Page 3 of Forever My Siren Luna (The Hidden Cove #2)

Jack

She looked stunning standing at the wheel, barking orders and commanding the ship just ahead of mine. I stood mesmerized by the beauty and power surrounding her.

“Slow her down, Lucky,” I told my first mate, talking about this ship.

I don’t want to trigger my fierce Ela by having her wear a damned corset.

She would be too proud to not live up to the bet, but I know she won’t like it.

If seeing me in the rib-crushing torture device the ladies fancy that makes their tits touch their chin makes her happy, I’ll gladly wear the blasted thing.

I would rather look ridiculous than make her uncomfortable.

“She ain’t goin’ be too happy findin’ out your let ‘er win, Cap’n.” Lucky shook his head at me with a knowing smirk.

“You’d best keep your mouth shut then,” I told him.

I would have gladly left her in the dust if she hadn’t added that last bit to the challenge.

I would never intentionally cause her distress by making her do such a thing, even if it was her idea.

Remembering her first days aboard my ship, and her panic being surrounded by unfamiliar men has me too worried to let her dress like Beretta.

Beretta liked giving the men a show. My fierce little Ela did not.

Ela is a beauty for sure, but she didn’t appreciate men gawking at her.

I had to drill into my men to keep their eyes off her, especially when she was shifting between her and her fierce Lycan.

I know she thinks she's okay with nudity and being around men, but I still can't help but to worry.

I would never stop her from doing whatever she wanted with her body, but I'll be damned if I let my men gawk at her.

She may be alright now, but I’m still not. Seeing the haunted look in her eyes, thinking we were going to do the worst to her was all too familiar to me. My mother, sister….my own mate and wife, all had that same look before their deaths, me being forced to watch the whole time.

My surprise at finding out that she was the niece of the man responsible for the death and destruction of my loved ones and my pack was almost as great as my surprise at finding out that she was the mate of Alpha Lachlan Stiles of Hidden Cove, the pack Wayne Lambert has had his eye on for over a decade now, but could never attain.

Ela eventually told me her story, or at least enough of it anyway for me to understand she had led a trauma-filled life, just like me and every single one of my men.

We are all survivors, and with her, I feel we finally have a chance at justice; a reason for hope of something more than living the rough life of a pirate on the sea.

I believe there is much more she isn’t telling me.

I could never get a clear reason why she ran away from her mate, or how she ended up on that island.

Sometimes she would wade in the shallows of the sea, staring out in the distance, her hand resting on her throat with a lost look on her elegant face with her golden hair blowing around her in the wind.

Even now, something is still haunting her.

I can see the pain and the longing in her eyes as she stares into the ocean void.

I thought maybe she hated her mate and his pack, that maybe they had hurt her too, but she had been fighting this fight against her Uncle's forces, solely wanting to do all this for them.

After I told her my story, and told her all I knew of her uncle, she declared it her life’s mission to put a stop to him for good. Her fierce determination and her drive to protect her mate’s pack made her all the more intriguing for me.

I wanted her for myself all the more.

She has a mate, and even though she can’t speak about him without her eyes burning with fury, she claims there has been no rejection. So, I am biding my time, earning her trust and hopefully showing her that in all the ways her mate failed her, I never will.

It would help if she disclosed with me what exactly he did to her. If I could discover what she was hiding from on that island, what she had run from, maybe I could get just a tiny bit closer to having her see me as more than just her captain or her mentor.

Maybe I could get her to choose me.

Each full moon, the desire to claim her stirs my beast, but we both know better than to force a bond to break.

I would never take that choice from my fierce little Ela.

It seems as if she has had enough choices taken from her in her short life.

My beast and I could never be the reason for her to lose the fight she now has raging inside her.

No, if she chooses me, it will be because she knows I’m the better choice. It will be because she did things the right way, rejecting her mate and trusting me enough to tell me her full story; everything that led her to me.

With the time drawing near for her requested time to be returned to her mate’s pack, in order for her to help save it from an impending attack that she seems so sure is coming for it, my time will soon come. I’m not letting her go alone. Me and my men will be fighting alongside her.

I will finally be able to take her mate’s measure and decipher what issues are between them. I will aid my fierce Ela in her mission, then finally declare my desires I have been keeping to myself when she no longer feels burdened with still playing Luna to her mate’s pack.

Pressuring her now; taking away the sense of security she feels while hiding behind me and my band of men by burdening her with my feelings before she trusts me is not how I will win her.

I will show her. Words mean nothing in this life.

If they did, my pack would still be standing, my mate and family would still be alive, and the alliance I had struck with that bastard might have actually saved us from the demons plaguing us from the Northern clans.

Words are cheap. Actions and deeds are where a man proves his worth, and I will prove mine.

I grin wholeheartedly, laughing quietly under my breath as I watch my fierce Ela cheering with Beretta and her crew on the deck of their ship when they pull into the harbor first.

Yes, wearing a corset for a few hours was all the more worth it to see her smile.

~

Elelira

The noise from the bar is drifting out the swinging doors, the piano coming alive now that old man Harry has had a few too many.

I enjoy the nights with the crew and the easy banter from being around everyone in high spirits from a successful raid, but the more I drank, the more nostalgic the scene became for me.

It reminded me of Yasmin, Lady Vera, the madam who ran the brothel in Hidden Cove, and so many of my friends who I miss dearly.

When Captain Jack in his borrowed corset, which was practically ripping at the seams, offered me coffee laced with rum, it reminded me so much of Cherum that I had to fight to not show my inner emotions.

Even Val started to miss our red-bearded protector.

As Beretta started in about her ex-mate and the shit he put her through with his continual cheating, I had to escape for a bit. It hit home for me, and Val had to retreat in my mind to not let her sorrow overtake her.

Now, she's curled in a ball, trying to rest after the day's events, and I'm left with all these troubling thoughts to sort out on my own.

It’s easy to forget how much I miss Hidden Cove and the people I left behind when I’m busy fighting for them on the sea, but at night it got a lot harder.

There isn't all the noise and distractions of the day from being out at sea and fighting with our own hands for once.

On land, without an external fight, the fight came inwards as I battled the ghosts that haunt me and the memories of two lifetimes.

My chest heaved as I took deep breaths of the salty sea air, staring out at the moon reflecting off the ocean in the distance.

I could hear the waves crashing on shore, but it’s so dark on this hidden island with so little population, that I can’t see them as well as I could back at Lachlan’s castle.

I used to sit at my window and watch the waves every night as Killian or Lachlan brushed my hair. That seems like a lifetime ago now.

Lachlan….

My last memory of him was not a good one, but we did have many good ones before everything fell apart; before I realized he was lying to me. I wondered what he was doing right now? I half expected to feel betrayal pains every night, but I haven’t felt them once.

I don’t know what to make of that.

Was he trying to be mindful so I don't feel the pain and might come back?

Was he finding other ways to pleasure himself?

I heard from Yasmin before that some men preferred to just watch women pleasure themselves instead of touching them.

Was he resorting to those methods now that I know everything and he doesn't have me to cling to each night?

Was he resorting to those methods while I was still there?

His face when I walked into his office to see him with Leona still bothered me.

He looked angry; fiercely angry. When I would see him with all those women in my first life, he didn’t bare that sort of face while fornicating with them.

He reserved that expression for me, the person he resented most at the time.

It was a cruel reminder of my past to walk in on him like that.

After finding out that he was the same man with the same memories from our first lives, then walking in on him doing that with another woman, it was like both lives were merging into one.

It was too much for me. Val took over and ran.

I don’t think she even expected to be able to shift into my siren form, the magic in the necklace draining into me at the time. It just happened.

We have tried since then to take our siren form again, and it seems without the necklace it is hopeless.

I left the necklace on the island where Jack found me, but when he went back to get it, he said the island was swarming with Lachlan’s warriors.

I bet Cedric tracked me using it, just like I suspected he could.

There is no way for me to recover it without returning to Hidden Cove.

Soon, I will be doing just that.

When I stopped trying to fight Jack and escape him, he opened up to me about himself and his crew.

Everyone here has been a victim of my uncle at some point in time.

Beretta was also a member of my uncle's pack, mated to one of his warriors. She got away and found Jack, and many others have similar stories. Most were survivors of destroyed packs, like Jack. When he told me the events that led up to all of their packs’ demise, it was too familiar of a story to be a coincidence.

My uncle has been taking over every neighboring pack’s territory for decades, using the northern clans and tribes to do his dirty work.

He signs alliance agreements with the other packs, always in his favor, then uses the treaty to take over the pack and acquire all their resources when he’s done.

The vampire and demon clans he worked with would get to keep the members still alive, and my uncle gets the things he wants, like gold, oil, agriculture, or in Jack’s pack’s case, his fishing grounds and access to the magic gemstone mining in his pack.

Jack’s pack was just north of my uncle’s and touched the sea a bit.

Not like Hidden Cove, but they had navy boats to help transport their jewels and freshwater fish to other lands for trading.

He said his mistake was taking his pack’s goods to my uncle’s pack one season nearly a decade ago when he first became alpha, hoping to strike up a new trade deal.

My uncle must have had his eyes on Jack’s pack from the start, because soon after that, the Northern clans started to invade Jack’s lands and wreak havoc on his people.

Uncle was eager to build an alliance with him as long as he was granted exclusive rights to the fishing and mining industry.

For the next year, my uncle’s men followed Jack and his pack members around his territory, learning how the mining worked and how to fish the salmon in the streams, since it couldn’t be done by nets like fishing in the sea is done.

Once the men were confident in their abilities to take over those two main sources of income for the pack, my uncle orchestrated for the Northern Clan to attack again. Only this time, they succeeded in overtaking Jack’s entire pack.

I asked Jack why he allowed those men in his pack so freely. Lachlan never trusted my uncle’s men enough to even grant them freedom to walk in town on their own. How an Alpha would just let those men invade his domain like that confused me.

He said that they seemed trustworthy at the time and he was young and naive. He thought he was keeping his people safe by having the extra help from my uncle's warriors around. They never hurt his pack members like what happened to Yasmin, and they never seemed anything but friendly.

When they took over everything, the first thing the men from my uncle’s pack did was to take Jack’s family and brutalize them, before killing them in the end.

Jack’s beast was being sedated by silver and wolfsbane, but after feeling his mate’s death after the endless torture, his beast was able to use his anger to break free and somehow escaped.

He looked lost as he told me this part of the story, his eyes glazed over as if he was reliving it.

It tore at me to see that look on his face, because I went through something similar to his mate before my death.

It helped me to trust Jack enough to stop trying to run away from him, and I told him a watered down version of what happened to me.

I told him about my uncle, what his men did to me, though I left out that it all happened in my first life.

I told him about being given to Lachlan to form an alliance treaty and how Lachlan ended up being my mate.