vote anyways. We are focused on more important constituents.”

“We?” I asked her point blank.

She flushed. “He is, the team is, we are all working on this together,” she tried to cover. “And you should be more concerned about it as well.”

“Oh, I have plenty of concerns,” I resounded, a touch of mystery in my voice. “Forgive me if I worry more about the Rogues who entered our compound and skirted security. That seems like a worthy concern to me, as Luna.”

I gave the last word extra emphasis, delivering it right to Tiffany. Killian’s voice brought my attention back to him.

“Since you mentioned it,” he said, “we are of course still working to understand the motives of our attackers. We’ve kept a number of them as prisoners, and will continue to interrogate them until we can get our answers.”

This was news to me, and I didn’t try to hide the pleasant surprise on my face.

“I look forward to hearing how that goes,” I said, not being shy as I shoveled egg and potato into my mouth.

I ate quickly to avoid being at this table longer than I had to. Tiffany had resumed focusing only on Killian, lowering her voice as if they shared secrets. A flash of jealously was like a stinging in my eyes, but I blinked it away.

“Well, I’m afraid I should get my own day started,” I said lightly. “There is much to cross off my list and we should take advantage since it’s stopped raining.”

I gestured to Simon to take my plate as I stood, and then sent him to take Tiffany’s play out from under her.

“I wasn’t quite done with that—“

“Come along, Tiffany,” I said, already moving. “I’ll need to go back up and gather my things.”

Killian stood again when I rose from the table, but said nothing as I commanded his Beta. She looked to him for help, but he nodded his head telling her to follow me.

Her grumbling voice echoed in the hall as we left him.

Killian

It was like their roles were reversed in my head.

For the longest time, Tiffany had been my right-hand and sounding board for Pack business. I respected her rigid personality and organization skills, and preferred her lack of sentimentality. Now, she seemed desperate to win my approval. Her glances at me lasted longer, and there was an emotional depth that I’d never seen before. She must’ve changed her perfume, because now my nose itched whenever she was too close to me.

On the other side, Elena. For three years of marriage she was like a figure in the background of the painting. Aesthetically pleasing, but otherwise silent and seemingly unimportant to the action happening in the foreground. Obviously I was attracted to her, drawn to her physically because of out Fated bond.

But this new Elena— she was living rent-free in my mind. Her body was the same, but she carried it differently. I think I’d heard her speak more in the past week than than she had in months, and her thoughts were intelligent and helpful.

I started to wonder if it was me that had changed, only noticing the truth of these women after years of seeing what I wanted to see.

“Sir?”

I was interrupted by Lucas who stood just inside the doorway.

“What is it Lucas?” I asked, a bit too surly towards my Beta.

“We have a problem with the prisoners,” he said, choosing his words carefully. I put down the document I was holding to give him my full attention.

“One of the guards was attacked.”