Kissed By The Moon

CHAPTER 15: Miss Odair: Welcome

It's been exactly three days since the ball and I wake up in my new room in my new house in my new pack. Everything and everyone is new to me and finding my bearings and feeling like I belong has not been and will not be easy. Amari Nash, my mate, because apparently that's still a thing that I didn't dream up, is lovely and I feel the pull of the bond, but she gave me my own space because things at the Ball did not end on such a pleasant note.

We danced for a while, and I was in heaven with her. I just felt so free, so seen. As if I mattered the most in the world, an unfamiliar sentiment. I didn't want the evening to end. I held onto every moment I could with her because I knew that if I let her go, it would all go away, and I will be thrown back into insignificance and I dreaded it.

But like all good things, it came to an end along with the night. The music stopped and farewells were said, and I now had to confront my reality. My mother came to meet us after the ball, after all, introductions had to be made. We needed to sort of do a hand-over-take-over. My mother greeted Alpha and Luna Nash with all the respect that befits them. Then she greeted my mate with the excitement of a mother-in-law and I became hopeful. I thought I'd finally done something worthy of her attention. Worthy of her affection.

I was mistaken. She pulled me to the side under the guise of final goodbyes and took me a distance she was sure even the super hearing of a wolf would not be able to discern.

"Can you not do anything right Charlotte Odair?" She began, "Do you not get that if you're mated to the Nash family, it is of no benefit to Grey Valley? We already have an alliance; we needed a union. If our two neighbouring packs came together, imagine how big our territory would have been? Then you had to show up here and ruin it!"

I couldn't believe it! She was actually mad at me for something I have no control over whatsoever. I don't facilitate the bond. I am subject to it, just like anyone else. I told her that in the hopes of appealing to reason.

"Then you should have stayed home. I didn't know it when I left you, but now I see it was for a reason, but you've always been so stubborn!" Obviously, she was not in the mood to be reasonable.

"What do you expect me to do? Apologise? As if I'm the one who did this? As if I'm the one who wanted this?" I defended.

"Yes! Apologise, for stealing your brother's destiny! For taking away your Pack's chance at security! For dishonouring the memory of your father by not making sure that the attack that killed him never happens again!"

"Me? Dishonour dad? When he died you threw me away like I never even mattered. He'd have never allowed that. So, it is you who dishonours him!" I had hardly got the words out when I felt the hot slap across my face.

We were silent for a while, both reeling from what just happened. Both shocked for different reasons, I'm sure.

"You think I wanted this?" I began, "To be mated to this family? To move from being in Kane's small shadow to Amari's huge one? If I could turn away from this, I would. But where would that leave me? Back home? With you? No. At least being a nobody here will hurt less. So, I'm going to stay, not for this stupid bond or this girl or this pack, I'm staying here because you hate it so much. Because it makes you so angry. Because me being here makes you the insignificant one."

She tried for another slap, but Kane, who had been there and silent the whole time, held her hand. "That's enough mom, you've done enough." He said as he pulled her away from me. "Goodbye Letta, I hope you find more than what you hope for."

Those where his last words to me before he and my mother left me at the Silver Moon and I have not heard from either of them since. When I got back to Amari she looked at me very differently, and treated me very differently. She looked at me with pity and treated me with caution, and I didn't know why until we arrived at this house and she led me to a room that wasn't hers.