Page 2 of The Broken Aztec Princesses

“Say in about six weeks? Let’s make it for the same amount of time. Thank you, Rose.”

I gritted my teeth as she exited my office. Not only did she insist on calling me Rose, but she was leaving for the entiretyof the harvest. So much for all hands on deck. It was no secret to anyone in the pack that me and Martha butted heads, but I’d asked her to help me put up a unified front, even if it was just for show, for the pack. Every other week, I got questions about what we would do if we didn’t get all the grapes harvested and if I could call other packs to see if any were willing to take us in.

I wasn’t ready to give up. This was my chance to prove to everyone that I was the youngest twin, but not the weakest. I wanted to prove to myself that I could lead my pack well. The council was still breathing down my neck. A pack shouldn’t be without an alpha, and they wanted to either disband the pack or have me take a chosen mate of alpha blood to take over. After some persuasion, they weren’t completely opposed to me becoming the alpha of Redmon Moon, but I had to prove I could handle the responsibility of a pack and the transition into the role.

I was currently failing on both counts. People still called me Luna, and Brandon had left the pack in a bigger mess than I could have imagined. Despite the times I told Cory I was too busy with Luna duties to visit over the years, the truth was Brandon kept me away from anything important.

I was kept from important meetings and was barely aware of how the vineyard worked. Everything I’d learned about the business was from Eric, one of the older supervisors. I spent days following him around before the attack, looking for ways to make myself useful.

Brandon was a possessive man. He hated when I went back to Crescent Moon without him, but he was always too busy to come, so I had to make excuses to Cory to avoid arguments with my mate. I already had enough fights about finishing my degree when I wasn’t planning on using it.

At least, according to Brandon. He swore I would never use it—the irony. The knowledge I learned at school was the onlything helping me manage the river of paperwork and constant demands. I would have drowned without it.

I booked Martha her ticket and forwarded her the information, even though I knew she wouldn’t look at it. She would just ask me when it was the night before and leave. Hell, I was tempted to “forget” about it and force her to stay for the harvest. Behind the sweet mother figure she presented to the world, the woman was a cold bitch on her best days and a raging cunt on the rest of them.

I picked up Adam from daycare before dinner, and then we went to the fields. A few of us always brought the little ones while we worked, taking breaks to watch them as they played around the grapes and trees. It was far from ideal, but nothing was for any of us right now. We were all working hard to continue surviving.

Everyone except my slob of a Beta and my ex-mother-in-law, at least. I’d yet to see either of them working the fields since spring. Hugh was hurt during the rogue attack and somehow lost almost five weeks of time. We still didn’t know what happened to him. He took over the warrior training after Brandon’s gamma passed away and spent most of his free time in the gym.

He was obsessed with not going through the same thing again. Half of me wanted to believe his actions were due to his trauma, but the other half believed he was using it as an excuse to get out of doing real work outside of the training and picking up chicks. The wolf was a man-whore, and there were a lot of widows in the pack right now. I already had to interfere in a few fights between she-wolves claiming he was taking each one as a chosen mate, only to find out that he said that to at least five more.

The man claimed to be shit at paperwork, which begged the question of who the fuck had kept the pack running? Brandon was never as busy as I currently was. Ron, his gamma, was a fighter through and through. His mother didn’t help, so how didit get done? Even after twelve months, I still couldn’t figure out how the pack hadn’t gone bankrupt over the last decade.

There were a lot of things that still didn’t make sense a full year later, but I had very little time to think about them. No matter how many hours of work I put in, I couldn’t seem to gain any breathing room. Cory kept suggesting that I replace Hugh, but it wasn’t possible right now. Aside from the fact that I didn’t have time to look for a new one, there were not enough candidates to consider. I needed fresh blood in the pack, but with the council’s warning label on the pack, I felt like we were the kid with lice in school that no one wanted to get near.

There had to be a better way.

Please, Selene, let there be better days ahead,I prayed as I went to sleep that night, wondering if this prayer would be ignored like the rest of them.

Chapter Two

Violet

“You’ve been isolated from the pack for a year, and while I understand this is the way you’ve chosen to cope, we need to get you back among the people who love you. You and your wolf will never heal by yourself. We’re pack animals, Violet. We need each other to thrive,” Dr. Estelle Campbell, my psychologist for the last year, droned on. “Can we set up a few small steps and goals for you this week?”

“I’ve been trying,” I answered, frustrated. “I try every day. Do you know how many times I’ve stood at those gates, trying to take a step out? Or how many times I’ve tried to go to dinner at the pack house with my family? It’s not like I’m not trying!”

“How many times in the last three months?” she asked, which shut me up.

“I’m tired of failing,” I answered quietly, looking down at my hands as I picked at the cuticles.

“It is not failing, Violet. It is healing, and it’s more complicated than simply being able to do something on any given day. You’regoing to have setbacks. You can go to dinner with a crowd one day, and the next, you’re going to be overwhelmed and stay home. The important part is trying. You can’t give up on yourself or the life you want to have.”

“Everyone still looks at me funny,” I mumbled.

“They are trying to understand what you need from them. They want to help you, but they don’t know how.”

“No. It’s pity. Pity for poor Violet, the Alpha’s little princess who didn’t even get a skinned knee growing up, and suddenly, she lost her mate and was raped in the span of months, and now she can’t even be in the same room with people.”

“Does the pack know you lost your mate now?” she asked, making me look back up at her. I bit my lip and shook my head. I made everyone in my family promise to keep it to themselves.

“How about we try one family dinner this week and one pack dinner? Tell your mom you want to eat with the pack, and you want to get there early so no one can surprise you. Sit at the alpha table, and if you get overwhelmed, ask one of your siblings to escort you to the conference rooms so you can calm down?”

I bit my lip again to stop it from trembling. “I don’t want to make them uncomfortable with all of my issues. It’s been a year. They’ve all moved on, and I’m still stuck. It’s not fair to any of them.”

“These are self-deprecating words, Violet, and we’ve discussed you having them even before everything happened last year. No one but you thinks they need to be healed by now. You’re doing yourself a disservice by not asking for help and you’re not being fair to your family by not letting them help you.”

I sighed because she had a point. Dr. Campbell thought that because I was a middle child, I had developed this line of thinking that I was bothering everyone whenever I had a problem. She pointed out how much help Cory got when the attacks on our pack happened. How Lucien moved back homewhile his mate Cecilia was pregnant and put on bed rest after she was shot, so mom could help take care of her while Lucien worked. Areli called Mom every day after taking on the role of Luna unexpectedly. Bells had people help her after her pack was attacked last year. Why couldn’t I ask for help?

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