Page 71 of Moonlit Nights & Northern Lights
We followed the winding path through a copse of silver birch trees, their pale trunks ghostly in the fading light.
“Is he?”
“Honestly, Uncle Alex is… different. He’s my mum’s brother, Oxford-educated doctor. One of the few who ever left Scotland—most pack members are born, live, and die within a hundred miles of the estate. He was always the progressive voice in family arguments. Actually listened when I talked about wanting medication. Couldn’t override my parents, but he tried. His dead wife, Moira, she was actually the same. Bit of a rebel by pack standards. She and Alex were the reasonable ones. When I came out, Alex was the only one who didn’t look at me like I’d grown a second head. Mum and Dad went mental—not about the gay thing specifically, but about how it would ‘complicate pack dynamics.’ Alex told them that the pack needed to modernize with the rest of the world.”
He kicked at a stone, sending it skittering ahead of us.
“Gatherings were the worst. Every time I let my impulses win, or I said something inappropriate, my parents would get this look—like I was deliberately trying to embarrassthem. But Alex would always step in, make some joke to defuse the tension. He’d defend me when no one else would.”
“So Isla’s mum is dead?”
Rory scoffed. “Pack says she died in an accident about seven years ago, but there were always whispers that my father had something to do with it. She and my dad clashed constantly. She’d openly challenge him in front of everyone. It was horrible. When she died, we were told a young wolf from another pack had wandered onto our territory during a wolf moon, and they’d fought, and she’d lost. But then the rumours started. I’m not sure what Alex thinks. Maybe he was happier pretending. Being packless is the worst fate imaginable for most wolves. You lose your anchor, your support system. Without a pack, you feel… adrift. Purposeless.”
“That’s not how you feel though, right?” I asked him, eyeing him carefully.
He bit into his lip. “I have Kit. That’s enough. Anyway, Isla was only thirteen when her mother died. She’s studying at medical school now, in Edinburgh, I think. I wonder how much she even comes back here.”
“How many wolves are in this pack?” I asked, suddenly apprehensive of how many teeth might snap at me tonight.
“Around thirty.”
“Thirty?!” I couldn’t stop the pounding of my heart. Perhaps I should have brought the silver bullets Kit had packed…
“Yeah, it’s one of the biggest around here for sure. Everyone lives pretty spread out across the land, so it’s not like you see everyone all the time. There’s the main manor house—massive old stone thing that’s been around for generations—and then cottages and smaller houses dotted around the estate.”
“And… what do the humans in the area think about it all?”
“That we’re—” He caught himself. “They’resome new age cult thing. We used to joke about it ourselves, sometimes. But all us kids in the pack would sometimes get teased about it at school. Until they realised we were all stronger than them, with short tempers.”
Abruptly, Rory stopped walking as a memory surfaced, so emotionally charged I saw it as if it were my own.
Rory, pinned against the brick wall of the primary school by a boy twice his size. Others circling, calling him “cult boy” and “freak.” The panic rising in his chest, the wolf inside him desperate to break free, to fight back. Then Kit appearing like a guardian angel, yanking the bigger boy off him with strength no teenager should possess.
…“Touch my brother again, and you’ll regret it.”…
“Rory?”
…that was before everything changed between us…before Kit left me…
“Rory?” I repeated, I touched his arm, trying to pull him back to the present. “You okay?”
He blinked, shaking his head slightly. “Yeah. Sorry. Anyway…” He shuffled forwards, kicking the ground. “Out of everyone, we can count on Uncle Alex. Trust me on this.”
“I’ll form my own opinions, if you don’t mind. You shouldn’t trust anyone here completely.”
“Oh, here we go with the detective routine.” Rory rolled his eyes, though a smile played across his lips.
“I… am literally here as a detective, investigating a missing persons case.”
Eventually, Thorne House loomed ahead, its windows already illuminated though the sun had only begun to set. The golden light spilled across the manicured lawn, creating long shadows that stretched toward us like grasping fingers.
Rory stopped abruptly, his gaze fixed on the house, shoulders drawing up tight. “It’ll be the first time I’ve seen her since I snapped all my bonds,” he said.
I almost asked who, before realising he was talking about his mother. The current alpha. The woman who’d mistreated—fuck that,abused—her son to the point he chose to leave everything he’d ever known behind to sleep rough in Glasgow.
Looking at his face—openly worried in a way I’d never seen before—a fierce protectiveness rose within me that had nothing to do with our pretense.
But I couldpretendit did.
