The Wolf God's Unwanted Luna

Chapter 68: Tomorrow

I didn’t know which part to believe anymore. So I clung to the voice on the phone like it was the only real thing left.

My mom was still waiting on the other end. And for now, that was enough.

"I’m so confused, Vivian. What’s going on, honey? You can come home, baby. Whatever is happening, we’ll face it together."

My mother’s voice cracked through the phone and broke me in ways I wasn’t ready for. The second her words wrapped around me, the fragile dam I’d been holding up inside me collapsed. Tears streamed down my face, hot and blinding, and my chest clenched painfully with each breath. I balled my fists tightly against my thighs, trying to stay grounded as my vision blurred.

"M-Mom, I missed you and Dad so much. I-I just don’t know, it’s, um, I’m not..." My voice trembled, collapsing under the weight of everything I couldn’t say.

Where would I even begin?

Should I tell her I’d been kidnapped? That I was safe now, but not really? That I was mated to someone whose name alone stirred fear in thousands? I wanted to explain it all. I wanted to scream that I hadn’t chosen this, that Zaliver was more than a captor, more than a name etched in dark history. But how could I explain a mate bond to someone who lived mostly outside the supernatural chaos, who went to church on Sundays and made lemon cake on weekends and believed, above all, that her daughter was capable of taking care of herself? How could I tell her that Zaliver Azrala, the Lupus Deus, was now a permanent part of my life, written into my blood, whether I liked it or not?

How could I tell her that some mornings I woke up and wasn’t entirely sure anymore which parts of me were still mine, and which parts were becoming something none of us had a name for yet?

My thoughts came to a halt when the bed dipped beside me.

I flinched, startled, but then looked up and met Zaliver’s eyes. My gaze was pleading, full of confusion and desperation. I hadn’t planned to call out to him. I hadn’t even consciously decided to, but somewhere between the tears and the sound of my mother’s voice breaking on the other end of the line, I’d reached for him through our bond without realizing it. Like a reflex. Like he was already the thing I went toward when everything else was falling apart, which was a thought I had no idea what to do with.