reading of one of the many children’s books and met the big blue eyes of the curly brown-haired little girl standing in front of her. A smile pulled at Luna’s lips. “So are you.”
Kathy, the seven-year-old human girl, had been fascinated with Luna since she arrived at the underground rebel base a few months ago after escaping Faelin’s warehouse. That was where she met Colt, the little girl’s uncle and a mutant.
Picking up Kathy, Luna cuddled her close as she began to read the story again. They were inside the small play area in the center of the rebel base. It surprised her when she first arrived and saw that the base was set up like a small den. Then again, there was a mix of shifters, humans, and mutants living there. Plus, the leader of this particular base was Rafe. In a sense, he was their Alpha.
Her thoughts drifted to how easy on the eyes Rafe was. He was the twin of her dead rogue-bastard mate, but Rafe was the polar opposite. It helped that he didn’t look like his evil twin as much as they did when they were kids.
In his final months of life, Royce had changed his appearance. Maybe it was because his aura had darkened so much from aligning himself with Felix, the former Alpha of the Onyx Pack. Royce was experimenting with several serums and potions back then. Not that Luna knew that at the time. She learned what Royce had done over the years. The more they learned about Felix and his mutants, the more she realized she mated a monster that made the rogue and the mutants look like puppies.
Rafe was different. Or was he? Luna didn’t know him anymore. Too much time had passed, and war always changes a person. The question was, had it changed Rafe for the better or the worst?
Gods knew she wasn’t the same person. She went from the loving maternal female she used to be before killing her mate. Oh, she was still maternal, but she was also an Alpha who protected her Pack with lethal efficiencies.
Turning the page in the book, she glanced up at the kids. They made her think about the little ones at home. Like the Pack kids, these children accepted their mixed culture. Luna hadn’t met a single one who was afraid of a mutant.
That was because they didn’t live through the war Ashwood and MoonRiver had.
Luna never took much interest in the rebels or their purpose. Being inside Rafe’s group, she wished she had learned more about their cause. As long as they didn’t go after her Pack, Luna didn’t care what they did. She never dreamed the camps they lived in were actually under the protection of other Packs.
Luna was staying at the rebel base while working with Rafe and a small team from Ashwood to track down and stop Faelin from following through with his plan to destroy all shifters, or whatever his sick plan was.
One thing she never thought she’d do was become friends with a mutant. But she did, twice. The first time was with Gina, a human bio-geneticist who was captured and turned into a mutant by Felix. Gina had escaped Felix and tried to reverse what the mutant serum had done to her, making her more human-like, but she still looked like a mutant. She had features of both a tiger and a wolf. And she was the most timid and polite mutant Luna had ever met.
Gina had eventually moved to the Birchwood Pack—a neighboring wolf Pack and one of Ashwood’s strongest allies—to work with their Healer, Sven.
The second mutant Luna called a friend was Colt. She met him a few months ago when she was held captive in the human-made basement of a small warehouse Faelin locked her in. That was also where she met Nyla, the half soul demon, half-witch Faelin was trying to control to get her to transfer the powers from a wolf carved moonstone to himself.
Nyla refused, and no amount of torture had changed her mind. She was also Kirk’s half-sister. On the demon father side, of course. Kirk’s mother was a leopard shifter from Ashwood Falls.
After finishing the story, Luna closed the book and set it on the small red and blue table next to her. The kids that sat on the floor jumped up and started playing. Kathy stayed where she was, staring at Luna. Staring back, Luna said, “Go ahead and ask your questions.”
The child pulsed