His Reluctant Luna

Ch 11 - Your Fate Is Sealed

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. 😘

***

I sat in the window seat in Kole's bedroom, staring out at the town that was now my prison. After the training grounds, Dinah had invited me to meet some of her friends but I'd refused. So, they'd returned me to the pack house, to wait handcuffed, for Kole to collect me for dinner. I was still, but my mind wasn't idle.

My tour around the town had taught me that escaping here was going to be a lot harder than I'd thought. I ran through a million plans in my mind and came back to the same problem every time.

They're wolves.

Even if I did manage to get out of the town, they could track me. Hunt me. They were faster, stronger. If I got a long enough head start, maybe I could get to a road and get help. But first I had to get through Konnor or Kallum. Then Kole. Then past a thousand other wolves between me and freedom.

I fought back a wave of despair. I would figure this out. I was smart, resilient and capable. This wasn't how I went down.

During the last few days I had scoured my mind for every bit of wolf trivia I had ever picked up from books, documentaries, my work. I knew about their heightened senses, I knew a little about pack behaviour, hierarchy. And I knew this: the pack never follows an unstable leader. Kole's behaviour today proved that was exactly what he was. If these creatures really were wolves, they weren't going to follow him for long. That was a crack in his armour I fully intended to exploit when the time was right.

A shiver ran up my spine and a moment later, the door opened.

Kole.

I hated that my body knew when he was nearby. He entered, his expression as dark and brooding as ever. He looked at me like he wasn't sure whether he wanted to kiss me or kill me, and that was a dangerous thing to not be sure of.

"Are you ready for dinner?" he asked and I nodded. Wordless, I stood. Not bothering to fight as he reattached my chain to my cuffs. It was strange that I thought of those things as mine. My chain. My cuffs.

The hall was packed as I'd expected, full of jovial laughter, but as we entered tension radiated from Kole in a suffocating wave. It permeated the air and sucked the joy out of the room. I watched, as I watched everything now. He was like the bow of a ship, steering the vessel one way or the other. The packs mood, their very well being fluctuated with him. He was unsettled, his beast unpredictable and they felt it.

He led me to the high tables where his family were seated, along with Marcus and Carrick and the two women that I assumed were their mates. As at breakfast, I had no chair, only the cushion on the floor. Teeth gritted, I knelt. As Kole fed me my first mouthful of food, everyone else began to eat too.

The meal was a kind of broth, nothing special, but it was one of the best meals I'd ever eaten. I could taste every flavour and I had to fight the urge to moan with every bite. This was getting ridiculous and yet....and yet that treacherous part of me liked it. Food from his hand was the best I'd ever tasted. Letting him tend to me in this way, felt like the rightest thing in the word. Yet, I knew it was so wrong. In nine days, he would hurt me. I had to remember that. This man couldn't be trusted. No one here could be.

I could feel Kole watching my every movement as he fed me, taking breaks in between to feed himself, but his gaze was never far, though I didn't look up once to meet his eyes. I ignored him as if he wasn't there at all. He was my food dispenser, my vending machine. Nothing more.