THE RIPENING (Dark Side of the Moon Book 1) Page 10

  “So I did.”

  More than one sound of surprise colored the room at Dame Strauss' admission. “There is no law of ours that dictates who viable females can mate with. You made your choice, Viola.”

  “And Luther has made his.” The redhead fired back, her fists clenching at her sides. “Are we really so different?”

  “Luther will receive the Alpha strain,” Ian cut in sharply. “Your situations could not be more different. Luther has responsibilities that you could not even begin to fathom. Your clan is one of only two on this continent. It needs to propagate.”

  “So the fact that I chose not to propagate this clan means nothing? What of the pups I could have had? I was not punished so severely.”

  “But you were punished.” Dame Strauss' reply to the woman's outburst was soft and neutral. “Your blood will die with you, Viola. You can never feel the heartbeat of your children against your chest, or know that your offspring will carry the blood of ancients in their veins.”

  The pain in the dark-eyed woman's eyes was enough to curdle milk.

  But Viola had never been prone to fits of crying or tantrums. To Dame Strauss' cutting remark she had only one reply. “I have the man I love.”

  She seated herself primly, and from across the room Luther watched his cousins edge away from her as if she were poison.

  Yuna, for her part, was staring at Viola in something akin to awe-and was it... hope?

  Behind Luther, Liam still hadn't gathered his wits about him. He continued to stare at his mate wordlessly, his expression unreadable. If Luther knew anything about his brother, it would take a while for him to absorb this newest revelation.

  “Magnus, I thought you might have impressed upon your son the importance of and the duties involved with being Alpha of a clan.” Baccus' low tones cut through the silence. “To have the ancient magic flow through one's veins is not something to be taken lightly.”

  “Luther has always been worthy of the strain.” Magnus replied quickly, his voice proud. “He has merely been distracted.”

  “I'll say. He was distracted right on the grounds of our ritual grounds! Where old ancestors came and ripened beneath age-old moons!”

  Nita's gravelly statement garnered the murmured agreement of her husband and Luther's cousins.

  “If I was a distraction, I was a welcome one.” Yuna's reply came totally unexpected, and the Elder's heads jerked around to look at her. The young woman's stance was calm, but her eyes spoke of her hesitance to reveal what came next. “Luther has always loved his family... but he's needed time off from them as well. Breaks from... well... what he is. The time we spent together served to soothe him-ultimately to make him a better and more balanced person, I think.”

  “There is no 'break' from being moon-ripened!” Aremis' voice cracked like a whip through the air, making even Magnus wince. “It is what we are, every hour of every day. To run from it is shameful.”

  “I was not running.”

  Luther could keep silent no more. His chair scraped brusquely against the marble floor as he rose to his feet to face the Elders head on. “Even as a boy I knew that the isolated life that we lead was missing something. We are lonely, ornery and desolate. When I found Yuna, my world changed irreparably. The time that I have spent with her provided me with lessons that our clan could never have taught me. Knowing her has made me more human than I ever thought that it was capable to be. I mated with her because it was at the center of my every instinct, including those wrapped up in whatever makes us what we are. The beast in me...it chose her. How can you deny me that?”

  “You would end your clan's line for an unsure flare of emotion?” Ian's words, as well as his gaze, were highly disapproving. “You have been blinded, Luther.”

  “What if she could have my pups?”

  The entire room went quiet.

  The expressions of everyone present clearly showed how ludicrous they thought the notion-everyone except for Luther's mother, that was. Her face drained of all color as he rounded on her, adamant. “You know of a way, don't you?”

  “Luther, don't be ridiculous. Haven't you put your mother through enough?” Magnus' indignant words bounced off of his son as if he hadn't spoken. Luther only had eyes for Marilyn, and he moved around his family member's chairs to advance on her.

  “Mother, you can't keep this from me. I have to know. If there's any way... any at all besides murder-”

  “It cannot be done!” The speed with which Marilyn leapt to her feet as her interjection cowed the room was amazing. Even Luther cringed slightly, though he towered over his mother.

  He was shocked, however, to see that far from blazing with anger, her eyes were bright with threatening tears. “Listen to me, Luther. Humans are too fragile. They break under the strain of living in two worlds.”

  “But it's possible.” The auburn-haired man pushed past his guilt to press on. He had her now. She would talk! “Humans can have our children!”

  “Rarely.” Dame Strauss' voice interrupted them and Luther turned to see her watching their exchange with dark eyes. “Perhaps one in one hundred million humans is genetically able to bear our offspring.”

  “A slim chance is better than any at all!” Luther burst. “It's better than killing!”

  “...tell him, Marilyn.” When his outburst had no other effect than to further darken Dame Strauss’ expression, the young man turned back to face his mother. Shock and guilt writhed in his gut as he realized that she was crying silently.

  “Mother.” Liam's words rang out over the crowd as he spoke for the first time in almost a half an hour. “Tell us. No more secrets.”

  There was silence for a moment before, haltingly, Marilyn began to speak. “Elias... your brother... he was mated with a human.”

  Luther's heart stopped.

  Mother never spoke of Elias.

  He had only been four years old when his brother had died, and he barely remembered him. Whenever he'd asked about his elder sibling, his mother had answered simply that he'd died in an accident, and refused to say anything more. Even Liam's once childlike charm had not gotten her to open up on the subject. Magnus, as far as Luther remembered, seemed to accept Marilyn's explanation as true and knew no more about his son's death than what she'd told him. He'd only been able to convey to Luther and Liam how devastated she'd been to lose her eldest, and how it had changed her.

  He looked thoroughly as shocked as his sons at the words coming from his mate's mouth.

  “He met her when they were young... much like Yuna and yourself. Though I forbid him from seeing her from the beginning, Elias snuck out to be with Laura whenever he could. I didn't tell you, Magnus, because I knew it would only upset you. You were so proud of the willingness with which Elias was preparing to take on the Alpha strain; it hurt me to think how much the revelation might disappoint you. I thought that it was infatuation... that our son would grow out of his adolescent feelings.” The humbled woman's face twisted in emotional agony. “But I was wrong.”

  “Just after his twenty-fifth birthday he came to me after the ripening and I knew. I knew what he'd done. I was shocked- so much so that I didn't even refuse when Elias took me to meet the girl.” Marilyn's mouth thinned as she lost herself in the memory. “She was a brittle, fragile thing. To her, the true nature of our condition was something to idolize and objectify. Elias was like Luther; he had more restraint than any of our kind. She never knew how truly dangerous we could be when our control was limited.

  “Elias promised me he would find a way to be Alpha and still have Laura, and a mother's love blinded me into believing him. When I found that Laura was indeed able to bear pups, I rejoiced. I was happy for my son.

  “Laura carried seven months into her term. The baby came early- and during the ripening. When her time came, the child was in its animal form. It was... ripping its way out of her. She barely made it through the labor, and after, she was never the same. She was convinced that our kind were monsters –
soulless killers that wanted to destroy her. She hated and feared her child, and her love for her mate turned to paranoia and hatred for what he'd done to her.

  “Six months before Elias would have taken the Alpha strain, and a few days before the child's first birthday, she drowned her daughter in the bathtub. Then she waited for my son to come home and put a bullet through his heart before turning the gun on herself.”

  **

  Horror suffused Yuna's body in a frigid fog.

  Luther's brother had been killed by a human?

  A human who had not only taken out one of his kind but also killed her infant daughter?

  Reeling, the young woman threatened to draw a breath. How horrifying must the birth have been for Laura to turn on her family so? The idea of carrying Luther's children suddenly took on an edge of terror as she imagined what it must have been like to have a baby fighting to get out of you.

  The raw emotion on Luther's face was enough to tell her how it had affected him. Feet from him, Liam's head hung between his legs as his chest heaved with the effort to take a breath. Magnus looked like he had stopped breathing altogether.

  How had Luther's mother kept such a thing from them? It had to have been killing her.

  All at once, the frailty of humans took on a whole new meaning in the young woman's mind.

  Upon giving birth to Elias' child, Laura had lost her mind. Human children were helpless against potential wolf parents, so they were forbidden, saved from a horrible fate. Dear God, could the Elders be right? Could humans be so incompatible with Luther's kind?

  “I hid this from you for the sake of our clan.” Marilyn went on miserably, her gaze apologetic as it hovered over her family. “Laura's family was convinced that she was murdered, that there was some foul play. Any chance that they might find us out had to be stifled, so I withheld the truth. I buried our boy myself and said that a fire had incinerated his body. I cradled the still form of my first grandchild... and unlike I had done with my first son, I let Luther have his friendship. Forbidden fruit is much more tempting than the readily available. The freedom I gave him and his loyalty to his family were supposed to save him. Would you really put him through that?”

  Yuna froze as Marilyn finally fixed her with the tortured gaze of a grieving mother. “Will you cleave to Luther until you hate him? If you do carry his child, can you stand against the fear of what might happen during its coming?”

  Yuna shivered at the chill the woman's words brought on.

  She had no reply.

  What could she possibly say?

  Yuna's eyes met Viola's in the half-lit room and found nothing but pain in her gaze.

  Even Luther had been struck down by his mother's secret, and when no one else spoke. Elder Agatha filled the silence.

  “It's settled then. Luther cannot have a human mate.”

  “We must follow the law on the matter. The law has always protected us.” Aremis nodded in agreement. “Breaking it only brings obvious strife. Our bloodline must remain pure.”

  “It will be done tomorrow at dawn.” Numb, Yuna listened wordlessly as they planned her murder. Ian revealed the details with a toneless finality that made her stomach curdle. “Only a few of us will be needed in attendance. As the ripening is over, we will need you, Magnus. You are still Alpha, and your power is strongest. You must-”

  “No.”

  Everyone in the room looked around at the sudden, impassioned word from opposite the Elders. Yuna gasped at the sight of Luther glaring at the five sitting before him, his gaze intense. “You can't kill her.”

  “Luther, your brother was killed by a human mate. In more ways than one.” Dame Strauss' quiet reminder wasn't completely without empathy, but she still seemed on the side of her fellows.

  “If you murder Yuna, I will not accept the Alpha strain.”

  A conglomeration of shocked filled the room, including but not limited to Marilyn's moan of dismay and Viola's sharp cry of betrayal.

  “You what?” Ian's fist slammed against the wall behind him, the ensuing sound revealing the strength still remaining in his bent limbs. “Your insolence knows no bounds, boy!”

  “Don't you see what she can do to you, Luther? To us?” Agatha’s eyes were narrow on him as she demanded his enlightenment.

  “Humanity is not what killed my brother.” Ignoring them, Luther went on as if no one in the room had spoken. “Lack of knowledge is. My mother herself revealed that Laura never truly understood our kind. She cited her as brittle and easily breakable. Elias never explained to her, never told her anything beyond the physical aspect. She mated with him unprepared and unable to cope with the realities of our people. Atop that, she idolized us simply for our strength... for the strangeness of our animal side. It was this baseless idolization that caused her family's downfall. That she just happened to be human is just coincidence enough for you to condemn Yuna.”

  “Luther!” Magnus's dangerous warning should have stayed his son, but it didn't.

  “The same covetous behavior would be the downfall of anyone, moon-ripened or human. Believe me when I tell you that Yuna is strong/ She has always been strong.” He turned to meet the young woman's gaze and Yuna's heart swelled in her chest. “She has been to the precipice of hell and come back from it. Upon discovering what I was she neither idolized nor feared me, she merely accepted me, and sought the similarities between our races rather than citing our differences. She is different than Laura in every possible way. If you take her from me, you won't have an Alpha.”

  “Luther, stop.”

  She couldn't let him do it.

  She just couldn't.

  Despite what they'd planned, and despite what he believed about his race, Yuna couldn't sit by and watch him help condemn it to extinction. Whatever the moon-ripened were, ancient and outdated, violent and barbaric, they were still a unique people.

  A people that would be lost if Luther didn't fulfill his duty.

  “Your mother's right.” Her mate's mouth dropped open when she spoke. “The elders are right. They're all right.”

  “Yuna....” The man she loved was visibly struggling for words now. “What-”

  “Humans are fragile. We can be weak and prideful. Whoever I am now, who's to say that wouldn't change if I had your children? How do we know I'm a one-in-one-hundred million genetic anomaly? Say I did get pregnant, our children are born, and I turn out to be no stronger than Laura? You'd lose me anyway. But not just me... our child, our love...all of it would be gone.” Though the words killed her to say, listening to Luther's family had finally convinced her that the bond was not just about what one wanted, it was about what one needed- and Luther needed his race. His family. Turning on them now, just for her sake, would be a disaster. You are one of the last remaining mysteries of the world.” As she continued, tears leaked from the corners of her eyes to drip copiously down her face. “You might be ancient and outdated, and your laws might suck, but you're still here. You deserve to go on as much as any other race. If that's what I'm dying for... Luther... then isn't my life worth giving up?”

  “No. Yuna, no.” Luther was shaking his head now, in complete denial of her words, but she wasn't finished.

  “Just imagine, Luther. Maybe you can't change things now, but what if it's your daughter or your son that does? What if it's their children? What if one of your offspring finds the answer to this whole mess? They’ll prove to be stronger than I am. They'll change rules and rewrite laws and everything will be better!” Yuna's eyes met Viola's briefly and the redhead covered her mouth in shock. “What if you can't have them unless you let me go?”

  Her mate stared at her, his expression one of utter disbelief. Before he could say anything, Yuna's eyes slid closed and she made the decision. “I'll do it.”

  “Wait.”

  Green orbs snapped open once more as Aremis' voice swept through the room. The smaller male met her watery green gaze over the table that separated them, his gaze piercing. “You would let us ta
ke your life... willingly?”

  Yuna nodded. “I can't let this come between you. You'll be all Luther has left regardless of whether I agree or not.”

  “You are... different than I would have anticipated.” This time Baccus spoke, making his wife's eyes widen in shock.

  “It matters not.” Ian snapped, his own expression no less harsh than before. “The law is clear on what must be done to pave the way for the Alpha. She must die.”

  “The law is also clear on the murder of innocent pups.” Dame Strauss' voice rang over his, silencing him almost immediately.

  Incensed, the man turned to her, his eyes narrow. “What does that have to do with the current issue?”

  “Everything.” Raising a finger with relish, the German woman gestured to where Yuna stood in the middle of the room. “That girl is already carrying the Douglas progeny.”

  ###

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four