Chapter 11 : He’s Getting a Luna

*Arealla*

As I walked away from Marcus’ office, painfully reminded that I was just something he was delaying with, Liana came and caught up with me. She came right up against me, sniffing near my shoulder, and I flinched away instinctively.

“Hey!” I objected, what was that?

“Oh, sorry,” she apologized a little sheepishly. “I know you just came from my brother; I wanted to know who was with him.”

I stared at her like she was insane.

“So you sniffed me?” I asked her. “You know,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “Just because I am alright with finding a way to make this whole mate bond thing work out for everyone, doesn’t mean I’m suddenly okay with all your little wolfy habits and heart-eating and all of that.”

“Heart-eating?” she asked, frowning. “Did Marcus already tell you about the heart-eating?”

A look of horror must have come over my face, because Liana burst out laughing.

“Sorry, I just had to,” she said, her laughter calming down, it didn’t last very long in any case.

“Why did you need to know who was with Marcus?” I asked her. “And who was it, in any case?”

“It was Bernard, Ben,” Liana said, clarifying. “His Beta. Ben is the wolf second in charge. Well, third now, since you’re technically second in charge.”

I blinked. I hadn’t thought of that part, actually. I was a wolf in charge now. But it didn’t really matter, if Marcus was just going to dismiss me in any case.

“And I needed to know,” Liana continued, dropping her voice a little. “Because a few things have been happening recently, and I want to know whats going on.”

I frowned at her.

“What is going on?” I asked.

I honestly thought that my presence was the one thing causing the most chaos right now. But if there was something else, something that Marcus was keeping just between him and his Beta, then it had to be worse.

“Food is missing,” Liana murmured, glancing around. “A lot of it. Winter stores. And some animals around the borders are missing. Poached, probably. But it will affect whether the pack eats well in winter or is rationed. And that always affects morale. It’s been happening for a few weeks now, a little at a time, but there is a trend. Someone is definitely stealing.”

I stared at her. A few weeks already–then that meant that the trouble in the pack started before I even got here.

A jolt of guilt went through me at that. I probably hadn’t made matters any easier with my presence, then. And I had probably only added to all the difficulties that Marcus and the pack had already been going through.

“Is there anything else?” I asked her. I wanted to get a proper picture of what was going on.

Liana looked around again.

“Weapons,” she murmured, even softer this time as she came close to me. “Enough to cause a problem. It doesn’t really matter where it’s going; it’s more the fact of the matter that it’s being taken away from us.”

“Weapons and food,” I murmured. “It sounds like someone is trying to weaken the pack.”

Liana nodded, “It could be any of the other four of the Big Five packs. But really, we can’t rule out any of the smaller ones, either.”

I thought back to the large territory that Marcus hadn’t explained yet. I had no idea why, but I felt like there was something there that might be influencing this, too.

Liana opened her mouth to say something more, but before she got a chance to get anything else out, Ben came up to us.

“Marcus is asking for you,” he said with a slight bow, and then a glance at Liana.

“You should go to him immediately,” Liana said with a nod.

I trusted her word, and I was going to make sure that this new arrangement worked. I swallowed the hurt I had felt when he just dismissed me the way that he had, and I went straight back the way that I had come.

I found the door already open, and I went right in without knocking or waiting for him to call me in.

“You will join the war council,” Marcus said, barely glancing at me.

His words made no sense, and his look over at me was so brief, that I was sure he couldn’t be speaking to me.

“We convene immediately,” he continued speaking, and I looked behind me to see if anyone else had come in that he could possibly be speaking to.

There was no one. But still, his sentences made no sense, not if they were directed at me. It actually made more sense if he was talking to some spectre only he could see, or if there was some other wolf outside that he was talking to.

My cheeks immediately flushed red as I realized that probably was the case. They had an incredible hearing ability, if one spoke from across the field, the other could hear, even if they spoke in a normal voice. It was more than possible that he was talking to someone outside.

“Did you not hear me?” Marcus demanded, and this time, he was staring right at me.

There was no mistaking that he was talking to me that time.

“What?” I asked, the confusion coming through my voice clearly. “Are you talking to me?”

Marcus looked at me like I had just lost a few brain cells, and he was confused as to why.

“There is no one else in the room,” Marcus said calmly, but I could hear that he was biting down on his back teeth.

“What do you mean you want me to join the war council?” I asked him, my confusion had turned to incredulity.

“I won’t have it seem like I’m just taking in strays in this pack,” Marcus said flatly. “You might be my mate, but you must still have use. If I could have it my way, I would have hoped to have a mate from a strong pack, and ally our two tribes together. As it stands, I don’t have that. I have you. And you must prove your worth.”

I huffed, folding my arms across my chest. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand marrying for political gain, and if that was what he had wanted for himself, then I well and truly would have wanted that for him. But as he had said earlier, we all must make sacrifices once the Moon Goddess decides.

And I honestly thought that I had made more than enough sacrifices.

“You can’t be serious,” I told him.

No other Luna would have been asked to prove her worth. He would not be treating anyone else like this. And maybe I was not like anyone else, but that didn’t make any difference to me.

I was here, I was what he got, and I was a person. And he was going to respect that and he was going to respect me. I was not here to prove myself and perform like some circus animal.

“I am,” he answered. “And you cannot attend a war council meeting dressed like that,” he said again, giving me a quick once over. “Go back to the room, I’ll have Liana meet you there, and she’ll make sure that you’re appropriately dressed.”

Being appropriately dressed for a war meeting was the last thing on my mind.

I pushed down the emotions that were threatening to spill over me. I had finally started to feel like we had reached some point of understanding. I had finally begun to feel less like a prisoner, and more like a part of everything here, and now his words just undid all of that.

Could I really be a part of the pack, if my presence wasn’t enough? Could I really be a part of the family, if I needed to prove who I was and what worth I had?

But more than that, was that really what Marcus thought of me? That I was a liability to the extent that I had to perform in front of his pack? In front of his war council?

“Marcus,” I told him, stopping whatever machinations he had going on right in their tracks.

I wasn’t going to argue with him. But I wasn’t also just going to swallow everything just for the sake of keeping the peace. I wanted him to know what he had done was wrong, but that I was willing to work through it to find a solution with him.

I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, I was willing to accept that there may be a few more things that I still did not fully understand about pack life.

“Arealla,” Marcus said again, cutting me off. “I don’t have time to argue with you. Some of the food stores from the pack have gone missing. Not a lot, but an amount worth noticing. I’m sure you can understand the implications of that. And some of our weapons, too. And I’m sure that anyone can understand the meaning of that. Please,” he said again, though there was the barest hint of a snarl coming through his voice then. “Go to the room, and Liana will be with you soon.”

I didn’t want to argue; I wanted to keep the conversation going, at least. But his words stopped me in my tracks. And made everything a little clearer.

It was things that Liana had just told me. But hearing him say it made it a little more serious. Maybe it was because it meant that he was trusting me with this information, I had no idea.

But I swallowed my words. I had made an intention to be a help here, and not a hindrance. I would stick to my promise to myself.

This was not the time for me to be arguing with him. Food was missing, weapons were missing. Those were things a lot more important than the tone that he spoke to me in.

I didn’t think that it wasn’t important. It was just that it was going to be something that we would have to discuss another time.

“Alright,” I told him simply, nodding.

I didn’t add anything further to that. I was pretty sure that he knew me well enough by now that he knew that I was never going to just drop something entirely.

Marcus looked a little taken aback, but he nodded after a moment, and I turned and left the room just as another wolf came in.

“I will meet you in the council room,” I told him, calling over my shoulder as I went.

I didn’t look back and walked away with my head held high.

If he wanted a Luna, that was exactly what he was going to get.