The moment she heard the door close, her fist balled against the center of her chest and those tears she held back rolled down her cheeks. It hurt to know he was willingly pulling away from her, he, as her Mate should know when she was in pain, but he either blipped over it or no longer cared to feel if she was upset.
That month of apology was long gone, and she was right back to being pushed aside. Only now it was willingly on his part, she felt. The first time she’d not argued with him about leaving, he’d stopped and stared at her, then had smiled and even thanked her for understanding Christy needed him. Now he just told her Christy wanted to speak with him and got up and left without so much as a second thought.
She was left alone in a bed that smelled like him, something she now both loved and hated at the same time. 20 years together and he was letting it go is what she saw and easily so, because his younger Mate was insecure and apparently couldn’t even measure up to his other Mate a reigning Luna of two decades.
Mischa could make her feel small and intimidated at times. Christy used that at every turn, stating she sometimes felt helpless or useless because Mischa was so accomplished at everything, that there was no need for Christy to be there in the pack.
Mischa sat and watched him listen to Christy’s softly spoken words, as the tears brimmed, and she looked sad and sometimes defeated even with Mischa right there. Christy had appeared to be putting Mischa on a pedestal but then had also made it look as if she could never reach up and touch it at the same time.
Anthony looked at Mischa sometimes with an almost helpless look of ‘What can I do but comfort her?’ He had two Mates that weren’t mated to each other. Had told her they’d been mated for 20 years, that their bond was strong enough to get through a few rough years of this new situation they found themselves in until Chirsty truly felt like she was Mischa’s equal.
What was a few years in the grand scheme of things, that he also wanted to create the same strong and unbreakable bond with Christy that they had. When he’d done that, everything would settle down, that if she could bear with it. This pack would be stronger for it in the end.
She had understood that, from his point of view, of course, he would want a strong bond with his new mate. What she didn’t understand was him letting Christy eclipse their bond. He’d wanted in the beginning to split his time 50/50, but now it was like 80/20 and that 20% was rapidly dwindling as well.
He might be here two nights a week, but they only had s*x once a week for the most part. Every other week, that other night, he was gone before they even went to bed. Arrived and within 30 minutes to an hour he was called away by Christy and just didn’t come back.
She was willing to bet that within six more months he wouldn’t even come to her room at all. Just retire to the Alpha Suite with his second Mate every single night. They’d be broken completely soon, and he didn’t care to realize it. Though she thought he had to feel it, but could only guess it was okay in his mind for her to be bound to him, but nothing to him eventually.
He had Christy now, and so he wasn’t the one who slept alone at night. Bonded pairs weren’t designed to sleep apart all the time, it hurt. But only she hurt within their mate bond, because he had a bond with another that could, she knew, outweigh his and hers.
Christy wasn’t just calling him back to her, she was trying to imprint herself over everything she and Anthony had once had, and the moment he stopped coming to this room altogether, that was the moment she knew Christy had won. She and Christy were chalk and cheese. Christy was young, outgoing and fun, whereas Mischa was 41, smart, sensible and responsible.
She could run this pack without Anthony, and she knew it, because she’d been here to help rebuild it and knew the business’ inside and out. Christy couldn’t do that if her life depended on it, and she could see that at some point she would be managing everything while Anthony was always off having fun with Christy.
Their lives hadn’t been fun, always struggling to keep the pack together, it had been serious and filled with worry all the time. Christy had come along only after all that, and Anthony liked being able to spend time with her in that playful, fun manner that she and he had missed out on, because they’d been too busy trying to save this pack.
He was, she thought, reliving his younger days with Christy, and Mischa, to him, was older and too mature and sensible to be like Christy. What he’d forgotten was that all wolves liked to play, but his wolf Shade had not once called Laud out to play since Christy’s wolf Sunny had become his second wolfen mate.
She got up from the bed and pushed out through the French doors onto the balcony and stood naked out in the bracing cold of the beginning of winter season, maybe the oncoming chill would freeze her heart completely, and she’d have the strength to leave, reject the other half of her soul and go through the pains of rejection.
She didn’t know if it would just hurt or if it would kill her, breaking an Alpha Luna bond of 20 years could she knew kill one of them if not both of them. He thought everything was fine, he was getting his cake and eating it too. Maybe it would just kill her and not him.
She turned her face up to the moon, “When it happens, Selena, don’t make me a Luna again. I don’t want the responsibility of holding a pack together at the cost of my own heart or my wolf’s heart. We’ll be happy just being regular Joe’s,” she told their Goddess.
For now, she was still the Luna to this pack, granted by Selena herself, “I will not fail this pack, or those that live here, even if one day Anthony fails me completely. I will stay until I truly know I am not needed, but then, I will leave, and you’ll release me, to live a new better life elsewhere. That is the deal I make with you, my Goddess.
“My oath to you, Moon Goddess, for the blessing you gave me that lasted two decades. But this new blessing you gave my Mate, I reject her as being seen as a blessing in my eyes. She is unworthy of being Luna.
“I feel your choice was wrong on that she-wolf. I’m sorry I state something so unforgivable of the one that created us, gave us life and blesses us with the other half of our souls. It is just my opinion. Do not take it to heart or punish this pack for my thoughts on the matter.”
She stood out there in the cold until she was numb, watched the moon fall beyond the tree line of the pack and promised herself she would attend every request that was asked of her and be the perfect Luna always until the day came when she was truly not needed.
Even though she didn’t really want to be anymore, she knew she would know the day when it came because she would simply not care about whatever it was that she was seeing and that would be it, the day she left. How it would happen? She couldn’t say. When it would happen? She didn’t know. It could be a month or a year, five years from now, she didn’t know.
Where she would be when that moment came, or how she was living when it happened, were also things that were uncertain in her mind. She would simply feel nothing and see no point in being here at all anymore. That was the one thing she was certain of about her impending departure.
Though the part of her that clung to the belief that the will of their Goddess was how they should live, was still hoping that Anthony’s words about everything would settle down in a few years, that it was just a rough patch; they were true.
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