Chapter 7: The Kiss.

Adel’s POV.

“Should we try again?” Maddox’s question is more of a demand as he backs me into the bark of the willow tree.

My heart fractured around the edges at the frustration marring Maddox’s beautiful face. So many years of planning. Years of expectation built up for this one moment for fate to not answer our call. To leave us silent.

“No,” I whispered, tilting my head to the side, and dodging the descent of Maddox’s lips at the last second. “Stop, Maddox. Please.”

“This doesn’t make any sense Adel… The Seeker—”

“It doesn’t mean anything, Maddox.” The smile that settles on me felt forced.

Anara has been strangely quiet since Phoenix told us his wolf's name, and now more than ever I wish she would offer me some of her sage wisdom on navigating this strange phenomenon. Seekers weren’t supposed to get it wrong.

This wasn’t supposed to happen this way. We were supposed to feel the bond click into place. We’ve been told the same stories from Seekers young and old for generations of how mate bonds are bonded in the stars first. Four souls and two bodies merging into one, finally finding… home.

“Let me— Maybe we didn’t do it long enough?” Maddox didn’t look like the intimidating Alpha he had been in the library earlier.

Suddenly Maddox looked like the young boy I had first met when I was ten, and he was twelve. All dark hair, and eyes too big for his face, wide with determination. I had felt it then when I saw him, even though I was only just a child myself. A spark of affection for Maddox. I knew that I would be happy. Content. Safe. If the goddess chose him as my mate. He was steadfast. Determined.

“Maddox.” I reached my hands up to touch his face, such an intimate gesture would have been frowned upon outside of the darkness of the small garden. “It doesn’t change anything.”

Maddox’s eyes searched mine. They were so different from his brothers. Phoenix was finding ways of burrowing into my every thought, regardless of how hard I tried to fight against it. But I was standing here. With my hands on his brother's face. The man I was going to be marrying… binding myself to in just a few short days. Not Phoenix.

“You’re right.” The tension slowly faded from the middle of Maddox’s brow. He took my hands off his face holding them in his own between us. “A kiss doesn’t determine fate. You’ll meet me at the claiming rock in just two short days, under the full moon. There we will combine our souls, and bodies and become one, and ask the goddess to bless us—”

“She will answer our call, Maddox,” I assured him, assuring myself at the same time. Praying to the goddess she would not make me a liar.

“Are you nervous?”

“Yes.” I laughed with the awkwardness at the realization that we are discussing both me giving myself to Maddox under the full moon in just two days. “Are you?”

“I don’t think nervous is a large enough word to describe the feeling.” The smile on Maddox’s face caused me to feel more affection for this larger-than-life future Alpha.

Maddox was everything you could want in an Alpha. He was protective, attentive, kind, and loving, to everyone around him, pack members who had yet submitted to his Clan.

“What’s it going to be like…Th—the ceremony?”

I hated how weak I sounded asking the man I would be spending this life and the next with, hating that it was easier talking to his brother than talking to him. Sending a prayer to the goddess that she would give me the comfort of friendship I found with Phoenix with Maddox.

“You will be prepared… By your family prior to the cresting of the full moon over the horizon. When the moon is at its apex you will be left at the start of the wooded path. It’s to signify the journey you took in life to get to your mate. I’ll be waiting for you at the stone—”

“The observers?” I interrupted, my hands growing damp in his large warm hands. “My father—”

“Two. Your stepmother—” The instinctual cringe on my face caused a reaction from Maddox. “I will not let anything happen that you do not give consent to, Adel. You say you do not want your stepmother, and aunt present. Say the word no, and I will march back into your father's office and tell him the ceremony is a private affair.”

“My father won’t be present?”

“Not unless you want him there—”

“I—What… What do you want?”

My entire life I had been taught to submit to the authority of either the pack leader… my father, or my Alpha. Our pack had not submitted as a whole to a Clan and were pre-destined to do so after our mating ceremony. I had only ever submitted to the authority of my father. Whose will ruled, and whims changed quicker than the ever-changing Chicago weather.

“I want you to be comfortable and at ease my Luna.”

“My stepmother, and aunt?”

“As of now, yes,” confirmed Maddox.

“Just my aunt and stepmother?” Images of Freddy hiding in the forest flashed in my mind, by Anara no doubt. “No one else.”

“By your command, we will ensure it so.”

“No one from your Clan will want to ensure that it… happened?”

“The Blood Moon Clan will trust the Seeker. Our Clan Seeker will be there by tradition, and while we are in our room.” Maddox’s face glowed with a new kind of expression as he drew me closer to him, releasing my hands to wrap his arms around me, pressing my hands between our bodies awkwardly.

My hands molded against his firm chest absorbing the heat radiating off him. “Basking in the afterglow of our first union, she will be declaring to the entire Clan who will be gathered in the center of the homestead that us. You, Adel Monet… Soon to be Adel Byrne and I are the new Alpha and Luna of the Blood Moon Clan.”

I wanted the picture he was painting, the images that became so life-like in my imagination. I wanted to be by his side, hand-in-hand as his Luna. I wondered what our own pups would look like, and how many we would have. But still, there was that nagging lingering tingle of doubt hovering in the recesses of my mind. The doubt that had a face with dark eyes, and a strong jaw. The doubt that was quiet and broody. The doubt that could never be mine but at the same time felt like he was. Mine.

“Maddox?” I asked, breaking the silence that fell over us like a stiff blanket.

“Hmm?” Maddox’s voice vibrated through my hands that still rested on his chest. He dipped his chin down, resting on the top of my head. “Yes, my Luna.”

“What does Chridhe mean?”

Maddox’s arms stiffened around me slightly, as we stood in silence once more.

“Where did you hear that word?”

“I read it in a book. It’s Gaelic right?” I lied. I lied to my future Alpha and mate.

“Heart. Mo Chridhe, or Chridhe. Means my heart.”