Wyatt
“She needs to train. If she is going to be our Luna, she must be strong.”
Byron crossed his arms over his chest and glared back at me. “She needs time, it's only been a week.”
“She is healed.” I insisted.
“Physically. Not emotionally.” He countered.
We were arguing about Bella, and whether or not she should start joining the pack for training. I felt that the sooner she started, the better. I didn’t think that keeping her alone and isolated in her room was going to help her heal from the trauma of her early years. Hell, she might never fully recover from the hell she went through in that house. But I felt that she needed to pull her socks up and face life head-on. “She’s stronger than you think. She can do this. It will be good for her.”
Byron wanted to keep her all wrapped up in bubble wrap like she was a glass doll that could shatter at any moment. He wanted to keep her sheltered and protected away from the rest of the pack. I wanted to protect her too, but my common sense told me that the best thing I could do for her was to push her outside of her comfort zone. The sooner she faced down her fears, the sooner she could overcome them. The sooner she would be ready to take our side as our luna.
“I’ve got an idea,” Daphne breezed into the room, but obviously she’d been eavesdropping for some time. “Why don’t you two stop treating her like a child, and ASK her what she would like to do.”
Byron turned and glowered at our sister. “Why are you still here?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “For your information, I was coming to say goodbye.”
I grabbed her stiff body and planted a kiss on her head. “You are a miracle worker, Daffy. What would we do without you?”
She pushed me off playfully. “You would die a hopeless, miserable, lonely death. And don’t call me Daffy, you know I hate that.” She smoothed out her shirt. “Seriously guys, this is a big deal. She’s your mate, and just because she’s hurt doesn’t mean she’s an imbecile. You better show her some respect.” She waggled her finger at the both of us. “She better still be here when I get back.”
I grabbed her in a tight, bone-crushing hug. “I don’t know how you got to be so smart. It must have rubbed off from me.”
“As if. You know she gets her brains from me. I’m the one that had to tutor her through two years of algebra.” Byron argued, looking smug.
“Yeah, but if I’d been the tutor, she would have gotten through it in one year.”
“Oh my god, you boys are hopeless,” She said, sounding much more like an older sister instead of a baby sister. “I’m leaving now. Behave yourselves. I love you.” She gave each of us a peck on the cheek and a squeeze before she headed for the door. She gave us a last smile and a wave before she left to make the long commute back to her college dormitory for the week.
I sighed, watching her go. I missed having her around the house all the time. She had a gentle, buffering effect on Byron and me. But now I had a whole other reason to want her around...she was able to smooth out the wrinkles with Bella. Daphne was like a safety net, ready to catch us if we screwed things up too badly. “OK, let's go talk to her,” I said, heading for her bedroom. I didn’t wait to see if Byron was following. This conversation was going to happen whether he liked it or not.
I knocked at her door and waited to hear her soft “come in” before I opened it. She was curled on the sofa with a workbook and a pencil in her hand. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment as she set it aside, and she scrambled to her feet. “Please, sit down Bella.” I coaxed her back down on the couch and squeezed my body in next to hers. Byron wasn’t about to be left out, as he took the other side. “We wanted to talk to you about something.”
She swallowed nervously and looked down at her hands and waited for me to continue.
“We want to know if you feel ready to join the pack for training,” I said carefully.
“But if you don’t feel ready, it's perfectly okay.” Byron blurted. I shot him a dirty look. Why can’t you encourage her? I snarled through the mind link.
Why can’t you be sensitive for once in your life? He growled back.
“Okay.” She said quietly, interrupting our mind-link argument.
“What?” Byron asked in surprise.
“I said okay. I mean, yes. I will go to training with you.”
Byron’s eyes bugged out a little bit. “You aren’t afraid?”
She shrugged her thin shoulders. “I need to start sometime. I guess now is it.”
I felt myself grinning like an idiot. A proud idiot. “That’s what I said,” I shot a gloating look over at Byron. “And don’t worry, we will be there with you the whole time. You will be perfectly safe, no one will ever hurt you.”
She looked up at me with those doe-soft eyes. “I know,” She said simply. “I trust you.”
Bella
I tried to put on a brave face. I didn’t want the brothers to know how scared I was of training with their pack. Just the idea of meeting them all had me shaking like a leaf. What would they think of me? How could they ever approve of a weakling like me as their luna? What if I did something that embarrassed the brothers? I stuffed my hands in the pocket of my hoodie and twisted them together. I was pretty sure that my very existence was potentially embarrassing. How could they introduce me? “This emaciated slave girl is our mate. She doesn’t shift. She doesn’t fight. But she’s damn good at cleaning toilets. Welcome your luna.”
I knew they wouldn’t really do that to me, but I was afraid that was how the pack was going to perceive me; weak and shameful. I was not worthy of the title, nor was I worthy of the brothers. I couldn’t understand what trick of fate had mated me with them.
“Ready, sweetheart?”
I looked down at my feet and nodded.
The brothers led me out of the house and onto the grounds. I had toured the area with Daphne, but it had been empty then. Now the field was teaming with people, men and women, and even some children. They were loosely assembled and already stretching while they awaited their trainers. I felt all the curious eyes on me, and I wished I could be invisible. They mounted a little knoll at the far end of the training area and bellowed out a greeting to the tribe.
“Good morning everyone!” Wyatt roared.
“Good morning Alphas!” the crowd shouted back, clearly glad to see them.
“I know there have been a lot of rumors swirling around the pack. Today I can confirm that the rumors are absolutely true; Byron and I have found our mate.”
The cheer that went up from the crowd was deafening. I felt all the hairs rise up on my arms in response to their energy. They were really and truly happy for their alphas. Everyone knows that a mated alpha is much more powerful than a bachelor.
“This is Bella. I know that each and every one of you will do your part to make sure that she feels safe and welcome in our pack.”
Another shout went up. I felt myself shrinking into Byron’s side. This was even more terrifying than I had imagined. I felt all those eyes on me, all those silent questions bombarding me, I felt them weighing me and judging me, and it was all making me a little dizzy.
“Okay, warm up! Five laps!” there was a collective, but good-natured groan as the group started to run the perimeter of the field.
“Hey, are you okay?” Byron was stroking my arms.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Do you think you can run, or do you need to walk today?”
“I...I think I can run...” I said with trepidation.
“Okay, I’ll run with you. Let's take it nice and easy.” He set the pace at a slow jog. I matched his stride and kept my eyes down on the ground. Even though he was going way slower than anyone else on the field before we had completed one lap I was already sucking wind.
“Enough for today. You will build up your endurance gradually.” He assured me.
I felt a hundred pairs of eyes on me, all the time. Part of me wanted to cringe away and hide somewhere. Somewhere where they couldn’t see my skinny legs or my scarred arms. The other part of me wanted to lift my chin and stare back at them defiantly. I don’t know where that part came from.
“Okay, partner up!” Wyatt yelled as the last runners finished their laps.
“Karen, come partner with Bella,” Byron ordered.
We sized each other up as she approached me. She was a small woman, probably a few years older than I was. Her ash-blond hair was pulled up into a perky ponytail. Her expression and her hazel eyes were cold as she looked back at me. When she spoke, she had a British accent, which meant she wasn’t native to the Valiant Mountain pack.
“Take it easy on her Karen, just the basics,” Byron said, “Punch and block.”
“Well this is going to be bloody boring isn’t it?” She sneered.
She reluctantly showed me three variations of a basic punch, and four different blocks to parry them with. All the while she was watching me with a sort of disgusted fascination. When Byron and Wyatt were out of earshot, she hissed at me, “What kind of Luna doesn’t even know how to fight?”
I clenched my teeth together and didn’t answer. What could I say, after all? She was right. It was shameful, and it only underscored my belief that I wasn’t good enough for the brothers. There must have been some kind of cosmic mistake in the fated mate selection.
“Why would the brothers choose some anorexic, sickly she-wolf for a mate, when they could have any woman? What are you, some kind of charity case?”
The wolf in my head growled lowly. At least, I think it was her. It might have been me because I was equally annoyed. I was annoyed because it was true. I was like a charity case to these men. Like a stray puppy they had taken in and were trying to nurse back to health. I knew it was true, but to hear it from her perfectly glossed lips tasted extra sour.
In addition to needling me with her words, her punches were getting increasingly aggressive and fast. She dodged my clumsy attempts to block her, and kept hitting me, hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to cause a real injury. It was frustrating for me, not to be able to stop her. My sore ribs and aching shoulders were adding fuel to the anger that her words were stirring in my heart.
“You are weak,” she snarled, landing a blow just above my breast that knocked the breath out of me. “You don’t deserve them.”
I don’t know what happened. Something snapped in me, and that wolf that had been growling in the back of my head suddenly sprang forward. I felt my consciousness get shoved aside as something else took over... something that was me, but not me. Something bold, strong, and furious. When I swung at her this time, it was as if someone else was controlling my body. My first jab landed in her fleshy breast, the second landed in her throat, and as she doubled over gasping I caught her right in the chin with an uppercut, snapping her head backward and sending her sprawling on her back.
I stood over her, my fists balled at my sides, my chest heaving. Wyatt and Byron noticed the commotion and came jogging over. “Jeezus Bella, you’ve knocked her out cold. It was supposed to be light contact only.”
I glared at her and then glared at him, rubbing the spot over my breast that was still red and sore. I wasn’t going to tell him that she’d gotten rough first. I wasn’t going to tell him how she’d been mocking me for my weakness. I wasn’t going to reduce myself to that kind of juvenile bickering.
Fear flickered through my brain... I’ve broken the rules. They will punish me. But I brushed it aside. If they punished me, it would be worth it, for the momentary satisfaction I got from seeing her fly backward.
My opponent was just starting to stir in the grass. I rubbed my arms, suddenly feeling chilled...and on the heels of feeling cold, I began to feel itchy and agitated.
“Bella? What’s wrong?” I heard Byron’s worried inquiry, but it seemed like he was talking from far, far away, instead of right next to me. In the next moment, I doubled over in pain and cried out, clutching my stomach.
“She’s shifting!” I heard Wyatt's surprised cry right before the pain consumed me, and a ceased to be aware of anything beyond the excruciating pain in my bones.