Moon Child (The Year of the Wolf #2) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,129
I missed all that as much as I missed my family.
Mother, it had been too long since I’d seen them. Over three years because the last time Seth had gone home, he’d attacked Grace and had been banished from the pack. Which meant, though it wasn’t as binding for me, that I’d been banished too.
My home was lost to me for as long as Seth lived, but it was my sacred duty to guard him, to protect him.
The day was coming, that was all I knew. A day that would see sides being chosen.
Irony of ironies, Seth thought I’d have his back. Why wouldn’t he?
When didn’t I protect him?
He was strong, but he was only a beta-type at most. With his past, and with the way he treated people, if he didn’t have me at his back to defend him, he’d have had the shit kicked out of him long ago.
I was his guardian. The barrier between him and the repercussions of the choices he made on a daily basis.
But I was waiting.
Just waiting for that day when I could take up my stance and join the rightful side.
Grace’s.
I figured she’d have more than one mate. She was barely five, and already, the power she held was captivating. Enough to marvel at, to behold with astonishment and joy.
I’d met her that first time when Seth had, and he’d attacked her. Even as my wolf had been snarling at me to tear out his throat, the enforcer in my soul, a duty that was written into me by the Mother’s word, which bound me by the covenant that had gifted me Grace, had forced me to hold him back.
To take him away.
To keep him from her.
She was only a child. Barely ready for pre-school. I was getting ready for junior year. My other mates were children too. It was strange to have three mates all under seven, made me feel like some kind of freak, but seeing them grow wasn’t a privilege I was allowed to have because of Seth.
My driving urge was to protect them. To keep them safe. But that wasn’t something I could do because of him, and any sense of duty that bound me to him was slowly turning to hate. With every letter I read, with every call from home, I missed my family. Not just the little kids that would, ultimately, become adults that were as bound to me as I was to them. But Sabina, Ethan, Eli, Austin. I missed their counsel, their wisecracks. The security of their love, the way they grounded me just by being them.
I even missed Lara and Todd. Missed the Thanksgivings and Christmases I wasn’t allowed to visit home for, and only the Mother knew when I’d be able to.
I was homesick, and it was way worse than when Sabina had found me, my grubby hands on a candy bar that I’d pocketed to ease the gnawing ache in my belly, when I was older than my mates were now.
My mother had died, my father had been slain in a challenge, and though I’d been cast out of my pack, the pain in my heart was nothing in comparison to this.
The gnawing ache inside me.
“Come to bed,” Seth grumbled. “Shut the curtains. We have to be up early in the morning.”
“Since when do I always do as you tell me to?” I growled back, not even bothering to twist around to glare at him.
I knew he sensed my mood.
That was the bitch of it.
Seth was sure I was his mate.
Talk about a clusterfuck.
But I wasn’t.
He wasn’t mine.
I had enough mates to know what that kind of connection felt like, even if they were all kids and there wasn’t anything other than a small link between us. One that tied me to each of them. Like a sparkler flaring to life instead of an atomic bomb.
With Seth, if we were mates, we’d have been at each other like rabbits. And though we’d messed around a few times last year, something he wanted more of, I wasn’t interested.
Fucking for the sake of fucking wasn’t fun. Not when you knew your destiny.
Not when you were waiting for the slow passage of time to crawl on by so that your mates were old enough to fucking graduate.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, wiping away the fatigue that hit me. I was, I knew, getting maudlin, and that was leading to me being depressed. Of course, that made me tetchy.