My Fierce Warrior Luna

2

REBECCA

Morning came sooner and more violent than expected.

“RISE AND SHINE!” someone screamed – right before throwing themselves on top of my still-sleeping self.

Safe to say, that woke me up for good – and if I didn’t scream in fear or react the way my body had been trained to (which is, kill first and think later), it was just because I recognized those voices and scents before my instincts kicked in.

It was Isabelle and Jenny, my girl best friends, looking down at me with big, excited grins on their faces.

Their sun-lit faces.

Shocked, I fumbled for my phone and nearly had a heart attack when I saw the time.

10 AM.

“Holy s**t” I whispered.

I’d completely skipped training – Brody was gonna kill me.

“Seriously?” Izzy huffed. “We come here to get you for a shopping spree and this is how you react? That’s it. We’re not friends anymore”.

“No, it’s just … I’ve skipped training” I yawned. “I slept through”.

“No, Frances canceled the alarm” Jenny precised. “You just had the sleep you needed and deserved”.

“She did wh…”

“She talked to Dad” Izzy added. “He made sure Brody gave you a day off, which means …”

“We have you, miss best-warrior-ever-seen, all to ourselves” Jenny grinned. “Which means we’re finally gonna catch up”.

At that point, I couldn’t hold back a smile.

It had been a while since my friends and I had managed to properly be together – between the war, Izzy’s classes, and Jenny’s work we hadn’t been able to see each other often, and the Goddess knew if we needed some time together.

“And get you a dress for tonight” Izzy added. “I looked in your wardrobe and, girl … you need a muscular stock boy, some champagne, and a personal shopper”.

I sighed, falling back on the soft pillows. “You know I hate shopping …”

“In your case, it’s a necessary evil” she insisted. “You need a dress for tonight. Mom pulled out the big guns, so you’re gonna need to look extra pretty”.

I sighed even harder.

Izzy’s mother, Luna Sheila, was rather strict when it came to her parties. She was well known for her expensive tastes, her extravaganza, and for not taking well those who came with a dress that cost less than three thousand dollars.

“Besides, you might catch someone’s eye …” Jenny chuckled.

This was what made me stuff a pillow in my face, groaning from embarrassment.

The Luna’s party was in honor of her son, Reiner, who’d just graduated from college and was finally coming back home to start shadowing his father, to learn the job of the Alpha.

I’d known him all my life – and we’d always been good friends.

That was until the Christmas incident. From that night on … something had changed in me.

Reiner had always been handsome, but I’d never felt particularly attracted to him – also because he, being my best friend’s older brother and the future Alpha, was a little bit out of my league. From that night on, though, I’d started seeing him with different eyes.

I’d begun to like him – like, really like him. And not the way a friend likes a friend.

I’d woken up many times with the faint feeling of his warm, strong arms softly wrapped around my body. And more than once I dreamed of that night – of his lips, of the warmth of his body.

Izzy had been the first to notice – hell, she’d been the one to catch us, and from that day on, an endless taunting had begun. Both for Reiner and me. Whenever we texted, he told me how Izzy still reminded him, from time to time, about that night.

And each time he mentioned it, I felt butterflies in my stomach.

“You definitely will, if you listen to me” Izzy giggled. “Come on, we need to wrap this candy real good for his party. It’s gonna be my gift for his graduation”.

I shot her a pointed look. “I’d be the gift? You know I’m a person, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, totally deadpan. “He’s gonna like this gift very much, and this will make me his favorite sibling even more. Now get up, you lazy ass – we need to make you look decent before 6 PM”.

The day with my friends had not gone as expected, I thought while, sitting between them in the backseat of Jenny’s parents' car, we drove to the ball.

Usually, Jen and Izzy were fun and chill – certainly more exuberant and cheerful than I, but never over-the-top.

That day, they’d been insufferable. Well, Izzy had been – and since Jenny tended to imitate her, she’d been too.

The trip at the mall had been an endless river of jokes, giggles, and attempts to get me to buy the most scandalous dress possible – with them going as far as to swap the dress I’d chosen, a simple yet elegant black dress, with long sleeves and a boat neckline, with a dark, wine-red off-the-shoulder gown with a sweetheart neckline and the highest slit I’d ever seen.

It was a dress I looked terribly good in, but one that made me feel way too exposed – a dress that would surely, as my friends wanted, put me in the spotlight.

I wasn’t a mood-buster – I knew how to take a joke or some teasing, but a whole day of it … it was too much. Their strange behavior had, thankfully, dwindled down a bit while we were doing our makeup, but it had sparked once again when Izzy had noticed that Reiner had texted me, asking me if I was coming to the party.

Yes – Reiner and I might have had a little accident five months prior. Yes, I might have started developing a little crush on him, and we might have started talking more often, usually with him starting, ever since … but I couldn’t understand why my friends were being like that, and Izzy most of all: I mean, she was his sister.

There was something else underneath. She was being way too extra, even for herself. I mean, there had always been a little taunting ever since the incident, but a whole day …

I needed a little break.

So, as soon as we stepped foot into the pack house and Jenny and Izzy went to leave their jackets in the wardrobe, I bolted right towards the bathrooms.

I needed to be alone for just a moment.

I slammed the door behind my back, sat on the toilet, and began to take deep breaths. I needed to calm down and regain some composure – because I was one joke away from losing it.

The fact that, that night, I would have surely met Reiner didn’t help either. Not just because his sister had spent the whole day basically treating me like a piece of meat for him to enjoy, but because it’d also be the first time he and I saw each other and interacted after the incident.

You look so f*****g good tonight.

The words he’d whispered to me that night, while we were alone on the couch, swept through my mind, along with the phantom feeling of his body next to mine – of his hands on my waist, of his lips on mine.

Or of his erection right under my core as I straddled him.

Suddenly, the already tight space of the stall became even tighter – and the air grew hotter.

Breathe …

The memory of that incident was already capable of making me feel light-headed on its own – but if paired with my approaching heat, my very first heat …

A cramp tightened my lower belly, a warning bell.

I needed to calm down, or any unmated male in that pack house would smell my arousal – and, strongest female of the pack or not, fending an entire army of horny wolves off would not have been an easy feat, especially while battling at the same time with a completely new thing, as the heat was for me.

Breathing wasn’t working, so I began counting down from 200: it was a trick Brody taught me, when he’d caught me having a panic attack a few days prior.

That slowly did the trick, and I began to feel my heat recede. The cramping stopped, and soon after, the temperature began to feel normal again.

What would happen when I’d inevitably see Reiner again? Would we be able to act like the lifelong acquaintances we were, or would what had happened between us five months before create a certain awkwardness between us? Our texts had always been absolutely chaste and friendly – never he had hinted at wanting something more from me, at being physically attracted to me, apart from that night – a night in which we’d both been rather tipsy, if not downright drunk.

Which could either mean that the alcohol had messed up his mind, making him act that way, or simply lowered his inhibitions, allowing him to act on his desires.

I had no idea whether it was the first or the latter, and not knowing that scared me.

I was a captain – I was not used to not being in control. Not knowing something meant you were at a disadvantage on the battlefield, and that was risky.

But this is not a battlefield, I reminded myself. This is Reiner. Just Reiner. He’s not your enemy.

Yeah. He might not have been my enemy, but I knew my feelings for him were not those of a friend – and not being sure of what his feelings for me were destabilized me. It made me feel insecure – something I loathed.

“Becks?”

The door to the bathrooms creaked open, and Izzy’s voice echoed in the room. “Are you here? Are you okay?”

I sighed.

I guess it’s time to come out.

“Yeah,” I said, walking out of the stall. “I just … needed to freshen up a little”.

My friend, though, was having none of it.

“You’re upset” she declared, looking at me.

“Izzy, I’m not …”

“You’re right, you’re not just upset. You’re pissed”.

I took a breath. One of the things I loved most about her was that she could read right through people – but when it came to me, it was also one of the things I hated the most.

“Fine. I’m a little pissed and upset with you and Jen. Especially you,” I admitted. “You’ve been acting up all day, and you’ve made me feel like … like a pretty steak. As if I … as if I were in function of your brother. I really don’t get it. I can understand some jokes and all, but all of this …” a thought crossed my mind, and I walked over to her, taking her face in my hands and checking out her eyes. As I suspected, there was a slight, pale reddening to them - the kind you only notice by actually checking for it. That, paired with the frequent “bathroom breaks” she’d taken during the day … “Have you been smoking?”

Izzy’s face fell, and she pursed her lips – and that told me all I needed to know.

Isabelle only smoked whenever things were bad at home – and weed, and family drama, tended to make her act out.

“I’m sorry” she mumbled. “I … it was real bad, last night”.

I took her hand in mine, all of my anger suddenly gone. I knew there was a lot of tension at her place: ever since James, her father, had decided to name Reiner, and not Garrett, the eldest son, as the future Alpha, things had gone downhill very quickly. Sheila and Garrett had stopped talking to Reiner - and the Alpha and the Luna, when they talked to each other, did so only to argue.

In that horrible situation, Isabelle was suffering from the conflict between her morals and the insistence of her mother and brother - Sheila and Garrett were always trying to drag her to their side, but as she had confessed to me, inside she knew that Reiner was the best choice as Alpha. Having not yet been able to win her daughter's full support, Sheila was resorting to heavy emotional blackmail - something that tore my friend's heart apart.

“What happened?” I asked, trying to soften my tone.

Izzy sighed. “Dad was on patrol - and Reiner would land when he was away. Dad had asked Mom to pick him up from the airport, and she had said yes ... but she conveniently forgot. He ended up coming home in a taxi.”

She pulled up with her nose, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. “He had such a discouraged look on his face when he came back ... so bitter. I understand that Mom wanted Garrett to be Alpha, but how is Reiner to blame? He spent days telling Dad to change his mind to keep peace in the family ... he was ready to give up being Alpha. And that b***h is acting like that! Then Dad came back and realized something was wrong. They fought all night”.

I swallowed. “I’m sorry, Izzy. I shouldn’t …”

“No, I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t have … my family’s situation is not something I should burden you with”.

“Isabelle, you’re my friend,” I told her. “It means you’re allowed to burden me with what makes you feel bad. You always listen to me when I have those … dreams. Why shouldn’t I listen to your problems?”

She took a shaky breath.

“You can lean on me as much as I can on you,” I said. “In fact, you should – because you smoke when you don’t, and then you act crazy. And your mother notices, and she throws a fit, and then you smoke more, and then …”

“Okay,” she interrupted me with a slight chuckle: at least she wasn’t crying anymore. “You’re right. I’m sorry for … today”.

I held her hand, offering her a forgiving smile. “It belongs to the past now,” I told her. “Shall we go to the party now?”

Izzy, however, shook her head.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” she said, her voice suddenly laced with urgency. “Something I’ve kept from you for a while”.