Leave Janelle by Sarah Spade
2
I’m not being the least bit dramatic when I say that the cycle of the moon is the bane of my existence.
You’d think that, as a shifter, I would be used to it by now. Though us wolves can change between fur and skin whenever we want to, there’s something about the full moon that rules us. Whether it’s because we revere the Luna as our goddess, or if her pull controls our inner beasts the same way the moon controls the tide, I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter. When the Luna hangs heavy in the sky, we are our beasts.
We fight. We fuck. We feast.
And, most importantly, it’s on the night of the full moon that I can be trapped with Jack forever.
The Luna Ceremony is simple enough. For a shifter to bond with their mate, there needs to be a marking, then a claiming with the Luna as witness. If she blesses your mating—and she always does, especially when it’s fated—then the bond snaps into place and the pair is bonded.
Together.
Forever.
For three years, I’ve been careful to avoid Jack on the night of the full moon. Though my human side refuses to be tied to him until death do us part, I’m still an omega wolf. He’s the Alpha. As much as I hate to admit it, if he pushes it, my inner wolf would show him her throat, then whine until he mounts me. I’d be helpless to stop it—and then we’d be bonded before the full moon set. My senses would return with the daylight, but the damage would be done. Literally, too, since any mark made during the Luna Ceremony would stay as a scar that would never heal.
Just further proof that he isn’t interested in having a bonded mate. Even on the few times that he demanded to rut when the moon was full, he didn’t mark me. Oh, no. He always saves his bites and his slashes and his claw marks for every other night of the year because he doesn’t want to settle for any one female. Why would he when, as Alpha, he could have countless?
Of course, as both his intended and his fated mate, the Luna has her own way of tying us together. Until he rejects me fully, choosing to bond to another female and finally setting me free, I’m the only one who can bear him a pup. All it took was him mating me during the height of the full moon one time and I fell pregnant.
I hadn’t known that was even possible. Pack lore said that only bonded mates could create pups, but Jack boasted that he was such a powerful alpha wolf shifter, even the Luna wanted him to spread his seed and continue to grow his pack before he settled down with me for good.
But then none of his other bedmates could conceive, and when my pup was finally born, he was disgusted to find that she took after me. Our daughter was another omega. A weakling. A disgrace.
And if I’ve spent the last year doing everything in my ability to keep up that facade, it’s worth it.
All the times Jack took his aggression out on me. All the times he ignored Ruby entirely before ordering me to all fours so that I could give him a worthy pup instead of an omega runt. All the times I struggled to heal the marks he left behind because I was using too much of my omega nature to cover up the truth of what type of wolf my Ruby really is… it’s all worth it because the alternative is simply unfathomable.
Still, I’ve learned how to manage my mate during the full moon. Jack’s temper and his lusts and the way the Luna affects my wolf aren’t why I dread her appearance. Not entirely.
Nope. It’s my poor baby.
It takes so much out of me and my wolf to conceal Ruby in the days leading up to the full moon because—as I first discovered when I came to live as Jack’s mate—an alpha is even more affected by her than the rest of the pack.
Jack, in particular, is a monster.
His wolf has always been more vicious than most. The Western Pack excuses it because an Alpha must be strong, must be protective, must be a fighter, but I’ve always believed there’s a line between an Alpha and a vicious killer. Jack Walker is firmly on the other side of that line.
His mood is pretty volatile on the best of days but during the full moon? I’m not the only one who goes easy like I’m padding on broken glass. It’s not unusual for a packmate or two to go missing, and when the current Beta—because Jack just can’t seem to keep a right-hand wolf at his side—inevitably asks what happened to them, his answer is always the same: “We went hunting.”
Only there’s never any meat, and the missing packmates never return. Considering his obsession with growing the pack so that it’s not only the largest pack in the West but in all the States, if I didn’t already know that Jack was a sadistic sociopath, that would’ve been one hell of a clue.
That’s not all, either. As the pack Omega, I have an empathic ability unique to my status. Just like how I can attempt to calm certain packmates—or, in the case of Ruby, use my ranking to shield hers—I can also sense how they’re feeling. An unstable Alpha leads to some of the more dominant shifters losing control. Riled up in response to Jack’s alpha aura, they get the brilliant idea to challenge him.
And, of course, he just has to put them down. With the whole pack serving as witness to his power, Jack often uses the full moon as an excuse to rip those wolves apart as a warning to any would-be alphas that to challenge him was to beg for death.
Even worse, he insists that I be present, front and center, for every challenge fight. As his intended, these brutal bouts are supposed to be his way of proving that he’s both the strongest male in the pack and the perfect mate for me.
But if he was? He’d know that being forced to watch another wolf be ripped to shreds has exactly the opposite effect on an omega.
My kind is historically coddled, but for good reason. Omegas can usually soothe any of their more dominant packmates, but even the most bloodthirsty wolf is a pussycat when compared to Wicked Wolf Walker.
I know why he does it. It’s punishment. Even if Jack doesn’t want to be formally bonded to me any more than I want to be tied to him, he’s punishing me for every full moon that I refuse to perform the Luna Ceremony with him. He hunts and he fights and he’ll find someone else to rut with regardless, but he makes me pay every single time the Luna appears.
I take that, too. I have no choice. The fights weren’t as common before Ruby—when I could use all of my omega nature to soothe Jack so that he only took his aggression out on me and not the whole pack—but since then? As awful as it is, I made a choice. To protect my pup, I knew I had to sacrifice my minor hold on her father. I couldn’t calm him, and he’s only gotten worse in the moons since she was born.
The last full moon, Jack spent the afternoon into the early evening with Portia, and by the time he decided it was my turn, he was intercepted, then challenged by a young alpha who had recently joined the pack.
The boy was barely eighteen. No match for Jack. Knowing that, the Alpha didn’t bother calling the pack together to watch him. He didn’t even shift. Relying on just his claws, he beckoned the boy close before gutting him, then ripping out his throat. As he gargled on his blood, Jack stepped over him and, with barely a hitch in his stride, he stalked the rest of the way to my cabin.
With an unholy amount of perverse pleasure, he gleefully told me how it took longer for the boy to die than it did for Jack to kill him. Then, his eyes lighting up when he saw the horror I couldn’t hide, he smirked and, using the same bloody claws, sliced my skirt to pieces.
And though he usually prefers to make me go on all fours so that he can fuck me from behind, the sick bastard ordered me to my bed, pushing me to my back. He laid on top of me, shoving himself inside of me as he licked the tears from my cheeks.
It was just another reminder that there isn’t a single part of me that doesn’t belong to him.
Jack likes it when I cry, especially when it’s because of an emotional hurt rather than a physical one. Over the years, I’ve gotten used to the pain.
I thought I had gotten used to his cruelty, too, but I was wrong.
That’s the thing about the Wicked Wolf of the West. Whenever I think that he can’t be crueler, he glories in proving me wrong. Honestly, except for when he’s flexing his dominance over those weaker than him, it’s the only time I ever really sense any true happiness coming from him.
That should have been enough. The pleasure he got from killing a kid—and his enjoyment at how I cried over his inhumanity—should have been enough to make me realize that I couldn’t keep playing my games with Jack forever. I might have managed to avoid being forced into bonding myself to him these last three years, but I’ve been fooling myself if I thought he wouldn’t grow tired of it and push me to say yes.
I thought I had a little more time, though.
Turns out, I didn’t.
* * *
All too soon,it’s another month.
Another cycle.
Another full moon.
Even if I didn’t know she was coming, I could sense the Luna’s approach. It’s a shifter thing. My whole body is vibrating, the little hairs on the back of my neck standing straight as I try to shake off my body’s needs.
I need to shift. I need to run. I need to let my wolf side take over, and I need to throw my head back and bay up at her.
More than all of that, though, I ache with the desire to let my mate mount me and rut away.
Whenever it’s this close to the full moon, it’s a struggle not to give in to the demands of my wolf. As much as she knows that our mate is no good for us, she’s always been blinded by the large blond wolf with the sharp fangs and the possessive gleam in his bright gold eyes.
Every moon since Jack marched into the territory of my former pack, claiming me in front of everyone I’ve ever known, then bringing me back with him to the Wolf District, I’ve fought the urge to let him mark me. It was harder in the early days, and only his initial refusal to bond an omega to him outright kept me safe. Later, I did everything I could to stop him, and though it’s so incredibly difficult when the Luna is out, I think of Ruby and I manage.
I have to.
I got lucky this month. Leading up to this full moon, he’s been busy with pack business. Three days ago, he left for the annual pack meet where every Alpha gets together to posture and threaten and, in some cases, make alliances. Some Alphas bring their families with them, but not Jack. I’m weak, therefore I’m a weakness. And the fewer people who know that his pup appears to be another omega, the better.
Since he left, the whisper-thin bond between us is stretched taut, leading out of the Wolf District. The pack meet ended last night, and though he’s not back home yet, he will be soon. I can sense his approach like an oncoming train.
It’s rushing, it can roll right over me, and there isn’t a Luna damned thing I can do to avoid it.
He’ll be back by tomorrow’s full moon. I’m sure of it. No pack meet ever lasts through a full moon, and even if I could pretend it might, I got confirmation that he’s already on his way back to our territory from the Beta of the Western Pack.
Jack’s most recent Beta is a cocky wolf about ten years older than I am. Scott took over when Caleb couldn’t hack the position any longer. I try not to focus on the fact that I haven’t seen claw nor fang of Caleb since he told Jack he wanted out of the job three months ago.
It’s… it’s easier that way.
Scott is definitely a good match for Jack. There’s a vindictive gleam in his dark eyes that reminds me far too much of the Alpha, and if rumors hold true, he’s got a sadistic streak a mile wild.
And that’s not the only thing he has in common with the Alpha.
Last night, Scott came by to see me. He told me to expect Jack some time today—just like he told me that, if I was lonely while I waited for my mate to return, he was more than happy to warm my bed until Jack was back.
He wants to fuck me, and he’s willing to risk Jack’s notorious temper for a chance. I could sense lust oozing off of him even before he made his offer. Determination, too. Like he believed that, if he could convince the Alpha’s mate to choose him, he might have a shot at challenging Jack for control of the pack next.
It’ll never happen, and not just because I appear to be completely loyal to Jack.
I’ve only ever been with one male and that’s my mate; whether I’d choose him or not doesn’t change the fact that, for now, Jack Walker is my mate. I was barely twenty when the Luna told him that I was his intended mate and he came to retrieve me. Though he had his choice of tracking down his fated mate or choosing one of his own, he went with fate—even when he discovered that an omega was the female meant for him.
It was all a part of the Alpha Ceremony, another one of our shifter rituals. When Jack challenged the last Alpha of the Western Pack and won his position, he was installed as Alpha and—in a ceremony that I still don’t understand—given the identity of his fated mate. Each pack needs an Alpha couple, which means that their Alpha needs his mate. I was Jack’s, and that was that.
As an omega, it wasn’t as if the other males in my former pack were lining up to mate me even before I met him. They treated me as if I was made of porcelain. Coddled. Protected. I was breakable, and none of the males wanted to be the one to damage the precious omega in their midst.
Since then, Jack has delighted in doing exactly that. But just like how he’s the only one who can hurt me, he’s definitely the only one who can fuck me.
Too bad his Beta didn’t get the memo.
From the moment Scott appeared on my doorstep, I knew precisely why he was there. He came on the pretense that he was checking up on his Alpha’s mate and pup while he was away, but Scott made it a point to tell me that Jack wouldn’t be back until morning. And, wouldn’t you know, he was more than willing to stay over the night to make sure we were taken care of.
And if I wanted to invite him to my bed, no one ever needed to know. After all, the full moon is coming, and we’re wolves.
We fight.
We fuck.
And Jack would kill Scott if I even thought about accepting his offer.
I sent him away. Of course I did. Even if I had any intention of letting another male touch me, it would never be an arrogant Beta who reminded me of Jack. And it had to be pure arrogance since he not only thought I’d accept him, but he seemed sure that Jack wouldn’t pop his head off like a freaking dandelion for attempting to sleep with his mate.
The bond between us is weaker than it should be between fated mates, but it’s still there. No matter how many times I desperately hope it will break, I know it won’t. Not unless Jack wills it to—or until I finally find the nerve to reject him. Since I haven’t, choosing any other male while I’m still his fated mate just can’t happen.
Of course, the rules don’t apply to him. Oh, no. Jack can have countless females, but me? I belong to the Wicked Wolf and him alone.
That’s how it’s been for three long years so far, and no matter how I wish things were different, I can’t see how they’re going to change any time soon.
At least I still have Ruby.
I’d do anything for her.
And I mean anything.