His Mute Luna
Chapter 14

Morgan

I really didn’t want to be hiding June away. I wasn’t ashamed of being mated to a human and she was astoundingly beautiful and intelligent, I wanted others knowing she was mine and I was hers. But I knew whoever my future mate was she was going to face heavy scrutiny, from both the pack and, I had a feeling, my father too.

My dad had done a lot to secure this pack and he always spoke about how he knew my mate would be a strong wolf. How would he take knowing my mate was human? Something told me he would have some choice words. Not that that would sway me at all; I was a grown man and an Alpha, I wasn’t about to be told who I could take as my mate from anyone.

I wished I could’ve stayed at home with June all day, but my damn responsibilities were getting in the way again.

‘I have said it once before; renounce our title, then we can spend every minute with our mate. She’s the more delicious option anyway,’ Mars grumbled.

‘Stop being a moping, horny bastard!… It’s not as though we can do anything yet anyway,’ I was starting to get irritated by his one-track mind. It was like I was talking to Cal and Cam with him sometimes; we had Alpha duties to uphold that couldn’t simply be dropped.

But normally, after a hard day of training, I would be going home to an empty house. And now? I’d be going home to the scent of honeysuckle and a pair of mesmerising ocean-coloured eyes. Just that thought alone had me hustling to the training grounds faster than normal.

At the grounds, there was virtually no-one there, except the first arriving warriors and my future Beta, Ryan. He didn’t look as though he had been sleeping well; his coal-coloured hair was a mess, his dark grey eyes looked tired and his normally tall 6’5 frame looked a little hunched in exhaustion. But seeing as his mate, Sandra, had just gone back to college to finish her second year, it’d take him a while to settle through the separation.

“Are you gonna be ok for training? You look like you’re about to collapse,” I questioned.

“I kept up pretty well chasing your a*s of a brother around, I think I’ll be fine. And would you stop worrying over me? You’re worse than a mother hen!” He was definitely cranky.

He and Michael hadn’t gotten along for some time. My brother had made a sarcastic if somewhat hurtful remark about his title as Beta and him being the fifth best option. At 21, Ryan was the youngest of five, neither one of his four older sisters had wanted the Beta title and so it had fallen to him. As a result, he tended to overstretch himself to prove his value.

“We can’t help it,” Shane approached, wrapping his arm around Ryan’s neck and ruffling his hair. “You’re the baby and we need to look out for you,” he grinned, while Ryan wrestled his way out of his grip with a glare.

Shane’s face turned to me instantly. ‘You smell like a woman,’ he mind-linked.

I thought I had washed my mate’s scent off enough, I guess not enough to get past Shane’s nose.

Ryan snorted, ‘is that a come on or an insult? And why are we whispering?’

‘Don’t play dumb, you’ve been around a woman and you’ve tried to hide it. Why?’ Shane continued to probe, ignoring everything other than my reaction.

There was no hiding it from them now.

‘Fine, don’t react to this…but, I found my mate.’

“What?!” Ryan shouted out loud, gaining the attention of the few warriors starting to congregate.

“…Are we doing in sparring today, boss?” Ryan chuckled nervously.

‘Smooth save, very natural,’ Shane shook his head, hiding his amusement.

‘Wait, why are you hiding your mate?’ My Beta asked, finally using his brain.

‘It’s the human, isn’t it? The badass?’ Shane stated with a grin, knowing he was right.

‘Yeah. You don’t seem surprised? And you could’ve said something about her not being able to speak,’ I would have made less of an awkward a*s of myself too.

‘I don’t exactly go round pointing out people’s inabilities. I know what it’s like to not be able to do something that everyone else around you can. But on a lighter note, I bet you’re kicking yourself now about not learning sign language with me,’ he smirked. I knew he’d bring this up just to rub it in.

‘Can we rewind? How is a human your mate?!’ Ryan exclaimed wide-eyed, looking a little insane.

I filled them in on everything – leaving out the more personal things – and why we were keeping our relationship low-key. Ryan still struggled to wrap his around it, but Shane seemed completely unfazed. Having been raised by parents of different species, this wasn’t exactly anything that different to him.

‘Uh…I think the wonder twins are trying to sneak up on you again,’ Shane shook his head in amusement. He was smiling now, but he’d be the one teaching them later.

The only thing that surprised me was that they were early. Cal and Cam usually tried this on despite the fact they could only hold their auras for a few seconds before it started to slip; this I really needed to train them more on. They couldn’t sneak up on a f*****g donkey.

I turned, grabbing Cal in a light choke hold while Cam tried to leap on my back, but he didn’t have the strength his twin did.

“This isn’t exactly fighting fair, you two,” not that it would ever stop them.

“You always said a fight would never be fair,” Cam called out from behind me.

The three of us continued to grapple a little. They were definitely getting better, particularly Cam, whose advantage had always been his speed.

All of a sudden, his grip slackened as he cried out, “ah, f**k, ok! I give, I give!”

I turned, with Cal still fighting out of my hold, to see Michael grasping the side of Cam’s neck hard and his arm pulled up behind him.

I offered a slightly awkward and begrudging thanks.

“Well it was embarrassing seeing you struggle against these idiots,” he replied, equally awkward.

“Wow, and I thought we were cool Mikey,” and upon hearing his hated nickname, Michael knocked Cam up the side of his head.

“I told you not to call me that!”

I couldn’t help but laugh at Cam rubbing his head, pouting, while I released Cal as he was complaining about not being able to feel his neck.

“I’m pretty sure mom’s at home. You can mind-link to go tattle if you want?” I taunted, remembering how he went calling to mommy yesterday at breakfast.

“Can we actually get to training yet?” Ryan burst out. “I might be the ‘baby’, but I swear I’m the most mature one here!” He was definitely getting crankier without Sandra here.

“Speak for yourself. I wasn’t even play-fighting,” Shane defended, almost sounding slighted.

“No. You were just sat, laughing,” and with that, Ryan stormed off to join the amassing warriors.

‘His mate needs to come home and blow him to chill him the f**k out,’ Cal crudely commented in my mind.

‘Would you tolerate that kinda talk about your mate?’ I scolded.

That fact that he walked off grumbling to himself suggested, no, he wouldn’t. I had no idea whether their mate would be a man or a woman because, in all honesty, those two would f**k anything that looked humanoid and with a pulse.

To my surprise, Michael offered to spar with me in training. It had been a while since he had offered anything like this and I suspected our mother was behind it. I accepted, seeing as I wouldn’t be leading training initially today. Ryan had been wanting to take the reins a little more and would be supervised by Shane. My Gamma may not have had the aura of a wolf, but he was greatly respected by most for his combat skills, even though he hadn’t the physical strength of a wolf. He and Ryan’s father, Terrance, would be schooling my future Beta on how to lead training till he was confident enough to do it himself.

After Michael and I had warmed up, we faced off against each other.

‘So I take it the women are ok then?’ Michael asked, as I took a defensive stance against his offensive one.

‘You actually care today, then?’ I replied back, slightly regretting my scoffing tone. This wasn’t helping our dysfunction.

‘I cared before, but it was a risk to the wolves who actually defend our pack,’ he shot back with, sending a rather stinging jab to my ribs.

‘Funny way of showing care. You would have left those women to their fate!’ And I would have lost my mate without ever getting to meet her or knowing who she was.

I sent a punch to his jaw with a little more force than I meant at the thought of ever losing June.

He winced, but still continued on strong, ‘and how many warriors did you take? What would you have told their families if they had died? Oh sorry about that, but at least some other family gets to be together now?’

I didn’t exactly have a reply to that, as the two of us stopped our sparring to face against each other in a new way.

‘Stop thinking everything I do is because I’m an a*****e. Just because I don’t make decisions based on emotion, doesn’t mean I don’t care.’

‘Those warriors that came with us were there because they wanted to, no-one made them. You need to learn that you can’t turn away from what’s right because it’s dangerous.’ I wasn’t about to back down, mate or not, I knew my decision was the right one. There were more risks, yes, but it was just.

He glowered my way but started to look uncomfortable and a little warm, ‘I need to go… something feels off with Lisa’ and he took off without another word.

‘That’s the longest I think I’ve ever seen you two play nice,’ Cal linked over from where he was sparring with Cam.

I frowned after Michael’s retreating form, sighing, ‘he doesn’t make it easy.’

‘It’s kinda killing mom that the two of you fight all the time,’ Cam interjected, coming over to me.

‘…I know. Look, I’m trying, ok?’ I really did want to go back to how things used to be when we were younger, when whatever the hell we were wasn’t this complicated.

‘You can be a little hard on him, ya know?’ He mind-linked, with an uncharacteristically serious face.

I looked at him in questioning expectancy. Was he about to give me advice? This guy wanted me to make him a dentist appointment four months ago because he was too embarrassed to ask our mom to do it!

‘A lot of those expectations you think people have of you, you put on yourself and you kinda hold everyone else up to those same expectations.’

I stared at him in amazement. This was the deepest thing my brother had said in 22 years of existence. I wrapped my arm around Cam’s neck playfully, pulling him into my side.

“Look at you, all wise!” I chuckled “…I hear you, ok? I’ll try…with all three of you.”

“That’s it?” He looked at me disbelieving, pushing away from me a little. “You’re not gonna fight me or give me some long-winded speech about responsibilities? Who the f**k mellowed you out?!”

I stilled a little at his words. Was June already having an affect on me?

Mates were that for a reason; each brought out the best in the other without the realisation that they were even doing it.

I loved the idea that she was already bringing out a better part of me.

“Come on, let’s get back to training. We need to work on your sneaking technique,” I grinned at him, heading back towards the others.

June

It was Tipper’s sudden jolting that drew my attention to someone arriving. I had been typing away wearing my headphones and listening to music as I worked, with Tip laid out beside me on her blanket on the couch and her head resting on my lap.

She had settled in pretty well once she had run around the place to sniff it out. And since no raccoon had snuck in, she hadn’t destroyed anything either, not that I believed that bullshit story of Tom’s.

I had also ‘borrowed’ the rather cozy looking hoodie of Morgan’s that was hung over the back of the dining chair; a deep green colour with a muted forest print around the body and it smelt heavenly of his musky, tree bark scent. Maybe I should have put more effort into wearing something nice? I was only wearing a simple pair of cotton shorts and his sweatshirt…when did I start caring so much about what I looked like? He had impressed upon me this morning how he wanted me to make myself at home and had even given me control to his garage and the code for his door. I just hoped I hadn’t taken the liberties too far.

The smell that truly caught my attention was that of delicious pizza accompanied by an equally delicious looking wolf, who was all mine…when my uterus decided to stop throwing a tantrum.

I closed my laptop as Tip went over to greet Morgan, which I was sure was a pretense to investigate the tasty food. Had it been Tom she would have definitely been spoiled to a slice or two. But she had her own food and I had even brought her bed in the hopes that he would invite me to stay the night again, hopefully with a less embarrassing wake up.

“Hey, I hope you’re hungry. I brought three of my favourites. I got ’em from this really great place that cooks them in a real wood-fired oven,” he beamed, placing three huge boxes on the dining table behind the couch.

Just how much did this guy think I could eat?!

I noticed how his eyes darkened as they trailed over my figure when I stood and that damned gorgeous half smile lit up his face. I leant up to k**s him sweetly, circling my arms around his waist. I really had missed him since this morning and was only just realising it fully now. I had never felt this level of attachment to someone so quickly or deeply either.

“If this is what my hoodie looks like on you, you can have my whole damn wardrobe,” little did he know I had already eyed up some of those cozy-looking shirts of his and had taken his words as literal consent. They would be our shirts from now on, I smiled to myself.

Let me go feed Tipper real quick, otherwise she’ll beg, I wrote down hurriedly because I wanted to get to my own food.

I came back from the kitchen with napkins to find Morgan holding a pretty white orchid, one of my favourite plants! How did he know?

“I got you this. It’s a white egret orchid…but you probably already know that,” he held it out for me to take. “Your brother said you liked plants and I kinda thought this doubled as flowers too,” that cute, hopeful smile tugged at his lips again.

It was more perfect than he could imagine.

I took it from him, mouthing ‘I love it’ and admired it from every angle. The pretty, delicate flowers swayed and danced as I turned it, adding to its charm. I placed it down carefully and wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him down so I could capture his lips in a k**s. I must have caught him off guard as he stumbled forward into me; not that I minded having his chest pressed even more to my own.

“I think this place is gonna be filled with orchids,” he chuckled as he pulled back.

I definitely appreciated his gift, but I certainly didn’t want him thinking I needed presents all the time to earn my affections. I was a very simple woman and I didn’t need things, what I needed was just him.

Trust me, all you have to do is feed me and tell me I’m pretty. I’m a woman of simple tastes, starting with this pizza, I typed, sitting and pushing out the seat opposite.

He wasn’t kidding about this being the best pizza. The three he had brought tasted phenomenal; mascarpone, mushroom and prosciutto, pepperoni and red pepper and ‘nduja with a pumpkin sauce base, which was hands down my favourite thing had ever eaten.

I had given it my best attempt, but I had barely made a dent. Morgan, on the other hand, seemed to inhale the food, but he had been training today. Even without that, wolves needed a much higher calorie intake; with their higher metabolism and body heat of 41°C, their wolf half burned through energy faster than gasoline.

He thought he was being sly too, but I didn’t miss him sneaking a piece of ham to Tip. She always did know who the soft touch was. I shook my head, sending him an amused but pointed look.

“What? Who can resist those eyes?” He grinned while ruffling her muzzle. He had a point, his diamond eyes had me completely under their spell.

“How about we just talk tonight? I don’t know much about you,” he asked as he threaded his fingers with mine across the table.

I nodded eagerly, I wanted to know each little thing about him. Everything I knew so far were either things I had heard from others or the hints of his character that he naturally exuded, like his kindness, his thoughtfulness and how much of an adorable dork he was; though I had a feeling I was one of the very few people that got to see that side of him.

And I wanted him to know everything about me too, things I rarely ever shared with anyone.