The Nameless Luna – Book Three: For Her, He Falls: Chapter 13

It took three days and three nights of tireless work to get help for all those who were injured and to get the dead to their final resting place.
I spent most of that time with Vanessa, helping the healers. Although Marco had insisted my mother remain in bed and rest, by the second day, she’d outright refused to stay inside. She’d spent long enough locked away and was more than happy to assist the healers with her knowledge of botany as they tended to the wounded from the battle while the warriors burned the bodies of those who would never recover.
Working alongside Vanessa also gave me a chance to get to know the woman who’d brought me into the world. She’s so different from my father. She is all the soft curves to his stiff edges, her laughter far too loud, and her patience short. She is easily distracted but difficult to disagree with, and she has so many questions. When she isn’t bombarding me with them, she is chatting away with the others, learning everything she can about the time while was locked away.
Three days to catch up on more than two decades of life.
Sometimes I look at her, and I still can’t quite believe she’s real. Every few hours or so, my father finds some excuse to stop by the infirmary to check on her and look at her the same way.
Tristan has not come by to check on me.
I see him in passing when I join the others for our daily meals, and I leave the door to my room open when I go to sleep, but he doesn’t approach me. I don’t know what else I was expecting.
There has been plenty of work to be done, and this distance between us feels like a necessary precaution. The curse that tore us apart is still marked over my heart, a single constant in a world so full of change.
As a matter of fact, it sometimes feels like that wretched scar on my soul is the only thing that has stayed the same.
In four days’ time, there will be a conclave to mark one week since the battle, and after that, even more things will change. The wolves cannot stay in the nightwalker’s kingdom forever, and now that there has been time to grieve the dead, the living have become restless.
So, at the upcoming meeting, the surviving Betas, Deltas, and Gammas, or whoever is still alive and able to represent each of the five packs, will gather in my father’s war room, along with the Night King and his advisors, Tristan, and the Rovers’ inner circle. I’m not sure exactly who I’m meant to represent in this gathering, but I know I must participate in this council that will determine the future of our people. Actually, I’m expected to step up as the new leader of the five packs.
…We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
I want to speak with Tristan before then, but I don’t even know what to say. Would it even matter?
‘You’re doing that thing again, Iris,’ Lucy says suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.
The Rovers had been quick to express their approval of my new name when I told them about it, but I’m still not used to hearing it. Just one more thing that feels surreal about this new world we’re living in.
‘What thing?’ I ask as I set down the mortar and pestle I’d been using to grind up herbs.
Lucy has been helping Helena run the makeshift infirmary. She seems to be thriving in this environment, and Sophie even mentioned the possibility of Lucy becoming her apprentice as the pack shaman. With Lucy’s own superpower of perception and gossip, she hardly needs to be a Seer to know what goes on in her pack.
‘That thing where your big, purple eyes get all sad and distant when you think about Tristan. Nico calls it your ‘feelings face.’ Have you talked to him lately?’
‘To Nico?’ I ask, knowing full well that’s not what she meant. ‘No, he’s usually too busy talking to you. What’s going on between you two anyway?’
‘Don’t try and change the subject,’ she huffs, blowing a stray black curl out of her eyes. ‘Tristan makes a ‘flower face’ too when he sees you too. You guys can’t keep avoiding each other.’
‘What is there to talk about? He’s my mate, but I can’t mate with him. I love him, but being with him could kill us both. It’s an impossible situation, and I don’t know how talking about it is going to make it better.’
Also, it hurts. I don’t just mean in the literal sense because of the curse. Being around Tristan is painful in an entirely non-magical way. It’s the sort of anguish that comes with any heartbreak. If he’s decided to pull away and keep busy, maybe it’s for the best.
‘You tried not talking to Tristan in hopes of protecting him once before, remember? Refresh my memory; how did that work out for you last time?’
It led to a horrible misunderstanding that ultimately culminated with him declaring his love for me before we ended up fighting side by side in a war that nearly killed us both.
When I first met Lucy, she complained that I didn’t talk much. If I recall correctly, she also scolded me for giving my mate the silent treatment.
I really should know better by now.
I don’t have to admit it out loud; the miserable look on my face tells Lucy everything she needs to know.
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ she says. After a moment, Lucy points to where Amara is resting on a stretcher with Helena by her side. ‘Look at them.’
The cuts on Amara’s face are healing nicely, though the scars will likely never fade, and she can only see out of one eye now. Nonetheless, she’s talking intently with the nightwalker’s healer, and the two of them seem completely caught up in the conversation. Over the past three days, they’ve become rather fast friends, and Helena’s constant presence is the only reason Mark is willing to leave his mate’s side long enough to help out anywhere else.
‘I’ve known Amara for nearly half of my life, and I’ve never seen her talk as much as she does with that bloodthirsty little healer,’ Lucy says with a smile. ‘They make quite a pair, don’t you think? A vampire and a werewolf chatting away like lifelong friends. Just look at the two of them, thick as thieves. A few months ago, I would have told you that vampires don’t exist, and if they did, Amara would probably kill them on sight.’
She’s right. So many unbelievable things have happened; I suppose at some point, I stopped keeping track.
‘A few months before that,’ Lucy goes on, ‘I would have said that Sophie would never leave her cottage in the woods, my brother would never defend an outsider, and Tristan would never commit to a mate after what happened with his parents. I’d say it was impossible for anyone to defeat the Banes. It was impossible for Tristan to get across a battlefield that sounded like it came straight out of a nightmare. It was impossible for a scrawny girl with purple eyes and a shitload of trauma to kill an Alpha.’
Okay, it’s maybe not the most poetic phrasing, but I see her point.
Impossible things are happening all around me. But there is one impossible thing that I would not be able to endure.
‘I can’t hurt him, Lucy. I just can’t. If this curse kills him… if it harms him in any way… it would destroy me. I love him.’
‘So tell him,’ she says softly, sensing how close I am to breaking at the very thought. ‘You have already hurt him, whether you meant to or not. You’ll do it again, and he will hurt you, if he hasn’t already. It can’t be helped. Pain is part of the package when you love someone, but that doesn’t mean you stop. All you can do is pick which parts you hold on to: the heartache or the hope.’
In a few days, an Alpha King or a Luna Queen will be chosen to unite the packs. After that, I’m guessing Tristan and the rest of the Rovers will go back to their town and back to that beautiful villa by the lake. My mom and dad will stay here, and I will have a choice to make. I don’t necessarily have to lose whoever I don’t pick; there’s nothing wrong with commuting, especially when you can shapeshift and fly. But I will have to decide. There’s no escaping it.
I swore I wouldn’t run away, but in a way, I did.
Never again.
‘How did you get so wise?’ I ask Lucy with a little smile that she immediately returns.
‘I learned from my friends, Iris,’ she replies pointedly.
Viktor is gone. He trained an abundance of fear into me; he taught me such shame and self-loathing. But I have learned so much more now. I can decide which lessons I hold on to and which ones I let go of.
‘I need to go find Tristan,’ I say, more to myself than to Lucy.
Because change is all around us, shaped by the choices we make, and if there is one thing I chose to hold on to… just one thing… I chose him.