Page 3 of Into the Grasslands

“I’ve always been Aiden to you, no need for formalities now. You just got back for your break.” He grinned again, and it never occurred to him that he was wrong. Shouldn’t the Alpha of the pack know that I had graduated from university and was home? If nothing else, he should at least know that yesterday was my birthday, and I most likely had the mate dreams.

Before I left the pack, they used to celebrate every time a female shifter turned twenty. She was brought to the center of a pack meeting and showed off to everyone. Before she took her run, she would call out if her mate was within the pack and then they would run together. That was how it was supposed to happen. I would have been home for my own celebration had it not been for my confusing dreams that made me believe something would go wrong with my final transition. Instead, something was wrong with my mate.

“Not a break, I graduated.” It physically hurt to get the words out around the lump of emotion that threatened to choke me.

“Graduated? College? How is that possible?” I ignored his question as my eyes continued to track the women - some of whom wore smug smirks on their faces. It was clear they were showing they held a favored position. “What brings youby today?” Aiden finally asked when I failed to answer his questions.

“I just got back.” My answer was just as inane as the scene my poor brain repeatedly failed to process. Our pack did not allow harems any longer. There had been good reason to ban the practice. It caused too much strife and conflict amongst the male shifters who felt their females were being sullied needlessly. There was no need to even talk about the fact that many of the females hadn’t been willing participants in the harems of the past. That didn’t seem to be an issue with the women who lounged upon the dais where the Alpha and Luna’s thrones sat. Kyla draped herself around the Luna’s throne as I watched. She didn’t climb into the seat, but the fact that her nude body hugged it possessively was enough of a message.

What no one ever addressed from those histories was how the harem affected the discarded mate. It was abuse, as she would feel pain every time her mate was with someone else. Many lost their minds, and sometimes their lives because of their mate’s participation in the harems.

“And the first thing you did was to come here?” He asked me as a cocky grin spread across his face. It took a few minutes for his words to register beyond my thoughts.

I nodded my head stupidly, still unable to process just what was going on in the room. There had to be some other explanation because this was an abomination. A practice that Aiden’s father himself had helped to do away with in other packs during his rule because he had seen how it nearly tore his own pack apart when his grandfather had been Alpha. That was something I thought Aiden and his father had agreed upon.

“The moon gave me a vision of my mate,” I explained as my eyes continued to survey the scene.

“She did? You know you don’t need my permission to seek him out.” I could hear a hint of dishonesty in his tone. Itwasn’t that I need not obtain his permission. That was true. He knew that I was most likely his mate, though. His father had mentioned it many times through the years as we grew up together. Aiden wanted it to appear as if he thought I was there for someone else. Maybe it helped him to assuage his guilt for what I walked in on.

I shook my head again. “I came here to find my moon-blessed mate.”

Aiden glanced around stupidly. “There are only the females and me here right now.”

That time my head bounced up and down twice as I swallowed down my nerves. “I came to findyou, since the moon instructed me that you were to be my mate.”

“Me?” Aiden stopped his approach instantly. Then, as if to add insult to the already humiliating experience, he took two very solid steps back. Moments ago, his arms had been outstretched toward me in welcome, ready to pull me into a hug. They hung limply at his sides after he moved away and eyed me cautiously.

A crack formed on my heart at the picture he painted. My mate actively avoided the touch that would secure our bond in place while six naked, or nearly naked, females sat behind him. Some had looks of pity or worry on their faces, others still wore smug masks after they watched Aiden reject my words with his actions.

“Yes. You are to be my mate.”

A couple of the women who were still perched along the raised dais, where the thrones sat, tittered at my proclamation, while the others glanced at one another nervously.

“I can taste the truth in the words you speak,” Aiden whispered. Since everyone in the room happened to be shifters with supernatural hearing, that meant they all heard him and knew that I spoke the truth. Some of the tittering laughter thenturned over to shocked gasps and even more worried glances as the doors on either side of the room opened and a few pack enforcers strolled inside.

I took another step forward, but to my complete horror, my mate backed away from me again.

“Nika, this news is a lot to take in, especially considering I’m only newly appointed as the Alpha of our pack.”

“I’m sure it is a lot to take in, but that doesn’t change the vision Selene gave me, or the path we must venture down.”

Aiden glanced behind him at the women who waited there for him. A sick feeling settled into my belly as I noticed a longing desperation in his eyes that I did not see when he looked at me earlier.

The males of our pack, who had made their way into the throne room since my arrival, were on guard waiting to see what might transpire. Some of them seemed almost relieved at my reason for being there. Others, much like the few women on the dais, offered pitying looks to me and disappointment or scathing glares for their Alpha.

Aiden’s brother joined them as we all stood there waiting to see what our Alpha would do with the information he was just given. In the meantime, we were steadily drawing a larger crowd in the throne room as word spread through the pack like wildfire. Their Luna had arrived. The question remained though, whether or not I wanted to be Luna to an Alpha with a harem. That was a simple answer. I did not.

Aiden chuckled lightly, though it sounded more like nervousness than it did lighthearted amusement. “The thing is, I haven’t quite settled into my position yet, and I require more time to do so before adding the burden of a new Luna to my duties.”

“Burden?” I hissed out the question. “A moon-blessed union between Alpha and Luna only works to strengthen a pack. Howcould that be a burden?” I asked, completely caught off guard that he would speak of our fated bond in such a cavalier manner.

“There are things…” He started to say before his attention turned back to the females who still lounged behind him, albeit a bit more uncomfortably, alongside the thrones.

“You see, there are certain rights that I have reestablished among the pack, and I can’t partake in them if I’m already mated, especially in a moon-blessed union.”

No. He couldn’t be saying what I thought he was.

“You’re rejecting our mating?” I asked in absolute horror.

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