Page 1 of His Fated Luna

Prologue

Estelle screamed as she gave one final push, and the room filled with the shrieks of an infant.

“A girl!” her husband and fated mate, Ezra, proclaimed proudly, gripping his wife’s hand as he was overcome with emotion. “She’s… She’s perfect, Estelle. Thank you… thank you.”

He leaned in to kiss his exhausted wife on the forehead. Ezra, the beta of the Bloodfire Phoenix pack, might not believe in traditional human weddings, but he’d had one for Estelle, his fated mate.

“Is she…is she fine?” Estelle asked weakly, holding out her arms for the crying babe.

“She’s beautiful!” the nurse exclaimed glowingly, handing over the baby.

“Rose…Ezra. I want to name her Rose,” Estelle spoke weakly, clutching her baby girl who was still crying and covered in blood.

“Rose it is!” Ezra exclaimed joyfully as his daughter was whisked away to be checked over thoroughly and brought back for her first feeding.

“I…I don’t feel so good, Ezra,” Estelle whispered, closing her eyes.

“You’re amazing, my love. You just gave birth. Give yourself time to rest and recuperate,” Ezra assured her, patting his mate’s shoulder lovingly.

There was a small commotion and the nurse and doctor hurried back with the baby excitedly.

“She bears the mark of our next luna!” the nurse proclaimed, pulling the newborn’s white blanket away to show her left arm.

A dark-red, phoenix-shaped birthmark resided on the inside of her upper arm, just before her shoulder began.

A child born on pack soil who bore the mark of the Bloodfire Phoenix was the predestined luna. She was the one born with powers to converse with the dead ancestors of the pack. And it seemed that the human mate of the pack beta had just given birth to the next luna. She would be the fated mate of the alpha’s son, who was only one year old right now. Ezra frowned as he digested the implications of this mark on his infant’s arm.

“Our luna has been born!” the doctor said with a happy smile. “What an honor,” he said reverently, looking down at the infant.

Estelle smiled, her eyes still closed. “She’s destined for great things, Ezra.”

Ezra, unable to cope with this new piece of news, suddenly felt as if his child had been taken from him. This was his baby girl! How dare the pack lay claim to her? He hadn’t even had time to hold her properly and now everyone was going to start fussing over her and… his train of thought stilled when a piercing pain shot through his body. Confused, he turned to his mate andrealized she was no longer breathing. This pain was the pain of his mate passing away!

“Estelle?” he asked fearfully, shaking her shoulder where his hand was resting. He did not want to believe what his heart screamed to be true. Estelle’s head lolled to the side, and she remained lifeless. “ESTELLE!” he yelled in anguish.

And that was how Rose’s mother died, a smile on her lips and internal bleeding that the doctors had not foreseen. It was very rare for werewolves to die in childbirth due to their regenerative abilities, but Estelle was not a werewolf. Human mates were very rare. It had never occurred to anyone that maybe she was better off delivering in a human hospital instead of the pack’s clinic. Maybe…, just maybe, a human doctor would have been more accustomed to all the things that could go wrong. Estelle might still be alive if she’d delivered at a human hospital.

Plagued by guilt over not being able to save his wife, Ezra fell into despair, throwing himself into his work. Rose would always be the light of his life, but even her pudgy fists gripping his fingers, or her toothless smile, was not enough to lessen the depression in his heart. Estelle’s sister, Hilda, took over the rearing of her niece whenever Ezra was out with his alpha for pack work. She moved to the pack lands, leaving her human life behind. Sometimes, Josie, the current luna of the pack, would stop by bringing her son Aiden, who was a mere toddler at that time, to check in on her future daughter-in-law.

It was uncanny how the infant would hush when Aiden was nearby. For his part, Aiden would look at the baby, fascinated by her coos. Josie had given birth recently, but Aiden’s new brother did not fascinate him the way that little Rose did.

“Pwetty!” he exclaimed, on a warm sunny day when Josie was visiting (she had left her younger son with an omega babysitter) while Ezra had gone out with her husband to inspect theperimeter of the pack territory. Aiden was pointing to the wild unruly curls atop the one-year-old's head

“Oh, she’s going to have a wild time trying to style her hair.” Josie laughed fondly, looking at the baby trying to crawl on her chubby legs on the plush carpet in the sitting room. She couldn't walk yet, unlike her werewolf counterparts who were already zooming around on their legs by the age of eight months.

“Her…her progress is a little slow…no?” Hilda asked, biting her lower lip worriedly.

By now, most werewolves were getting into everything.

“Don’t worry about it,” Josie assured loftily. “Every child is different. She is part human, after all. The doctor said her werewolf genes would lay dormant until her first turn at twenty-one.”

Hilda nodded, still worried about her niece. If younger werewolves were anything like their teen human counter-parts, her niece would have a tough time. “I worry sometimes; she might not fit in…”

“Nonsense, she’s the future luna of the pack. No one would dare bully her,” admonished Josie.

The two females continued to chat until there was a sudden crash from the front door. A canister rolled into the sitting room. Gas exploded and the two adults were sent into coughing fits. Rose began to cry, as did little two-year-old Aiden. Both females went to pick up their respective charges and then run out of the house.

“Take them,” Josie implored, dumping her son into Hilda’s arms.