Page 125 of His Fated Luna

“It’s one of the reasons,” he admitted vaguely. “I still hate the book. Maybe I’ll try reading it again in a few months to see if I still feel the same way.”

I stared at my laptop screen listlessly.

“That’s fair, I suppose. You’re entitled to your own opinion.”

My voice sounded like I was somewhere far away. I was still emotionally wrecked from Aiden's gift.

“Go enjoy it,” his voice cajoled me.

My head snapped up. “What?”

“Go to your room and enjoy the audio book. I’ll clean up here.” He motioned to the old books spread out on the table. “I can send coffee up for you, if you want.”

“But what about the re—”

“It can wait. I know you well enough to know by now that what you really want is to go listen to the book in the privacy of your room.” Aiden was already walking around, gathering up the books for me. He waved me off. “Go.”

And before I could think twice, I stood up, grabbing my laptop bag. Staring at him with uncertainty for a minute as he was peering down at my notes, the insecure girl inside me made a split-second decision. I squared my shoulders and closedthe distance between us. Standing on my tiptoes, I reached up to kiss him on the cheek to thank him, to show him my appreciation. And then I backed away.

Pausing at the threshold of the door, I turned to give Aiden one last thankful smile. I found him standing stock still, almost as if he was shocked I’d kissed his cheek. A blush crept across my cheeks as I rushed out of the library to go to my room.

Aiden's POV

When Rose entered the library after breakfast the next day, she was surprised to see me sitting with books strewn about, poring over the ancient text she’d been looking over the other day. I looked up and smiled at her tenderly.

“It’s Arabic. Ancient South Arabic to be exact,” I supplied.

I had her notebook open in front of me. Rose could see I'dgone over her notes, adding things in and circling certain statements with a question mark. She walked over to me, again in her old cutoff shorts and an old, olive-green, tank top that portrayed her luna mark on her bare arm. Momentarily, my eyes flicked to my mark on her neck before meeting her amused green eyes.

“Weren’t you supposed to clean up after me instead of taking over the research?” Rose teased. Her hair was in a bun again and I wanted to yank it open so I could watch those curls fall around her face in wild abandon.

“I had some time yesterday, so I thought I’d use it to help out. Decided to cancel my meetings for today and work on this somemore. It is for my brother after all,” I replied easily. “It’s not fair that you’re stuck doing this.”

“Your brother is a member of my pack,” Rose pointed out.

“Our pack.”

I amended the statement with an incline of my head. I pushed the book towards her. “We won’t know for sure if it’s what we’re looking for until I get this to a translator though. This is all mere speculation on your part.” I rubbed my eyes tiredly. “I was up half the night going over your notes. There’s no concrete evidence that this is what we’re looking for.”

“No, I think I referenced the book in my notes that mentioned this…” She came over and leaned into her notes, not catching my sharp intake of breath over her proximity. “Look.”

Rose pointed to something I had circled and underlined twice. “This book talks about the ceremony being enacted to let a second alpha join the pack. It makes sense because the pack would be stronger with two alphas and the two end up co-sharing the responsibilities of an alpha. It’s actually been recommended for larger packs in the book to have the ceremony.”

“But it’s customary to have two betas if the pack is large,” I pointed out. “I’ve never heard of two alphas.”

“In the olden days, things were different. Might is what determined if a pack was strong or weak. What’s mightier than having two big, strong alphas within one pack?” Rose reasoned, going back to an upright posture, and crossing her arms. “Of course, one alpha is more dominant than the other. The land just accepts the second alpha’s scent onto the territory. That’s actually what’s driving Dylan’s wolf wild. He wants to be able to scent his territory like any other alpha would.”

I pondered her words for a moment. “This is all speculation though,” I finally said firmly.

“And if I’m right, it means we found a way to help Dylan. So, there’s really nothing to risk if we hire a translator for this,” Rose ended primly.

“What’s this?” I pointed to a title of a book Rose had written down along with page numbers. She’d written “options” next to it. I had inserted two question marks next to the word. “Is this an alternate plan if the ceremony backfires?”

“Oh…” Rose trailed off, biting her bottom lip apprehensively.

She was hesitant to tell me. I gazed at her, drinking her in. My eyes softened as I watched the sunlight glinting off her hair in the afternoon sun. I'd never seen a more beautiful sight than my luna nibbling her bottom lip, deep in concentration as wisps of curls fell from her messy bun and into her face. Finally, the look of indecision on her face gave way to a resigned sigh.

“Well, there’s something else I found when I first started all this research. It's about us being…” Rose’s face became hot as she hesitantly spoke. “…mated.” She looked down quickly.