Chapter 39

Killian

I watched Elena’s location on my phone throughout the afternoon. It was like a game, and I was addicted to it. She stood in one spot on the edge of the lake, and I started to imagine what she was thinking about as she communed with nature.

Growing up as the Alpha’s heir meant I was never out in the elements nearly as much as other children, especially Elena. I kept my time in the woods to when I transformed and led my wolf life, otherwise my human life was confined to important rooms and diplomatic pass-times.

Is she thinking about me?

A mixture of desire and jealousy willed deep within me: I wanted her, and was envious of the trees for getting so much of her attention.

When I checked later on, she was moving back out of the woods, stopping periodically. In my mind I saw the small plants and flowers she might be gathering with her delicate white fingers.

“Can we go on?”

I closed out of the tracking app quickly and looked back up at the table around me. This meeting was going on longer than I wanted, but maybe that was party my distraction.

“Yes, please,” I smiled at Kana, my publicist. “Let’s finish this up.”

“Great, thank you, I’m sorry if this is tedious,” she said, though her tone told me she didn’t care what I thought. As Alpha, I was more of an empty suit to her, less an actual person. “I want to have every release timed perfectly in advance, knowing that we will have to pivot when we see what they have in the other camps.”

The opponents, Jaxon being the most vile.

“And we really need a photo of you and Luna Elena: happy couple ready to take on leadership, together,” she said, a hint of impatience in her voice. “We can arrange for a quick photo op at the Elder Center dinner. She will be there, won’t she?”

“Yes, I mean, I will confirm with her,” I said, not wanting to make a promise I couldn’t keep. “I hope she will.”

Kana’s lips were pursed but she gave me curt nod, looked at Tiffany beside me.

“She will.”

All heads turned quickly to the doorway. There was Elena, flushed from riding her bicycle, a bundle of green held delicately in her fist. And yet she was regal, even with her hair slightly loose from her braid. She exuded a radiance I had not seen before, so fully in her own element and power.

“Tiffany,” she said, “I have a dress being delivered in the morning. I’ll need it hung and steamed before the evening.”

And with that, Elena turned around and left the room. I looked over at Tiffany, whose face was blotched with red and almost twitching with contempt.

“I think that will be all for the day,” Kana said.

I didn’t see much of Elena the next day, and when I did she was civil but distant in our interactions. She was silent in the car on the way there, soI tried to focus on preparing for the evening ahead instead of her attitude. And I tried not to think about sliding my hands along the soft fabric of her dark blue dress.

“Thank you, again, for coming with me tonight,” I said when we were almost at the Elder Center. “It means a lot to me. “

“It’s for the campaign, I get it,” she replied, looking out the window.

“And for me, for us,” I tried not to sound desperate. “It would be good for us to be more united, as Alpha and Luna. Since you seem to want to be Luna now.”

She looked over at me, brow slightly furrowed, gaze hardened with a thought that she didn’t want to share. Then she turned away again.

“Perhaps you’re right,” she said to the window.

“Also,” I added, trying to keep her attention, “I leave tomorrow evening for the charity race in the lake district. I wasn’t sure you’d want to come, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to leave you in charge.”

Her head turned slowly back to me. Her eyes were stones.

“Probably pretty boring in the end,” I added when she didn’t say anything, “but the staff and members of the Pack should see you as a leader.”

Slowly the stones softened, and the corners of her mouth turned upward so slightly I almost didn’t notice it. She nodded twice, then looked forward.

“Alright.”

She returned to her window view, but in her reflection I saw her eyes were bright and face alive as she thought about what I had asked of her.

Elena was radiant as we entered the dinner event, my chance to dine and dish with the Elder members of the Pack. She held my arm as we walked about, smiled and shook hands and bantered with the best of them.

But whenever the camera turned away or we were left to our own plates, she would put space between us and become silent and reserved. She acted like she didn’t even know I was there.

Elena

The first day without Killian was uneventful in a wonderful way. I handled household activities, the staff surprised that I knew where things were as if I hadn’t been living there for years. In my new version of this timeline, it was hard to remember how unobtrusive I had been. For the people who knew the old Elena, the shift in my personality was like the wallpaper coming to life.

Tiffany was probably counting the ways she would like to kill me by the end of the day, but I still created endless ways in which she would be useful to me. Always with a smile and oozing grace and gratitude.

The second day without Killian, my metal was tested.

The call came in the morning, and I would later thank the goddess that I had at least finished breakfast before I was whisked away.

All the wooded areas in this region were divided generations ago, plotting out trails for safe passage while keeping certain Packs from taking over others.

But sometimes, those boundaries were blurry.

In one such case, that very morning, members of our Pack were feuding over a small area that had recently begun over water access. While neither Pack was without other sources of water, it didn’t matter. Once the heat of anger rises and the claws come out, disputes like this could end in bloodshed.

“Luna Elena, you do not have to go out there,” Lucas said to me. Killian had once again left his Beta with me, and I was grateful for his presence. “There are others who can deal with this, you should stay out of danger.”

“It has to be me, they have to see that I am a Luna who will show up for her people,” I was getting ready to go, and did not need him to delay me. “Do you think Killian would stay home, send someone else to look after what is his responsibly?”

“But, no disrespect Elena, you aren’t Killian.”

I spun him. “You’re right, I’m not,” I said firmly, walking in on him in spite of my shorter stature, “and I will use that to my advantage.”

I turned to walk towards the door.

“I understand,” Lucas said, giving up his hopeless fight. “Just please promise me you will be careful. This Pack is notorious for it’s shady dealings.”

The other Pack was called Fading Shadow. Their Alpha was notorious, infamous.

It was Jaxon.