Filed to story: In the Shadow of the Past Luna (Lily & James)
Robert and I both loved and cared for her.
However, I just could not connect with Lily the same way that I had connected with Stephanie, and Lily had no grand destiny that I had to prepare her for like the one that her siblings had laid out for them. So, I sort of just went through the motions with her. 2
Maybe that is why Lily acted out. If I had spent more time with her… if I had tried to love her like I loved
Stephanie… would she have been whoring herself out in the woods looking for love in all the wrong places? Would she have put herself in a situation in which Stephanie had to go and rescue her in the middle of the night?
Is it, ultimately, my fault that Stephanie -my greatest blessing- died?
I admit that I have physically abused Lily on more than one occasion since Stephanie died. I also admit that I probably should not have. But… Lily looks so much like me when I was her age. She even has my bright green eyes and my reddish-brown hair. Sometimes, when I am lashing out at her, I am not sure who I am really lashing out at: Lily, Stephanie’s murderer, or myself.
After the beatings, I strangely do feel better… but I have mixed feelings about whether Lily deserves the abuse.
I think that is why I reached out to Dr. Hyder a couple of years ago, when I found out that Lily had applied to his medical program. It is against pack protocol to make that kind of call without first going through our alpha, but I consider Dr. Hyder somewhat of a friend. After all, he was there on the worst night of my life 27 years ago.
I begged Dr. Hyder to accept Lily into his program as a personal favor to me. I had to ask, because I did.
not know if I could continue to look at Lily’s face every day, and I knew if I did, the beatings would only get worse as my rage increased. Lily having an excuse to leave my home and this pack was a good thing,
I thought.
I was so glad that Dr. Hyder listened to me.
But now… having watched what happened during Stephanie’s last memorial event… I wonder if I should have gone further. Perhaps I should have begged both Dr. Hyder and Alpha Randall to prohibit Lily from ever coming back to the West Mountain Pack. I think things would have been much better if I had.
(James POV)
It has now been a month since Lily and I rejected each other.
I am currently standing outside my father’s office, prepared to make a new series of demands on him. I have not been to this office since the meeting that we had before Stephanie’s memorial. Being here brings back a lot of memories that I would rather forget, and many that I am still trying to understand.
tla
I had woken up in a hospital bed roughly four days after the rejection.
Just before I woke up, there had been a fuzzy period of time in which my brain was starting to adjust to consciousness again. During that period, a part of me fought with my body about whether I should wake up at all. It was not that I wanted to die. It was that I was scared. Of what, I was not certain… but I knew
I that once I woke up, I was going to be forced to face a reality that I was not sure that I wanted to be a part of.
During the period of fuzziness, various memories flashed through my head. Although they were choppy, they were enough to remind me that I had made a real mess of things. In an effort to humiliate and intimidate my second chance mate, I had publicly bragged about getting bl ow jo bs and sexual favors from other she-wolves, apparently forgetting that we were at a memorial service for my first mate.
amy
And, worse than that, I had gone ahead and accepted the Little Brat’s rejection. I was vaguely aware that there had been good reasons for me to do so, but in my semi-conscious state, it was difficult for me to remember any of them. Instead, I could only think about the Little Brat’s bright green eyes, her strength and confidence as she yelled at me in the crowded hall, and some of the words she spoke that suggested that much of my life had been built on lies.
Waking up and confronting some of those potential lies was the last thing that I wanted to do. On the other hand, a bigger part of me knew that I had to wake up, because what haunted my semi-conscious state most of all were the memories of how Nick and Robert brought Lily to the memorial unconscious, bruised, and absolutely battered. I could not help but worry, even while semi-conscious, about what condition she was in when they found her after the rejection. I also worried about how Lily had gotten all of those injuries in the first place. Was there someone in the pack who had purposely hurt her?
Ironically -even though my worries about Lily were what ultimately convinced me to open my eyes- once I woke up, no one would tell me anything.
Apparently, my father had given a variety of alpha orders to prevent me from experiencing any level of stress until I was fully recovered. Honestly, I appreciated the alpha orders that prevented the she-wolves from visiting my bedroom -I really did not enjoy those visits anyway- but the other alpha-orders irritated
Nevertheless-given that the intent behind the alpha orders also prevented me from having to have a conversation with my parents about all that had happened- I was ready to file my irritation with the alpha orders away in my me ntal folder of grievances against my parents. I figured that Luke would help me find ways to work around the orders anyway.
The problem n was that I then discovered that Luke was not there. Or, rather, that he was there… but that he was completely closed off and unreachable to me. I should have anticipated that Luke would retreat for a while they give us all sorts of warnings about the impact of rejections in school- but I found myself caught completely off-guard.
Everything in me shifted when I realized that Luke was gone. His absence set me up on a roller coaster of emotions that I was not prepared to handle.
Dr. Miller said that it was normal for wolves to block their humans for a while after a rejection, because they need time on their own to heal and process. Unfortunately, I knew that in our situation, there was more to it than that. Luke had begged me not to accept Lily’s rejection, and in a fit of rage, I had blocked him out and done it anyway.
Luke and I were a team, and who we accept or reject as a mate is a decision that directly impacts us both. In my anger, I made the decision for both of us. I knew that it would be a while before he would forgive me for that, if he ever would. I could only pray to the Moon Goddess that, in time, he would understand that we had no choice but to reject Lily. There was no way that our pack would have ever accepted her as a future Luna, and sharing a bed with someone to blame for us losing the love of our life was a torture neither of us should have to deal with.
Ultimately, I spent a week feeling guilty about what I had done, and then I spent a week feeling angry at
Luke for being too stubborn to see the mistake that the Moon Goddess had made by pairing us with Lily.
Then, in week three, I shifted to looking for someone else to blame. The Little Brat was, of course, the most logical target. I began to once again curse her in my mind, adding “wolf-killer”
to her list of sins and murderous traits. I largely set aside my initial worry about the Little Brat’s condition, telling myself that her decision to show up bruised and battered to Stephanie’s memorial was just as much a ploy for attention as her bizarre behavior at Stephanie’s very first memorial event. I also began to day-dream about new ways to get revenge. Some of my better ideas included making her my personal maid whose responsibilities would include hand-washing the bedding that I would “dirty”
multiple times a day, and/or hiring a painter to paint murals of Stephanie and I hugging and kissing on all four walls of the Little Brat’s bedroom. *
Eventually and unfortunately, during week four, the yo-yo of emotions running through me shifted again. Every time I thought of some new revenge plot, I felt Luke retreat further and further away. It sort of took the fun out of the revenge planning process.
Just as importantly, as much as I am ashamed to admit it… I had never been able to completely shake my ongoing, gut worry about whether Lily was okay. Without a wolf, and with all the extensive injuries that Lily had, I could only imagine that the rejection hit her far harder than it hit me. Were her parents and Nick with her to help her through it, like my parents were with me? Was she receiving the medical attention that she needed? Was there anything more that could be done to help her?
In my mind, I knew I should not care. The Little Brat killed her sister, and her decision years later to taunt me into accepting her rejection may have cost me my wolf.
However, after finding myself unable to ignore the worry any longer, I started to rationalize it. The Little Brat may be a callous, unfeeling wh ore, but I am not. I am going to be the alpha of this pack in the next misguided, murderous ones.
With resolve in my gut, I marched myself to my father’s office for the purpose of demanding both that his alpha orders be lifted and that I be finally updated on how the Little Brat is faring.
Goddess help me, I knocked on his office door.
(James POV)
I knocked on my father’s office door and waited. I heard hushed voices and what sounded like a couple of people scrambling about.
Finally, my father hollered through the door that I could enter.
When I walked in, I saw my father sitting behind his desk. My mother was sitting next to him with at sheepish look on her face. Both sets of their clothes were wrinkled, and my father’s dress shirt was buttoned incorrectly. There was the unmistakable scent of sex in the air.
“Seriously? It is 2 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. At your ages, I would think you would have a little.
more restraint.”
My mother rolled her eyes, but I could tell from the pink in her cheeks that she was embarrassed. “Your will understand when you find your m-“
Wow. I cannot believe she just went there.
“Oh, no, please do not stop yourself, Mother: Go ahead. Finish that thought. I will understand when I find mate? Hmmmmm. Great way to rub it in your son’s face that his first mate died and his second mate was… Lily Brogan. Anything else you want to say on that front, or should I just bring you some literal salt to rub in my wounds?”
I responded bitterly.
“James….”
“Forget it. That is not why I am here anyway.”
“You need to drop the attitude with your mother if you want anything from us,”
my father scolded.
“Whatever. May I sit?”
My father gave me a displeased look, but nevertheless signaled for me to sit down. “What can we do for you, Son?”
“I came for two reasons.
“What are they?”
1 want yo you to lift the alpha orders that prevent pack members from talking to me about Lily. I also want you to tell me where Lily is.”
My parents exchanged looks.
“James, I do not think that is a good idea,”
my mother responded. “You heard what Dr. Miller said about it being important for you to avoid stress.”
“Yes, and you also heard him say that the restrictions did not have to be forever. Just for a while. It has been four weeks. It is time for the restrictions to be lifted.”
“Is Luke talking to you again?”
my mother asked hopefully.
I said nothing: I just stared at her.