Luna, page 14
part #2 of Five Fangs Series
Little flower? Is everything okay?
Um, guys? I interrupted them. Emerson is having a ... problem. He says he smells his mate, but won't get out of the car.
They were silent for a long moment.
Posy, Emerson is gay, Cole said at last. For his own reasons, he kept it a secret from most people, but if he's found his mate, the truth is going to come out now whether he wants it to or not.
Okay. And? I asked, worried for my friend and not understanding the issue.
Sweetness, do you even know what being gay means?
No, not really.
He likes boys, Mason said in his blunt way.
Do you mean like as in the way you five like each other? Or—
No, honey, Cole cut me off. Like as in the way we feel about you and you feel about us. He's attracted to males, not females.
So, he's scared because he doesn't want anyone to know about the gay?
Ash giggled for some reason, but Mason and Jayden agreed that was probably the case.
What should I do? I want to help him.
Convince him to get out of the car, sweetness, Jayden said, and the mate bond should do the rest. We'll explain 'the gay' to you later.
Who might his mate be? I asked. Would that information help me convince him?
Uh, cupcake, we're pretty sure it's Angelo del Vecchio, unless the witches are all screwed up, which they might be because I don't know if Angelo is even gay. If they did mix things up, the only other guy it could be is—
Is who? I coaxed when Ash fell silent.
Leo Halder, he whispered. No one else is here. The rest of the pack is at the motel, in our prison, or dead.
Oh, no. The Moon Goddess wouldn't be that cruel, would she? To give a teddy bear like Emerson a mate like that monster?
To be fair, the boys had explained to me that Leo Halder was possessed by a demon. No one, however, knew how he'd gotten possessed or how much he'd participated in willingly.
Okay, definitely don't use any of that to convince him, I told myself, then linked my mates once more. Give me a few minutes of quiet, please, then I'll be out. I promise.
I closed the link on their whining, wiggled between the two front seats and over the console, and sat next to Emerson. Taking one of his giant paws in both of my hands, I tugged on it until he looked at me.
"My mates explained that you like boys. I don't understand the gay completely, but why are you upset for people to find out? You're still the same Emerson. You're still my beta and friend."
"Being gay cost me everything once before," he mumbled. "My family, my friends, my birth pack. I don't want to go through that again. If I lost Five Fangs and all of you, I—"
He stopped talking and drew in a deep breath.
"Why would you? I support you, your alphas support you, and I'm sure your brother betas do, too." With a tiny smile, I squeezed his hand. "No one here is going to turn their back on you for being who you are."
"But what if he rejects me? What if the Moon Goddess made a mistake and he isn't gay or she gave me a girl? What if—"
"What if he doesn't?" I cut him off. "What if she didn't? What if this ends up being the best day of your life? What if you find a kind of happiness you never thought possible?"
Getting to my knees on the seat, I dropped his hand and grabbed his bulging shoulders and shook him. Well, tried to shake him. He was a big, solid guy.
"You're going to love him and he's going to love you and what anyone else thinks of that isn't going to matter. Now go find your mate, Emerson Jones!"
#
Wyatt
All of us gathered in front of the Tall Pines alpha house as vehicles began to come up the drive.
The first to park was Tristan's Jeep, and he and Tyler bailed out quickly. Tristan because he wanted to get to Ariel faster and Tyler probably because Tristan's old-man driving had made him antsy. Tristan ran over to Ariel and picked her up and kissed her senseless. Tyler, on the other hand, stayed at the Jeep and looked around curiously, and I figured he was waiting for the other betas.
Waiting for his luna, Granite corrected.
Matthew's truck was the next one to arrive, and he and Crew jumped out and stretched, then joined Tyler. They stood chatting for a moment, then turned to watch as Jay's SUV came up the drive with Emerson at the wheel.
"Mmm!" Sara took a deep breath in through her nose. "My mate smells like rain!"
Maria bounced up and down and clasped her hands under her chin, reminding me of Posy when she got excited, and my heart squeezed. I'd missed her so much the past couple of days.
Only a few more minutes, Granite yipped as he danced around in my head.
"Mine smells like lavender!" Maria squealed.
"What about mine?" Angelo asked.
"We don't know," Sara retorted. "We can only smell our own."
"But we can sense that your mate is with them," Maria said kindly.
His hands reached for the pistol butts at his waist. When they didn't find them, they clenched into fists and dropped to his sides.
"You can't smell your mate?" I asked him.
I could smell our girl, but she hadn't gotten out of the SUV yet, and my brothers and I were trying to wait patiently. Talking with the del Vecchio flock helped to distract me.
"He doesn't have a bird spirit, so no, he won't be able to smell his mate. Don't make him feel bad for it!" Sara snapped at me.
"We're not even sure if he'll feel the mate bond or the sparks," Maria said much more gently than her sassy pants cousin.
"Bro! That sucks!" I clapped a hand on Angelo's shoulder and squeezed in sympathy. "How will you know who's your mate then?"
"Not sure." He reached for his guns again, and his empty hands fell to his sides. "Not sure how any of this is going to work. Maybe they're wrong about it all, and maybe they're right. I've learned to roll with it. You can't fight fate, anyway. That bitch always wins in the end."
"Amen." I grinned and dropped my hand.
"Alpha Wyatt, which one is mine, please?" Maria reached over and tugged on my sleeve, her hazel eyes smiling up at me.
"Um, I don't know? I'm not the Moon Goddess." I scowled at her.
Posy was linking us, and I wanted to concentrate on her. She said something was wrong with Emerson, which was why they were still sitting in his SUV. My brothers were getting it under control, though, and I knew I'd see our girl in a few minutes. That gave me enough patience to focus on what this itty bitty witchy at my elbow was yammering about.
"I know that, you silly puppy! My mate is the one with midnight black hair right there!" She pointed her pinkie finger at Matthew.
Granite let out a hurt woof at the 'silly puppy' comment, but I figured the poor girl didn't deserve any more payback than having Matthew as her mate.
"That's Mase's beta, Matthew Rose. Good luck, tiny." I patted her head and she pouted up at me. "Go say hi."
With a happy squeal, she took off across the yard at a dead run. Thankfully, Matthew was quick, both in intelligence and reflexes. I saw it in his face the second he realized his mate was hurtling toward him. His bright blue eyes grew wide with surprise, then joy, and he grinned and held out his arms to catch her.
"What's my mate's name, please, alpha?" Sara asked, which was much more polite and subdued than anything I'd heard out of her mouth since I'd met her. "He arrived in that black pick-up truck with Maria's mate."
I looked where she was pointing to see Crew with his nose up and his nostrils spread wide. Although his usual calm expression never faltered, I could see his eyes glowing with wolf-light.
"Crew Myers. He's Jay's beta."
"Thank you, Alpha Wyatt." She inclined her head, then began to walk gracefully across the yard.
"Is she bipolar?" I asked Angelo out of the side of my mouth.
"She's a water witch. Everyone thinks it's the fire witches that are the hardest to deal with, but it's really the water ones. Fire is always going to burn and you know it. You just adjust for how high and hot the flames get. Water, though?" He let out a low whistle. "Think of the ocean and how it can go from becalmed to hurricane in a heartbeat, and that's a water witch."
"Out of curiosity, what about air and earth witches?"
"No experience with earth witches. I've heard they're the most calm and easygoing, but also the most powerful. It takes a lot to get them to lose their temper, but when they do, they wreck everything. The piccoli uccelli (little birds) want to find one so they have a full coven. That's been on their radar for a couple of years now. Anyway, as for air witches, can't you tell anything from meeting Ariel and Maria?"
"Not really." I shrugged. "Jay and Mase probably have it figured out, but I don't pay enough attention. And I've only talked to either of them for maybe ten minutes in total. I did notice that they're both very kind."
"They are kind and crazy intelligent, but flighty as the birds they shift into. What my grandpa called book smart and life dumb. They get upset rather than angry, although they can be pushed too far. When that happens, watch out. Maria especially likes to throw things, and she doesn't need her hands to do it."
"Ha ha ha!" I laughed as I envisioned the future with witches in the pack. "Tristan would never purposely do anything to make Ariel angry, but Matthew is going to have some interesting times ahead."
"What about this Crew guy? Is a water witch going to be too much for him?"
"Nah. He's about the most zen guy you'll ever meet. Ha ha ha! I remember one time, I accidentally set his shoe on fire and dude just took it off and casually threw it into the fire pit. Didn't even get mad at me. Ha ha ha!"
Angelo looked over at me with furrowed brows.
"How do you accidentally set—"
"To be honest, I don't even know." I shrugged and made an 'oh, well' face. "Things like that happen around me all the time."
"Your poor mate," he muttered.
"Speaking of," my heartbeat accelerated as she finally got out of the vehicle, "here she comes!"
With that, I took off, aware that my brothers were running with me.
#
Angelo del Vecchio
If they thought about it at all, my cousins believed I was straight. Or at least, I thought they did. With witches, it was hard to know. They saw so much, but could be blind little bats, too.
And sometimes, just the 'little bats' part.
I never had any magic. Not even a fizzle. No one could tell me why.
I never got my animal spirit when I turned twelve, either. Again, no one could explain it.
Nothing like this had ever happened before in our recorded family history.
I was a glitch. A dud. A botch. A defect.
My family worked hard to convince me otherwise, but I knew the truth.
To make it up to them, I decided to become the flock's protector. I learned anything anyone was willing to teach me, studied languages and ancient texts, and became an expert in as many forms of combat as I could. I lived in the gym the rest of my time, hardening and strengthening my body and taking my cardio to the next level.
When there was no one left in the flock to teach me anything, I sought out others, in both supernatural and human communities, and trained with them. Guns of all kinds, swords, knives, fists, teeth, feet - I learned to fight with anything and everything.
My plan was going fine until I realized I liked guys more than girls. I'd never really paid attention to girls, too busy with everything I wanted to accomplish, but hormones kicked in eventually. For about a year, I wrestled with the decision to come out. Some of the older members of the family were very traditional, and I feared they might see it as yet another defect in Angelo Joseph del Vecchio's faulty wiring.
After the sickness swept through our flock, I was suddenly alone with four little witches looking up at me with devastated eyes. Expressing my sexual preferences dropped right to the bottom of my priority list. There was no one left to come out to, anyway.
As the girls got older, they teased me about finding a mate, and I told them it wasn't going to happen. A couple of years ago, Ariel and Sara ganged up on me and demanded to know why I thought I wouldn't have a mate, and I made up some lame-ass excuse that neither a shifter nor a witch would want someone who might give them 'normal' babies.
They'd let up after that, for which I was grateful, but I sometimes caught them staring at me with knowing eyes.
Freaking witches.
I was brought out of my depressing thoughts when the new arrivals began to move forward. One fire-haired girl broke away from the massive man she was walking with and sprinted ahead. She was breathtakingly beautiful, and I wasn't surprised when Julian caught her in a bear hug and swung her around and around.
It's good to be the king, I smirked to myself.
Since my little streghe (witches) ditched me, I was left to the process of elimination to find my mate.
I let my eyes go first to the guy who'd been walking with the queen. Honestly, he was gorgeous, but the dude's dominance echoed in every long stride. When Gisela collided with him and he let her tackle him down to the grass, I breathed a sigh of relief and stopped watching.
Good. Being submissive is not in my nature.
Looking around, I saw a blond kid. He was a real cutie, no doubt, but he was young. I didn't think he was even eighteen yet, but knew he was a Five Fangs betas. Maybe he just had a baby face? Regardless, I hoped it wasn't him.
I may be a glitch, but I ain't into that daddy's baby boy kink.
A field of blue fabric blocked my gaze. Shocked, I realized I'd been so fixated on finding my mate that I hadn't even noticed this guy's approach. Yet here he stood, a foot in front of me, his wide shoulders level with my eyes - and I was not a short guy.
Careless, Gelo, and careless can get you killed.
Irritated with myself, treacherous hope, and everything else now, I grabbed the dude's arm, intent on shoving him aside so I could find my piccoli uccelli (little birds) and make them tell me who my mate was.
"Can you please move your giant carcass?" I growled. "I want to—"
Tingles in my fingertips turned to sparks that spread up my arm. Slowly, I turned my eyes to where my hand gripped his hard bicep.
"Find."
The sparks weren't going away. If anything, they were getting stronger.
"My."
My eyes traveled up his arm to his shoulder, then the base of his throat.
"Mate."
Looking up at his face, I fell into a pair of dark brown eyes.
"So, uh, you're Emerson, my mate. No, I mean, I'm Emerson, my mate. No, sorry, you're my mate. So, ah, yeah." His thick eyelashes fanned down for a moment, then he opened his eyes and tried again. "Um, hi?"
Oh, yeah. A smile spread across my face as pink streaked across his. This one is mine. All mine and mine alone.
And the world would burn before I ever let him go.
18: Practice
Posy
Leaving Emerson to make his own decision, I jumped out of the car and let my eyes roam the area for my mates.
I wasn't surprised to see them sprinting toward me in a little pack. They all wore giant smiles, even Mason! That made me so happy to see; he was usually stone-faced, even with his brothers.
I dropped my bag and ran to meet them. In seconds, I was squished in a group hug as all of the octopuses tried to get a tentacle around me. After they'd each had a chance to hug me, Ash used his height to pluck me out of the mass of limbs and sat me on his hip like I was a child.
"We missed you, cupcake! Did you miss us even a little bit? You didn't link with us very often."
Hearing the uncertainty in his voice, I grabbed two handfuls of his curls and tugged him closer, then kissed him until I needed air.
"I missed all of you so much," I said as I drank in his delicious scent. "I thought about you all the time. I didn't link because I was afraid I'd interrupt what you were doing. What if I distracted you while you were in the middle of a fight? I couldn't bear being the reason you lost focus and were hurt."
"Makes sense, I guess, but I missed your sweet voice. Did the betas take care of you?"
"Of course they did." I kissed his jaw. His five-o'clock shadow pricked my skin, and I pulled back and rubbed my nose. "Itchy, waffle!"
"Waffle?" Cole and Jayden chorused as Wyatt snickered and Mason snorted.
"He smells like maple syrup." I shrugged.
As I looked down at them, I realized how high up I was. I swung my wide eyes back to Ash.
"Is this what it's like to be so tall? Is this how you see the world all the time?"
"Yep! You want to be even taller?" His dark eyes snapped with mischief.
I wasn't sure what he meant, but I trusted him. Every day, I was growing more and more secure in the knowledge that none of these boys would deliberately hurt me or allow me to be hurt.
Still, the ground was already a long, long way down.
"Okay," I said hesitantly.
"Ash." Mason's voice was loaded with warning, and Ash rolled his eyes at him.
"Relax, Papa Bear."
Papa Bear?
That made me giggle, but as Ash suddenly swung me up on his shoulders, my giggles turned into a shriek.
Although his hands held my calves tightly, I was scared and clung to his head. My pulse sped up, my lungs weren't working right, and my whole body shook.
"How's the view, princess?" Ash chuckled.
With a whimper, I pried my death grip from his head and made grabby hands at the first person I saw, who happened to be Mason. He held his arms up for me, but I was too frightened to jump.
"Put her down, Ash. She's panicking."
"Shit!"
"Language!" Cole snarled.
As Ash crouched down, Mason slid his hands under my arms and pulled me to him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his torso and held on tightly.
"I'm sorry, Posy." Ash patted my shoulder. "I didn't mean to scare you."
I nodded, but didn't take my face out of Mason's throat.
"You're okay," Mason whispered in my ear. "You're okay."
He rubbed one hand up and down my back while his other arm slid under my bum to support my weight. Then he walked around with me until I calmed down.
