The Wolf God's Unwanted Luna

Chapter 40: AURORA

I exhaled slowly, trying to push out the frustration clawing at my chest. My gaze locked onto the distant pack house. It was buried deep in the forest, miles away, but that didn’t matter. Not for someone like me. Through branches, trees, and thick night, I saw it as clearly as if I stood at its doorstep.

I tuned everything else out. The rustling wind, the low howls in the distance, even the steady heartbeat of the earth below us, gone. All I could hear now was the pack house. It was like slipping into another form entirely. Disembodied. Invisible. Like a ghost.

My senses cut through walls and floors with ease, moving past thumping TVs, muffled music, hushed arguments, flirtatious whispers, the soft breathing of wolves lost in sleep. A couple arguing in hushed, heated tones on the second floor, the kind of argument that had been had before and would be had again. Three pups long since unconscious in the east wing, their breathing the slow, even rhythm of the truly untroubled. Johnson, still awake somewhere on the fourth floor, muttering what sounded like a list of grievances under his breath, and a voice that was probably Mila telling him to go to sleep.

I slid past them all, until I reached her. My room. Vivian.

She was already in bed.

Her heartbeat pulsed gently in my ears, rhythmic and soft, soothing in a way I hated to admit. She shifted beneath the covers, metal dragging faintly against silk. Then she lay still for a minute, only to toss again like her body couldn’t settle. The chain, though not meant to comfort, tethered her in more ways than one. And the knowledge that she couldn’t rest without me nearby? That twisted sense of control satisfied something dark inside me.

Satisfied, I slowly pulled my senses back and turned my attention to the silent figure standing beside me, my beta, my oldest friend.

"You know what the worst part of this mate thing is?" My voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of a truth I rarely allowed myself to speak aloud.

He didn’t answer.