Page 26 of Beyond the Grasslands

“We should run back together,” I offered.

He flinched and seemed ready to deny my request until I tugged on his hand. “Thorin, it has to happen sometime. If I am willing to trust your wolf, then you should probably get there too. If you can’t then we need to deal with that.”

“I’m so thankful that Aiden was a weak Alpha.”

“That was random.”

“Not random. I can’t imagine not having you as a Luna by my side. You’re perfect, Nika.”

“Not perfect. No one is.”

He shook his head. “No one else but you.” He winked and then in the next moment his wolf stood by my side and gave a little half impatient huff-half bark. I heard the others moving in our location and figured he wasn’t keen on the others seeing me nude whether he stood there as a man or as his wolf. I laughed my way right into my shift and ended up making a horrible squawking yowl as my mouth changed into a snout.

Chapter 12

September

NIKA

After the rogue attack,Thorin and I shut ourselves away in the office after we got back to the pack house. He told me everything he and Warren had learned from Miriam while she was under the Alpha’s command. It was hard to watch Thorin’s heart break as he recounted how his father had apparently been unfaithful to his mother. She had grown sick and unhealthy as a result, which probably contributed to her death. It was a shame that she had to meet the same fate as her moon-blessed, considering he was the source of all her pain.

That was the reason I grew angrier with the gods and goddesses. I always believed that they looked out for us and wanted only the best for their creations. The more I learned, the more it felt like we were just some sort of sport or game to them instead. If Miriam was to be believed, there was another goddess involved in the mix and she was hell bent on creating chaos through the destruction of Selene’s moon-blessed bonds as well as the deaths of prominent figures in the shifter community.

The other thing we learned, after Thorin managed to track down his Aunt Alicia and throw her in the cells, was that his aunt had not been a willing follower of whomever this mystery goddess was. She had some sort of sigil implanted in her rightshoulder blade. She must have been fighting whatever magic it held because there was an angry red mark around the site that made it easy to find. Once it was removed, she explained to Thorin that she thought the woman had done the same thing to her son, Viktor. It was just a feeling she had though, as she had never seen the woman who claimed to be a goddess with Vik.

The shifter council was still busy trying to sort out what went wrong with my old pack. There was some sort of scandal with Aiden and Avery’s parents that we only heard whispers of. While I wondered if they were also the victims of bored gods and goddesses playing games with their lives, it wasn’t sometime we mentioned to the council yet. It had been three weeks since Miriam’s admission that she had been working with a still unnamed goddess.

We were no closer to finding out who the goddess was, what she wanted, or why she was so determined to remove Thorin and his family from ruling the Grasslands Pack. We didn’t want to speculate that the same thing happened to my former pack because the circumstances there had been very different. Then again, that might have been the difference between their pack not having someone as completely unhinged as Miriam to make the plays. My thoughts were interrupted as someone knocked on the door to my room and then opened it before I could respond.

“Are you ready?”

I turned to see my best friend in the doorway. She tracked me down in the room we used to share. Janella had been given her own space and I asked that Thorin move me out of his rooms until we officially mated. So, he placed me back in the space I occupied with my friend when we first arrived at the Grasslands Pack. It felt a bit like going backward, but there wasn’t any way to deny that the separation of Thorin and my personal space helped.

“Just about. What are you up to?”

Janella kicked at the area rug on the floor. “I just wanted to wish you good luck. Is that a thing for dates?” She almost seemed startled, or maybe worried, that she had done something wrong.

“There is nothing wrong with wishing someone good luck on a date. I think it will be okay, considering Thorin isn’t exactly a stranger.” She must have sensed something in my tone.

“Why do you sound so unsure then?”

“I don’t know what he has planned, and while I’ve been doing better with learning to trust most of the pack again, I’m not sure I’m ready to be under a microscope with them either. What if Thorin takes me out and the pack disapproves of something?”

Janella shrugged her shoulders. “I think you need to forget about that. You are going to be their Luna. It doesn’t really matter if they disapprove of something you do. Technically, you can make it a rule that they have to like whatever it is.”

I laughed at her. “I would never abuse my authority like that.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about, Nika. Seriously, most of the pack already likes you and the ones who didn’t were under some sort of spell.”

“How are you handling everything?”

She shrugged again, but I could tell by the way her body wilted inward that things between her and Viktor had not improved yet. He might have had the sigil removed from his back, but he continued to disappear and go to the woman we all knew he was seeing. Thorin wanted to give his cousin the benefit of the doubt, since he seemed adamant that he was not involved with whoever this goddess was that had put him under the power of her sigil. Still, it hurt my friend to know that he was no longer under that spell, or whatever it was, and yet he chose to keep going to whoever he had hidden away off the pack’s lands.

“I can ask Thorin to force his hand.”

Tears welled in Janella’s eyes as she shook her head. “If a person has to be compelled to be with me, then I don’t want them.”

“I’m so sorry, honey.”

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