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“That would teach them, wouldn’t it?”
“Are you kidding me? You sound like a Dark Moon mutt right now, Ruby! Act your station and defend your pack!”
“I am defending my pack!” I yell, and the whole pack goes silent around me in disbelief. “I only came back to say goodbye, I’m Dark Moon now, mated to their Tracker. It’s done.”
For one brief moment my brother looks so mad that I think he might shift and tear me apart. Around us those that haven’t shifted yet do so, growling and stepping forward.
Stepping towards their enemy, me.
Instinctively I cower towards my brother for protection but he pushes me away and I fall onto the gravel, scraping my knees and hands, and look back up at him in disbelief.
“Traitor,” he growls, so low I can barely hear him. His eyes swim with emotion as the muscles in his jaw work. The wolves are almost on me, ready to shred me for what I’ve done, and my brother isn’t going to stop them.
“That. Is. Enough!” I hear my mother shout, and the pack parts like a wave as she descends the stairs. She looks regal, dressed in a white pants suit, her hair tied up in a French twist. Her face is a solid mask of fury, like finely lined marble, and when she reaches us she doesn’t look at me with her anger; she directs it at my brother.
“No matter her mate, she is still your sister!” She looks at the pack and they cower before their Luna. “Ruby is the daughter of your Luna and her Alpha passed. To come against her is to come against me!”
She holds her hand out to me and I take it, her tiny body showing surprising strength as she pulls me up and wraps her arms around me. Her hands don't settle on my shoulders as she looks at me, they settle on my stomach, and her eyes fill with tears.
“Your sister is with child, and you throw her to the ground like your enemy. You could have killed our future!” she snaps at my brother.
The sheer shock on his face breaks my heart. He falls to his knees before me, pressing his head against my stomach, and the pack around me bows down. Everyone but Jax, who’s nearly healed but still limping. He looks at me with cold hatred before he turns and walks away. I feel sorry for him, he honestly thought he loved me. He’ll see, someday he’ll find his mate.
I put my hand on my brother's head and he looks up at me with tears in his eyes. This news doesn’t surprise me, somehow. I think I knew, even in the cave, that I was carrying the seeds of our future.
“If I’d known…” he mutters, touching my stomach with reverence. It’s been so long since one of our females carried that this moment is momentous beyond words. “...but with the enemy? How can this be?” His searching eyes turn to our mother and she looks up at the sky and closes her eyes, murmuring a prayer for wisdom.
“They are fated mates, this was always meant to happen,” she says sagely and pulls me towards the house without another word.
When we’re seated in front of my Father’s portrait again, Cole takes a knee and cleans my scrapes himself with a first aid kit he grabbed on the way in the house. Outside, the pack gathers on the porch trying to hear anything they can. Mother has her back to us, looking up at Father, and when she turns around her blouse is unbuttoned and her hands open her shirt to reveal her own mark. Cole and I look at her with shock and reverence as a tear spills down her cheek.
“Your father and I were the last to have the fated bond, marked by Cassius and Raina as soon as my child quickened in my womb. I knew the very moment I was pregnant with you, Cole.” She sighs and sits down on the coffee table, her eyes far away. “I woke up that morning wrapped in your father’s arms, and when I sat up in bed I saw a woman standing in the early morning light coming through the window. She was ethereal, glowing, and the smile on her face was so motherly. She laid a hand on her own mark on her chest, then on her stomach, and she nodded at my stomach.
“I felt it happen, I felt the weight shift and the handprint appear, and for a split second there was a massive man behind the woman who looked upon me like a father before the wind shifted and they disappeared like mist.
“I knew from that moment that this mark is a blessing from our ancestors, a blessing of a true born fated pair. Richard and Vicky had the marks too, but Richard…he was troubled. Your father and I spoke about how he seemed to be touched by Raul himself. We tried to make peace, save our packs, but Richard’s darkness ran too deep. Vicky retreated into addiction, knowing what he was doing and letting it tear her soul apart. Neither of them survived his corruption, but their children are as fated as you two.
A faint smile lights up my mother’s face. “Now that I think about it, I’m not so surprised this has come to pass. We’ve created only boys for so long, while the Dark Moon produces so many viable and amazing young ladies.”
“You’re wrong, mother,” Cole says, turning away from me as the chill returns to the room. “We’ve suffered ill luck, that’s all. That’s the end of it. This? This is a fluke. They are our enemies, always have been and always will be!”
“And what will Ruby’s children be, Cole?” Mother asks, looking down at me with a sweet smile. I’m overwhelmed with love for her, so struck by her story that I feel the rightness in my bones.
“They won't make it, it’s wrong. Her children won’t be born.”
“How dare you!” Mother roars, shifting into a wolf and pinning him to the couch.
She looms over Cole, her white coat glimmering in the dim light, her red eyes boring into him as she growls at him with her jaws wide open.
“Those children are our future, and you will protect and love them as if they are your own!”
Cole is so still it’s frightening, his eyes bulging with his own urge to shift. He’s dwarfed by our mother’s wolf, but were he to shift himself she would not stand a chance. I slip away from them on the couch and rise to my feet while they have a mental conversation just between the two of them. I walk to the window, sitting on the sill and looking out at the milling pack as they try to pretend they weren't listening in. I stroke my own stomach idly, filled with such joy and love that my brother’s words don’t even phase me.
My child is strong, it will more than survive, it will thrive. I look towards town, willing the news to find my mate, and as if summoning him I see him step out of the trees in his human form, naked and glorious. He looks at the house, directly at me, and I know he knows. He walks past the threatening pack, ignoring the snaps and snarls as the clamor rises, but mother doesn’t get off Cole.
No one can stop my mate, he doesn’t touch them at all he’s so fast, and before I know it he’s in the sitting room and pulling me into his arms. He kisses my forehead and his hand cups my stomach gently.
“We’ve been summoned to a meeting, I came to retrieve my mate,” he tells Cole and my mother, but his eyes never leave mine.
