Bab 5: Chapter 5: Moonlit Rendezvous.
Adel’s POV.
“It was after our engagement was officially announced.” I started settling back against the tree, the familiar feel of the bark scratching my back in a comforting way as I craned my neck to look at my future mate's brother.
“How old were you then? Eleven…”
“Thirteen. It was two years after we first met. We had just bought this place and I had just learned my wolf’s name… I had shifted for the first time a week after we moved out to the property. Mom said it was because I could finally hear… her voice clearly.”
It was said that to share the name of your wolf was as intimate as shifting in front of someone, and for someone who was unbound… untethered it was looked down on among the more proper clans. Since our conversation in the library, Anara had begged for me to share with Phoenix… Nix, her name. I had been reminding her of the rules we had to adhere to, which he wasn’t ours to share with. That we were waiting for our mate to find us when Nix found us sitting in the quiet dark under the willow tree.
“It's tempting isn’t it.” His voice quieted so low I had to quiet my mind to hear him. “To shift.”
“Your brother… Maddox,” I continued, ignoring the temptation of Anara pushing against me for control to shift, “was fifteen. I think he saw himself as more mature than the thirteen-year-old girl whom he had just become engaged to. It was under this tree that he told me on the night of my twenty-first birthday he’d meet me here, and we’d…”
“You don’t have to tell me any more,” Nix said suddenly, growing stiff next to me.
“Is it awkward for you?”
“Is what specifically?”
“Me. This. Your brother being mated?”
“You? No. You’re the only thing in all of this that doesn’t make me feel like I want to give control over to…”
Nix stopped short of his words, leaning his head against the bark of the willow tree, closing his eyes, and breaking the connection we had shared in the dark.
“What’s it like?” I asked after what felt like forever sitting in silence, wrapped in the sounds of the night. “The… what is it you and Maddox call it? Homestead?”
“It’s quiet…” The tension bleeds from Nix as his shoulders relax. “Our homestead is nestled in the middle of a ridge with huge pine trees. Our parent's home sits along the creek.”
“Is it true there’s a waterfall?”
Nix nodded his head, his eyes still closed. “A few small ones, but up along the ridge there’s a large one that feeds the creek.”
“And the clan? It’s not just your family?”
“Started that way,” Nix responded, his voice taking on a soothing quality as he settled into our conversation. “Back in the day, when our fathers, fathers, father was Alpha. But as it grew, as the family took on mates from other packs, and those packs merged with ours, it became a clan. When our father became Alpha, he wanted it to be different, as I’m sure most Alphas would, to forge their own path and make their own name. Dad wanted to open the doors of the clans to lone wolves. Wolves who for one reason or another no longer had a pack to call their own. At first, it wasn’t respected by the larger packs, and his seat was challenged. But now. It’s respected.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?” Nix fired back, cracking his eyes open to rest on me again.
“How would you be remembered as an Alpha?”
“I’m the spare, Adel. I’ll never have to ask myself the question.”
“Well, you asked me a question I didn’t know how to answer so it’s only fair I ask you one.”
For the first time since meeting the strangely quiet wolf, Nix laughed. The short, brief sound could have been missed if it weren’t for the quirk in his lip. But there was no denying that I had made Phoenix Byrne, the second son of the Alpha of the Blood Moon Clan, laugh.
“Fair.” Nix chuckled again as he crossed his ankles. His dusty boots were so odd in contrast to the black pants he wore.
“To be honest, I don’t know what I would do. But I would do away with these kinds of things.”
“Stuffy dinners?” I responded without hesitation, causing Nix to chuckle again.
“No… Well, yes. Now that I think of that. That too. Arrangements. If we’re going to trust that fate, and the goddess has a plan, then we shouldn’t be consulting with seekers to translate what that plan is.”
“You would do away with the star seekers completely?” I couldn’t hold back the shock that bled through my question at Maddox’s brother's proposition.
“Not completely. They’re useful for bindings, unions, healings, and all of that. But this. Matters of families, and contractional unions. We weigh so much of our decisions based on what the seekers ‘see in the stars.’ Without really knowing if what they see is fate or convenience. All of this seems like useless politics—”
“That’s your opinion then. That this was just orchestrated convenience.” I noded my head, unable to sort through the reason behind the betrayal I was feeling by Nix’s statement.
“N—no.” Nix’s face paled in the moonlight. “Adel…”
“I don’t know why it took you saying that for me to realize it. You must think I’m mindless… You practically spelled it out for me when you came out here asking me if I believed in fated mates.”
“Adel. I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry I’m not good with words. If you’ll let me explain…”
“No, it’s fine. I wouldn’t want to dull you with any more of this, especially when you clearly don’t want to be here in the first place. I seem to have interrupted you and misread the situation. I thought we were becoming friends—”
“Adel—”
“I don’t want to keep you, Phoenix. Maddox should be here soon. We wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea.”
I watch as Phoenix pulled his long legs under him, the leather of his boots creaking under the strain of his movement. Slowly, he stood to his fullest height towering over me like a giant from a book my mother used to read to me.
“Fin.”
I sit in stunned silence unable to process the meaning of the name he just gave me.
“His name is Fin. He wouldn’t let me hear the end of it if I walked away and didn’t tell you…” Phoenix said as he takes one small step backward. “My wolf. His name is Fin.”
Anara screamed at me to tell them to stop, to beg for them to stay…
“He… We… wanted to tell you his name, and for what it’s worth, you might be our only friend.”
Hadiah
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