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“I’m sorry too,” Luna said. “About my mom. Your daughter, I mean.”
“I wish I’d gotten to know her,” her grandmother admitted. “I’m sure she was a wonderful woman. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss her.”
Thiswasher grandmother.
She’d convinced herself it was all one big hoax. To have the truth out in the open before her. To actually speak to this woman she shared a distant connection with.
It was almost too much for Luna.
They talked for hours. Luna talked about everything Victor had done to her and how she’d wound up in the Crescent Moon Pack. She talked about the bond she’d formed with Adrian and how she’d become the female alpha.
“The blood of alphas flows through you,” her grandmother said. “It’s never been easy for us. But it does tend to work out in unexpected ways.”
And her grandmother shared her story. It was a fascinating but depressing tale of betrayal, love, and heartbreak. By the end of it, Luna knew she’d found a common ally against Victor.
When her phone battery started dying and darkness flitted through the window, Luna hung up, promising to call often.
“She’s quite a character,” Adrian said.
“You heard every word of that, didn’t you?”
Adrian shrugged. He brought his nose down to hers, pressing his forehead against her temple.
“I told you it would be all right,” he said softly. “You were fantastic.”
And with the evening fast approaching and the study growing darker by the minute, they kissed, holding each other tightly.
EIGHTEEN
LUNA
“Oh … God. How am I going to go through with this?”
“Breathe, Luna,” Sasha advised, sitting across from her in the pew.
With Victor staying out of sight for the past week, it didn’t feel like a good idea to have a mating ceremony. But Adrian had insisted it was all part of the plan and that Victor would show his hand soon enough.
“Why is he asking me to do this?”
Nobody had arrived at the small temple, an old rock building garbed on all sides by tangling vines and a fountain on the altar. Adrian had told her that once upon a time, this shrine was devoted to a fertility goddess before laughing and clarifying he actually had no idea about this place.
It was just a pretty, quaint building he liked.
But if anything, this should have been a decoy ceremony if it was meant to lure Victor out.
Was anybody even coming? Because, at this point, only Sasha and Luna were in the building. Luna anxiously paced in front of the altar while she waited for Adrian. She knew a mating ceremony was very different from a wedding, but still, she expected a greater level of planning. Anxiety loomed large on her mind at the thought of Victor, who was biding his time.
The noon sun hung high in the sky, peering through the cracks of the shrine. In any other place, this building might have been condemned. She was partly glad it hadn’t been. She could say what she wanted about old buildings, but this one was certainly memorable.
In the silence, a phone rang in Sasha’s pocket, but it was Luna’s ringtone. Luna’s emerald dress didn’t have pockets, so she had given it to Sasha for safekeeping.
Sasha took it out, looking down at the caller ID before raising an eyebrow and handing it to Luna.
“I guess it’s for you,” she said, the confusion never easing from her features. Luna feared the worst.
Luna smiled back, taking it and looking down. She recognized the number.
Oh, God.Everything was falling apart.
