Filed To Story: In the Shadow of the Past Luna (Lily & James)
“You have said that three times already. Can I take the last one as a yes?”
“Fine. Yes, whatever. I will play your silly game.”
“Good. Now I have two conditions.”
Lily looks at me like I have grown a second head. “You cannot add conditions after I have already agreed to your deal.”
I
“Sure I can. Condition number one: complete honesty is required, no matter how painful the answer might be. Condition number two: we each get exactly two vetoes and no more. If a veto is exercised, a different question must be asked.”
“Fine. Then I will add a condition as well.”
“And that is?”
I feel Lily’s demeanor shift from our playful banter to a more sericus tone.
“You u cannot ask a question that you are not prepared to hear the answer to. If you ask a question and you lose your sh&t when the question is answered, the other player has the option of either terminating the game or making you remove an item of clothing.”
“I knew you wanted to see me naked.”
“James.”
I laughed. “Sorry. Yes, deal.”
Lily put her head on my shoulder. For a brief moment, that simple action makes me consider whether I want to ask her any questions at all. Will any of the answers really make a difference? I would really rather just stay right here and spend time with her.
“We need to get the answers so that we can fix things, James,”
Luke reminds me.
“Fine,”
I link back
“Lily, my beautiful rule follower, would you like to ask the first question or should I?”
“You can.”
I inhale deeply.
“Question 1. What happened on the night that Stephanie dled?”
(Brady POV)
I have fallen in love with Lily. Loving and taking care of her has become one of my most important priorities. One day soon, I would love to make her the luna of my pack.
Given my feelings, you may wonder why I bailed on our plans for tonight and let her go out with James instead. The answer is simple. I only have one priority in my life that will ever be more important to me than her. And, unfortunately, James knows exactly that that priority is: my 7-year-old son, Sammy.
Sammy is my heir, but he lives with his mother in another pack. He will continue to live with his mother full-time until he turns 16. At that point, he will move to Black Moon to begin actively training for the alpha position.
Given the distance between our two packs, and given Sammy’s school and extracurricular activities, I only get to see Sammy in person during the summer and during school breaks. To make up for my absence in his everyday life, I do everything I can to stay in touch with him using phone and video calls. I also play online video games with him, actively using the chat feature of those games to stay connected.
None of that is enough, but 1 am grateful for whatever I can get.
For the past six months, my son has been participating in a weekly debate class. It is specifically designed for the pups of ranked wolves, and it is intended to help them learn public speaking skills. The program is run by an academy in Washington D.C., but it serves wolves all over Europe and the United
States. The program is extremely competitive and hard to get into. I had to pull a lot of strings to get
Sammy in, but I was able to pull it off.
It may seem silly to have pups as young as Sammy participate in a debate class, but the reality is that ranked wolves have heightened responsibilities to their packs, and they need to develop certain skills as young as possible. Participation in a program like this also allows pups to bond with future pack leaders across the world, which can become really important for making alliances later on.
For pups this age, the program leaders try to make the class as fun as possible. For example, they debate very silly and pup-appropriate topics. The pups are also allowed to have a parent attend the class with them.
The parents play an important role in each week’s class. Parent participants serve as debate partners for their pups, help their pups prepare talking points when they debate other students, and help the pups understand and follow up on feedback received from the program Instructors.
Because the program is done entirely online, I had been hopeful that this would be something that
Sammy and I could do together. However, thus far, Sammy has insisted that either his mother or his
James is close to Sammy’s stepfather. That is how he knows about Sammy, and how he knows about what happened between Sammy’s mother and I.
I do not know what kind of magic James was able to use, but somehow he was able to get Sammy to invite me to do the debate class with him tonight. I absolutely hate James for getting involved in my life, and I hate him even more for manipulating my pup for his own selfish desires. Even so, when Sammy called and asked me to be his partner, there was absolutely no way that I could suy no.
Acknowleding that James may have won the battle, I was nevertheless determined that he was not going to win the war. I made sure to send three-quarters of my security team with him and Lily, and I gave the team very specific instructions that I thought would be sufficient to keep the two of them mostly apart.
I told the team not to disturb me during Sammy’s class, but once the class was over, I demanded updates every 15 minutes.
When my team told me that James had taken Lily to a chocolate farm, I laughed. I honestly did not see the appeal of doing something like that, especially when you are trying impress a she-wolf. Then, when my team told me that Lily fled James‘ car and was yelling at him to leave her alone, I felt nothing short of giddy.
I headed downstairs, planning to rescue her. I also thought that taking Lily for a walk along the beach.
would be a perfect opportunity to finally tell her about Sammy and Evelyn. I knew I had kept the whole situation a secret for far longer than I should have, but I never planned on falling in love with Lily. By the time that I realized that I had, Lily had more important things to worry about.
Once I got downstairs, I headed to the area my guards told me they had seen Lily and James. Just as I was making my way to that spot, the guards mind-linked me that Lily and James were on the move and seemed to be getting along again.
I did not believe it, so I went to check for myself. Using Kalen’s ability to block our scent, I was able to get pretty close to Lily and James without them noticing.
I arrived just as they were debating the twenty questions game. Listening to the conversation, I could not help but wonder whether James was taking this situation seriously enough.
When James brought up doing a twist on the game that involved the removal of clothing Items, I was ready to murder him. The only reason that I did not go over and punch him right then and there was that Lily was sitting next to him.
Instead, I decided to announce my presence to them and get Lily away from him for the night. Before I could, however, I saw Lily put her head on James‘ shoulder.
2/3
It was such a small gesture, and yet it completely broke my heart. After all that James did to her, how could she possibly feel comfortable being that close to him?
I decided to leave before I did something that I would regret. I went back to my room, enraged. A part of me was upset with Lily for falling for James‘ nonsense, and a part of me was pissed as hell at James for toying with Lily this
2
My team continued to give me updates on what Lily and James were doing the rest of the night. I ended getting no sleep at all. I was pissed, hurt, and ready to lash out at anyone and everyone.
But above all, I knew that I was not going to give up yet. I would make sure that Lily eventually saw reason, and that Lily would eventually be mine.
*Trigger Warning: I apologize in advance: This chapter is going to be emotional and really, really dark. Violence and threatened (but not actual) sexual assault/ child abuse will be discussed.
(Lily POV)
“Question 1. What happened on the night that Stephanie died?”
I lifted my head off of James‘ shoulder and took a deep breath.
“What?”
I asked him.
James squeezed my hand and spoke solemnly. “You said that no one has ever asked you what happened.
on the night that Stephanie died, so I want to. My first question for you is just that. What happened?”
“You could not start off small and work your way up? Ask me what my favorite color is; what my favorite.
food is, something like that?”
James gave me a sad smile. “Nope. I want to get the hard stuff out of the way. We can work our way down to the easy stuff. Now stop stalling and answer the question. Unless you want to take off your shirt.”
I glared at him. “I could also take off a sandal or exercise a veto.”
“Sure. But you won’t do either of those things.”
No, I won’t. Because I know we need to have this conversation, even if a huge part of me knows that it is happening six years too late.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?