His Reluctant Luna

Ch 30 - I'm Still Here

ATTENTION RADISH READERS! Please don't leave any spoilers in here or you'll be getting a spanking from Iona. Or Kole. Or Konnor. Whoever you'd prefer. 😘

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Kole.

I woke on cold stone, the sound of water rushing in my ears.

I could smell my brother and I forced my eyes open to see his grey wolf watching me from a distance. I shifted, grunting with effort as my bones rearranged themselves. Once a fluid process over in seconds, now was taking longer and longer. It was getting harder to come back.

Yet I was back...but how?

"Iona..." My voice was broken but the sensation was heaven after being stuck as mute.

As soon as Konnor saw I was back to myself, he followed suit, shifting into his skin. "You've been gone for a few hours. I sent Jake and Jardis after her."

"She's alive." I gasped and he nodded.

"I know that now." Of course he did. If she'd been gone, I never would have come back.

Konnor looked exhausted. The last sibling holding it together. Kallum could be dead, Kara was gone, our parents broken and his brother and Alpha was a half-mad wolf who's Luna was on the run.

"We piled on you after you shifted and I broke your neck to take you down. I'm sorry, it was the only way to -"

"You did the right thing." If I'd jumped I would have died too and then it wouldn't have mattered if she'd lived or not. With me dead, the Gulfs would have killed her sooner or later.

My wolf snarled in my ear, angry that I'd caged him once again. I tried to soothe him, to remind him that we'd been a team once, but he was a pissed off animal pacing in his pen. My hands shook with the effort of keeping him in and I gritted my teeth. Focusing on her, her hair, her scent, her pulse...

I pushed to my knees, drained but determined to push on. "We have to catch up to them."

"Don't take my head off, but I don't think you shouldn't shift right now." My brother sat on a rock a careful distance away, watching my every move.

What must he think of me?

Humiliation burned bright, that I, Alpha, needed a minute to catch my breath when my mate could be dying. But I had to be smart. I'd got out of that limbo twice now, I might not make it a third time.

"Besides, Siobhan called while you were out." He lifted the phone in its plastic case. Jake must have given it to him before they took off after Iona. "They found the fucker that hurt your mate. He was unconscious though, so they couldn't get anything out of him." My wolf crawled under my skin, writhing like a snake to be let loose. "They took him back to the pack and they're on their way to us now. We should wait for them to catch up."

That was good, seven of us searching for her would be better than four, but I knew that wasn't the only reason he wanted to wait for them. He didn't want to be alone with me.

"Fine. We wait."

I stood, walking to the cliff edge where my mate had chosen death rather than me. The breeze was crisp but it didn't bother my heated skin. My nakedness didn't bother me either, it was an unavoidable element of our lives.

I looked down at the water. When I was eight, I'd fallen in rapids much like these. I'd only made it out when my fathers wolf dived in after me and dragged me out by the scruff of my neck, before dumping me on the bank and leaving me to find my own way home, my punishment for not being more careful.