Reunion Under the Moon: Second Chance Mates

The rain fell into a cold and ruthless curtain, crushing on earth with the regularity of a heartbeat. The metal smell of blood mingled, transported by the wind that rushed between the knotted trees, whistling through the silent forest. There was no more cries, no more grunts of rage or pain. Just this heavy silence, punctuated by the hammer of the downpour.

She gave her teeth and accelerated the step, her boots sinking into the mud. The call had come at dawn, a distant, raucous howl, barely distinct in the dark. She had hesitated. An injured wolf alone. She was no longer used to acting like this, to respond to instinct rather than reason. But something, a deaf pulsation under his skin, had pushed her to come out. So she had grabbed her care kit and sank into the woods.

The path was steep, traitor in the rain which transformed it into a sliding heap. She was not afraid. The darkness of the forest was no longer worrying for her. She had grown there, had learned to listen to the murmurs, to recognize the dangers. It was once a familiar territory, a refuge where she felt in her place. Now it was just a shadow of the past.

She stopped clearly when she saw him.

The dark mass lay between the roots of a tree, a twisted, inert body. Even from a distance, it distinguished the sides raised by difficult, breathtaking breathing. The smell of blood was strong, heady. She knelt, placing her fingers on the soaked coat. He was hot under his palm, but the fever was there, insidious. She folds her eyes, looking for wounds.

The notches were deep. Claws. Crocs. He had fought, and he had lost. Pieces of flesh hung in shreds on its sides, and a gaping wound marked its shoulder. He had not had to flee far before his forces abandoned him.

She sighed and opened her kit, ignoring the unpleasant feeling that tied her stomach. Care him. This is what she knew how to do. Not think. Not wondering where he came from, or why he was alone. Only act.

The minutes went into a familiar monotony. She cleaned, curled up, shining efficiently. The wolf did not react, apart from a few tremors at each pressure too supported. He had to be on the verge of unconsciousness. When she finished, she stood squatting for a moment, staring at the dark, reflecting coat.

She couldn't leave him there.

The idea made her hesitate. Taking care of him here was one thing. Taking her home was another. It's been too long since she had crowned anyone. But leaving him in this rain, injured and unable to defend himself was to sign his death warrant.

She pushed an annoyed sigh, as if she could convince herself that all of this bothered her deeply. Then, carefully, she slipped her arms under the solid body and pulled with all her might. The weight almost unbalanced it, but it held out.

She brought the wolf home.

***

The flames projected a trembling glow on the walls of the room. The smell of blood persisted despite alcohol and ointments. She was washed with her hands, then remained standing, observing the body lying on the table.

She hadn't seen her face yet. He had transformed himself during the journey, his features returning to a human form in a natural process of healing. But she hadn't tried to look at. Maybe because she knew that the answer would not please her.

She ends up approaching, her heart heavier than she would have liked.

He had a pale complexion, almost cadaverous under the sparkle of the lamp. The brown wicks, soaked and tangled, glued to his sweetened forehead. His jaw, once strong and proud, was marked by fatigue and exhaustion. He had changed. Skinny, more marked. But it was him.

She felt something break in her.

The storm of memories fell, brutal, relentless. The nights spent laughing under the moon, the murmurs exchanged in the secret of the woods, the warmth of her arms around her. Then abandonment, tear, the void left behind.

She went back, her fingers closing on the edge of the table as if it could give her a catch on reality. He shouldn't be there. He should no longer exist in his world.

But he was there.

And he was broken.

She looked away, feeling a dull anger getting into her. It was not his problem. It would never be his problem again. She did what she had to do. Cure. Save. Now he would leave.

She turned away and went out, leaving behind the ghost of the past.

***

The cold clung to his skin as a second suffering. He walked without a specific goal, guided by a single necessity: move forward.

Each step sent a throbbing pain along its ribs. He felt blood drying against his skin, a constant reminder of his failure. But it was not the physical pain that overwhelmed him the most.

He had lost everything.

The betrayal had been a dagger drunk so deeply that he doubted one day being able to remove the blade. He had believed in her. He believed that the moon had imposed on him. And he was wrong.

The weight of rejection still haunted him.

He stopped, his fists tense. His legs trembled under him, his breath was short. His body demanded rest, but her mind was screaming.

He had been king. Now he was nothing.

A thrill crossed him. The fever was gaining ground. He knew that he would not go further.

Then he felt something. A presence. Heat.

He opened his eyes, but his vision was blurred. He only lives a silhouette, a glow in the middle of nothingness. Hands that touched him, which wore him.

A smell.

Stealthy, familiar.

A memory broke out in his mind, a fleeting image, a voice he thought disappeared.

Then nothing.

***

When he opened his eyes, he first thought he was dead.

The ceiling was familiar, and the smell assaulted it suddenly, drowning everything else. A gentle fragrance, that of medicinal plants and something more subtle, more intimate.

He straightened up too quickly and dazzling pain turned his chest to him. A groan escaped him, and a movement caught his gaze.

She was there.

Frozen near the door, the dark and impenetrable gaze.

His heart missed a beat.

It was impossible.

She should never have been there.

His gaze slid on his face. She was even more beautiful than in her memories. Harder too. A shadow hovered over its features, a new coldness, like a wall erected between them.

He opened his mouth, but no word came.

She crossed her arms and spoke the first.

- Don't get mistaken. I treated you. That's it.

His voice was sharp, without the slightest emotion.

He swallowed with difficulty, fighting against the flood of sensations that invaded him.

She looked at him as a stranger.

And he understood.

He no longer had his place here.

He had never had his place with her.

Silence settled, heavy, cruel.

She ended up looking away, and this simple gesture hurt her more than all the wounds of her united body.

He thought he had known the pain.

But it is only now, seeing this empty look on him, that he understood what really meant to be broken.

She had learned the news by chance, at the turn of a conversation that she shouldn't even have heard. A whisper escaped in the warm air in the afternoon, carried by the wind to its ears. Nothing very important in itself. Just a fact, information released with the nonchalance of those who ignore how a name can still burn.

He is back.

She hadn't reacted. Not a start, not a thrill. Just a slightly stronger heartbeat, quickly repressed. It was nothing. It didn't change anything.

So she had continued to work, classify vials and write her notes as if these words had not sought to dig a breach in her. She had not culled, not let the slightest crack appear. It was a long time since he had no importance.

The past was a corpse that she had buried with her own hands.

***

He didn't understand.

Something was wrong, something bored him since waking up. A diffuse, insidious feeling, which clung to him without him being able to name it. Like a whisper in the hollow of his skull, a thrill under his skin.

She.

Whenever she was there, the air seemed to vibrate differently. He felt her presence before she even speaks, even before she looked at him - if she still looked at him. He followed her with his gaze unwittingly, lingering on the curve of a gesture, on the fleeting light in his eyes.

But he didn't understand why.

There was no attachment between them. No link, no reason for his simple breath to haunt him.

However, every time she entered the room, he felt her own heart to miss a beat.

The large room was filled with a serious whisper, a deaf rumble woven from the voices of men and women from far for this meeting. The air vibrated with authority and latent tensions, because it gathered several alphas in the same place was always a balance of balance. Both gauged others of the gaze, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses, defying without a word, while respecting this fragile truce which imposed on them to put away claws and fangs.

She was there, straight, serene, indifferent to the power games that were traced around her. She was not of their world, more for a long time. And yet, it had been called. His name was now circulating among them, no longer as an echo of the past, but as a necessity. His talent, his knowledge, his ability to save those whom even the donations of the Wolves-Garous could not heal, this is what was worth a place among them today.

She was standing on the outskirts of the room, watching, listening. Then a presence struck her, an invisible weight that fell on her before she even turned her head.

He was there.

He did not look at her yet, taken in the stormy exchange between two alphas, her right and insured posture. But she felt it. Like a current under his skin, a pressure in the air, something intangible that should have disappeared over time but which, against all logic, still existed.

She inspired slowly, controlled her breath. He was only one man among others in this room. Nothing more.

Finally, he turned.

Time did not hang. There was not the vertigo that lovers who find themselves after years of absence know. No. There was simply this look, this moment when their eyes met and when she saw, without the slightest ambiguity, that he did not expect him to discover.

He stared at her, and she saw something deeper than a simple surprise parade. A disorder. A misunderstanding.

She did not look away.

She did not flank.

And that's how he understood.

She was no longer the girl who had loved her, formerly.

There was a fraction of a second where she thought she saw her jaw contract, as if he was fighting against something he did not master. Then, as quickly as it came, he turned his head.

The murmur of the room resumed, the tension dissipated in the bustle of the discussions. However, something was broken in silence.

She had felt him.

And too.

The discussions around the table took an increasingly tense turn, but FL felt his own calm vacant. Each word exchanged, each furtive gaze she received seemed to be responsible for a charge that she could not ignore. He was there, just a few steps, his presence as disturbing as it is imposing. She knew that she had to keep her cool, that her skills as a doctor were what she was invited for, but each movement on her part revived the ashes of a past that she had carefully buried.

She clenched her fists under the table, leaving nothing to appear from the thunderstorm that rumbled in her. Then he spoke. His raucous and cold voice echoed in the air, slipping into the exchange. He had not forgotten. Nor her. Nor their past.

- We need someone we can trust, he says, his gaze lingering for a moment for too long on her. This situation is delicate, and I doubt that it can be resolved by simple treatments.

The other alphas nodded, but the way he had pronounced these words gave birth to a tension that she could not mask. Why this accent on "confidence"? Why this implication?

She straightened up in her seat, her eyes launching an icy shine.

- You seem to forget, Alpha, that my skills are what brought me here, not my links with you. There is nothing left between us, and I ask you not to forget it.

The answer was immediate, sharp, without detour.

- Nothing ? he said, a bitter smile stretching his lips. You are right. There is nothing left. But we both know that it is more complicated than that.

She struggled so as not to flank under the weight of these words, a painful memory dating back to the surface. But she did not give in. She turned to the other alphas, deliberately ignoring the warmth of her gaze.

The exchange continued, but the piece seemed to have been shrinking around them, as if everything surrounded them had become secondary. The voices of others were now too distant, and FL heard that this electric shiver between her and him.

Their words had become veiled daggers, and she knew he was still able to injure her as deeply as he had done in the past.

And in this tumult, something even more subtle was added to this tension: a smell.

A soft, almost imperceptible scent, like a wind carried by the wind. He couldn't help frowning. He could not have defined it, but this fragrance ... This warmth, this sweetness, was strangely familiar.

Her eyes laughed at her, as if he was looking for an answer that he did not yet understand. The smell had slipped into the air, invisible but persistent. It was like a trace, an imprint left over time, a memory of a bygone era that he could not grasp.

He scrutinized her, seeking in his gestures, in his posture, an explanation for this strange familiarity. But FL, without the slightest sign of destabilization, made a head movement, capturing the attention of another alpha. She deliberately avoided her gaze.

He remained frozen for a moment, observing, but did not find an answer. However, this smell persisted. A mystery that he could not have resolved that day, but which would continue to haunt him, following the shadow of his thoughts.

The silence of the house was comforting. Fl pushed the front door, a slight smile touched on her lips when she saw her children running towards her, their little feet beating the ground with effervescent energy. One of them rushed into his arms, while the other two surrounded him with overflowing enthusiasm. Their joy was a breath of fresh air in a world that sometimes seemed too heavy, too heavy with secrets that she had to carry alone.

- Mom ! Mom ! You are finally there!

She hugged them, feeling the warmth of their young bodies against hers. They were the center of her universe, and their innocence protected her from the shadows of the past. But every time she looked at them, a weight grew in her, an invisible burden that she could not share with them.

She put a kiss on the head of each of her triplets, then slowly detached from their embrace.

- I came back, my treasures. Are you doing well ?

The smiles broke out on their faces, their eyes shone with happiness, but a part of her knew that she could never relax completely. The secret she was carrying in her was a breach in her inner peace. A secret that was likely to destroy everything if someone came to discover what she had hidden during all these years.

She had given them life, she had raised them alone, in the shadow of this story that she had never told anyone, and she never wanted it to become a burden for them.

But today, with each stealthy look exchanged between her and ML, with each thrill that he let out in the air, she knew that the truth was resurfaced. And if it were bursting, everything was likely to collapse around her.

She turned slightly, her thoughts landing on what was going on beyond these walls. Basically, she feared that the secret she had protected so long does not end up destroying everything. She stood there, in the illusion of security, but the rumbles of the past, they kept reaching it.

***

In the darkness of the night, ML was there, alone in the silent room of his house, his head pressed against the back of the chair. His gaze was lost in darkness, a dull agitation hugging his soul. The spirit occupied by memories which returned to haunt him.

The night.

The night he had found it.

The night when everything had changed, and however, nothing had really changed.

He remembered details with painful clarity: the softness of his skin under his fingers, the warmth of his breath against his neck, the feeling of his body against his, fragile and confident. They had been two foreigners in a world they knew too well, two lost souls who had found themselves. And yet, something in him was broken that night, something he couldn't repair.

He woke up in the morning, lost in this same emptiness that had always followed him, and left him behind without a word, without an explanation. He hadn't known. Or maybe he had chosen not to know. The responsibilities, the heaviness of his position as alpha ... All of this had seemed to him more important than he felt.

He got up, the room revolving around him. He walked towards the window and observed the glow of the moon filtering through the curtains, bathed in the space of this silver glow which seemed to make fun of him. The regrets still invaded him, and he wondered if he could have acts otherwise. But the questions remained unanswered. The past was too heavy. And she ... she had turned her back.

His thought turned to FL, this woman whom he had never completely forgotten. The pain he had caused, the way he had let her rebuild alone, all of this gnawed at the inside. But what disturbed him even more was the question of the future. He felt that something had changed in her. He no longer recognized her. She was different. Stronger, more distant, but something in his eyes ... Something he could not define, reminded him of memories that he did not want to face.

And he couldn't help but wonder if, by rejecting it in the past, he had not lost more than he thought.

He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply. All of this devoured him from the inside. He would have liked to go back, erase everything. But time was a calm sea that took the regrets without possible return.

And basically, he knew what he had lost would not come back. He also knew that sooner or later he should face the consequences of his actions. But, for the time being, he was only a broken man, haunted by memories of a night he would have preferred to forget, but who remained engraved in each fiber of his being.

He finally got up, his trembling hands sliding on the wooden wood, looking for the stability that his thoughts no longer offered him. He went to a neighboring room, a room he had never really used. There, among papers and forgotten books, he sought something, anything that could prevent him from getting lost again in this inner whirlwind.

But deep down, he knew that that night was not just a memory, not just a mistake among many others. That night was the start of a path he should one day take, and this path would probably lead him to her. To fl. Towards what he had left behind.

In the shadows of the forest, a sneaky murmur was circulating among the ancient ML allies, a wind of rumors which was becoming more and more pressing. One of his former rivals, a fallen alpha who had never stopped waiting for the opportunity to take power, had straightened up, taking advantage of ML's weakness. Since his betrayal and forced loneliness, ML was a weakened alpha, and the other, feeling the opportunity, sneaned through the packs of the pack to prepare his blow.

This alpha, more cunning than he had never been, knew exactly when to strike. He knew that ML, weakened and still marked by the loss of his status, was vulnerable. In secret meetings, he whispered in the ear of influential members of the pack, sowing doubt, fueling rumors. "A weak alpha is not worthy of the pack," he said. "The order must be restored. We need a stronger leader, a leader who will be able to defend our interests. »»

The murmurs grew, and several of the youngest, those who had not known ML in his full glory, began to ask questions. The seeds of doubt were sown, and they germinated quickly. ML's position seemed more and more precarious.

In this context of fragility, another emergency arose. A member of the pack, an experienced but elderly warrior fell seriously ill. The traditional remedies, herbs and potions that healers usually used did not work. The disease seemed strange, virulent, out of control of the pack capabilities. Time pressed, and panic began to settle. The Alpha could not ignore this problem, but he knew that the help of FL was the only chance to save their comrade.

After a night of reflection, ML finally decided to take one of the most humble steps of his life: he went to FL. It was not just the situation that pushed him towards her, but a mixture of guilt and despair. The coldness he had felt from him during their last meeting only intensified his need for help. But he had no other choice. The pack, its burden, the life of one of its members were at stake.

He arrived in the evening, just before the light started to withdraw from the horizon. When he presented himself at his door, his gaze was more humble than usual. He did not have the presence of an alpha in full force of his power, but that of a man who seeks a solution, who admits his weaknesses.

- FL, he said, standing in the doorway, a hand on the frame as if he still hesitated to enter. I need you. A member of my pack is seriously ill, and it seems that no one can help him. You are the only person I can call on.

The words, although pronounced with a tone that betrayed his desolation, were nothing begging. It was just the truth. He was at the end of his resources, and in this world of wolves, there was no place for pride when the life of a member of the pack was at stake.

Fl looked at him for a moment, seeking to understand what was hiding behind his gaze. She remembered the promises made once, broken ties, the love she had tried to forget, but that she had never been able to erase. However, at that moment, she knew that she could not turn her back on the situation. Someone's life was at stake.

- Come, she simply replied, her firm voice despite the storm of emotions that was shaking her heart. I will see what I can do. But you know it's not a question of magic or herbs. If your friend is also sick, it is because there is something more ... deep.

She invited him to enter, and without one more word, they headed for the room where the sick man was lying down, his laborious breathing and his abnormally pale skin. The ground seemed heavier under the footsteps of ML. The situation was pressing, and he could not avoid wondering, in the oppressive silence of the play, which still awaited his future.