The Nameless Luna – Book Three: For Her, He Falls: Chapter 12

My father rests a hand on Vanessa’s shoulder and places the other on my own, creating a sense of connection among the three of us that I can’t put into words.
Still crying, she releases me to look back at Marco, taking his hand from her shoulder while still clutching my own. I mirror her actions, creating a chain between the three of us as we sit in a little circle on the bed.
‘Look at her, Marco,’ she gasps with something between a sob and a laugh. ‘Look at you; you’re so big. My baby is all grown up.’
Vanessa’s face cracks with heartache as she looks at me, shaking her head. ‘He took you from me. He stole my baby away, and I missed so much. So many years… He took so much from me… All that time, I didn’t know what he’d done to you…’
‘Hey, it’s okay,’ I insist, squeezing her hand tightly. ‘Viktor is gone for good, and I’m here now.’
There will be time to grieve what was lost. We will have years to mourn the ones that were stolen from us. But right now, I’ve had enough sorrow, and I am not willing to give that man a single second more of my happiness. Not when I finally have what I never dared to hope for.
Friends. A pack. A family. My parents. We’re together now, and that’s all that matters.
‘There is so much I want to ask you, I don’t even know where to begin,’ I tell her.
‘Ditto,’ she says, smiling at me through her tears. ‘I want to know everything. I don’t even know what to call you.’
I tense at her words, and Tristan senses the shift in me, taking a step closer to the bed. Vanessa’s eyes widen, darting up as she suddenly realizes the three of us aren’t alone in the room.
‘It’s okay,’ I say quickly, turning back to look at Tristan, whose eyes are trained firmly on me, his expression calm and reassuring. ‘This is Tristan Lyall, Alpha of the Rovers. He’s- he’s…’
‘He’s your mate,’ Vanessa says softly, startling me. I whirl my head back around to stare at her in surprise.
‘How did you know?’
She gives me a knowing smile, but something woeful lingers behind her expression. ‘I may be a stranger to my own daughter, but a mother always knows. Just look at the way he watches you.’
I glance back to find Tristan still watching me, unflinching under my mother’s scrutiny as she looks back and forth between the two of us.
A few months ago, this man who didn’t believe in the mating bond would have been just as likely to avert his eyes and avoid my gaze as I was. But now, neither one of us looks away as we hold each other in the only way we can, considering the circumstances.
‘You have no idea,’ Vanessa says, finally drawing Tristan’s attention away from me, ‘How happy I am to meet you, Tristan Lyall. Thank you for watching over… I’m sorry, sweetheart, I still don’t know what to call you. What’s your name?’
I lower my eyes, shrinking slightly into myself. I still don’t have an answer.
‘I-I don’t have one. No one ever, um… I’m not…’ I stammer.
I suppose I could have just picked something for my friends to call me. I could have made up a name to tell her, but it did not feel right. A name is meant to be given. It is the first gift a child receives from their family. Names can be chosen or changed, but they cannot simply be plucked out of thin air for convenience’s sake. Where a word has meaning and definition, a name has a person. It is a life summed in a single string of letters.
Without a name, Viktor made me less than living. Without a name, what do you call out when you miss or need someone? Without a name, what would you curse when you’re angry or whisper tenderly when muttered in a lover’s embrace?
Tristan steps forward, standing beside me by the edge of the bed and resting a hand on my shoulder.
‘She has many names,’ he says softly, answering when I could not. ‘The nightwalkers call her princess, and I know the Night King calls her his diamond. To the five packs of Silvertooth Peaks, she is referred to as the queen, but to the Rovers, she is our flower.’
Vanessa’s expression darkens as understanding fills those blue eyes that shine brighter than Viktor’s ever could. After a moment, she blinks a few times, processing what Tristan has just said.
‘They call you flower?’ she asks, confusion and curiosity lacing her words.
‘Of course, I never got the chance to tell you,’ Marco says, smiling slightly despite the heaviness that hangs between us as he nudges my mother. ‘It seems our daughter inherited your love of things that grow, my star.’
‘You like horticulture?’ I ask tentatively.
Vanessa laughs, and it’s a bright, musical sound that I didn’t know I’d been missing my entire life.
‘Like it?’ Marco asks. ‘She adores it. We always used to say that when we eloped, and she came to live with me, she would start a garden right outside the castle.’
‘I was a botanist for the Banes, often working in tandem with the healer and apothecary of the pack. Viktor only allowed it for practical and medicinal purposes, but I always loved the poetry of it,’ Vanessa explains, her soft features still glowing with delight. ‘Oh, Marco, do you remember that book on flowers you got me? It was so long ago it seems like it’s been lifetimes since then.’
‘Careful, my star, we’re not THAT old.’
Did my father, the prim and proper Night King, just make a… joke? Marco, the vampire… kidding about being old?
Tristan coughs a little awkwardly as if he’s also struggling to make sense of what just happened.
I’ve never seen Marco like this, smiling and relaxed. It’s like there’s this whole other side of him that Vanessa brings out of him that he must have buried when he thought my mother had died.
‘I might not be, my love, but you are ancient,’ Vanessa retorted with another burst of that lovely laughter.
But something is nagging at me.
‘S-sorry, the book? What book?’
‘It was a gift from your father,’ Vanessa answers excitedly. ‘Something inconspicuous yet meaningful that I could have with me without drawing attention or raising suspicion. No one would question one more book forgotten between the shelves of the pack house, but I adored it. It was all about the significance of flowers and how they could be used to send messages and convey various meanings. What was the title? Something about… ‘The Secret Language of Flowers.”
The book I stole from Viktor’s library while cleaning. He never even realized it was gone because it wasn’t actually his. It was my mother’s.
All this time… that silly book is how I taught myself to read and write after Viktor only allowed me to learn the basics with the rest of the pack. It’s what first spiked my interest in plants and led me to find sanctuary in the gardens. A gift from Marco to Vanessa and then, by pure chance, passed on to me. All these years, I had a little piece of my mother with me, and I never even knew it.
‘Yes, exactly,’ Vanessa says, her excitement settling into something far more intimate and profound as she reads the emotion in my gaze.
‘When I found out you were pregnant, I turned to that book to look for a name. You were barely the distant promise of an impossible dream, but I swear I could feel your heart growing strong inside of me. I loved you from the first moment I felt you exist, even without knowing the beautiful young woman you would one day become.’
Tears sting my eyes once again, threatening to begin trickling down my cheeks all over again. ‘Did you find a name? Did you decide what to call me?’ I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
Vanessa’s smile softens, and she raises a hand to cup my cheek. ‘My daughter, you are a flower and a diamond and a princess and a queen. And I am so sorry I wasn’t there for any of it. If I can give you this small gift now… perhaps I am not too late.’
I’m impossibly aware of my mate standing by my side, and I get the sense that he is holding his breath in anticipation just as I am, his heart beating in tandem with mine. Because of him, I know who I am. I know what I am, what I stand for, what I believe in, and what I love.
Now all that’s left is to name it.
‘Before you were taken from me,’ Vanessa says. ‘Before you were even born… I called you Iris.’
‘A lovely name for a princess,’ Marco adds softly, kissing my mother’s cheek as if to grant his blessing of her choice.
‘What does it mean?’ Tristan asks.
‘It can mean a few things,’ I reply. ‘In Ancient Greece, irises symbolized a bridge between two worlds, a connection between heaven and earth. In certain parts of Europe, the flower could be used to denote royalty. Depending on the context, an iris can represent faith, valor, trust, and courage. But basically, the most common meaning is-‘
‘Hope,’ my mother interjects with a soft smile. ‘Iris means hope.’
Yes. Okay. This is me.
Iris means hope.