Page 156 of His Fated Luna

Rose smiled. “I won’t be lying next to you for long. Come on. Get up.”

She got up from the bed, pulling my naked form up while smirking at the fact that I was wearing socks. Next moment,she was pushing me towards the passage between our rooms.

“Go get dressed. We’re going to the temple of the Moon Goddess,” Rose urged.

So a quarter of an hour later, I sat outside the temple in my sweats while Rose was inside. She’d asked me to wait outside while she tried to converse with our ancestors.

Rose's POV

I was drawing runes in white chalk on the gray stones around the pewter bowl that contained a crackling fire. Then Isat down cross-legged, eyes focused on the small fire. When I said the incantation, a flare of heat sparked from my fingers, automatically casting an eerie yellow glow inside the temple. At once, my brain was abuzz with voices. So many voices of so many people welcoming me, congratulating me. They all clambered for precedence, each louder than the other, welcoming the new luna.

“I’m so happy you and Aiden made it, Rose.”

It was a very masculine voice.

“Alpha Austin?” I asked reverently.

I looked around the empty room awash in pale yellow light. But there was no one around. The voices were all in my mind, in my brain. If it was Alpha Austin, then this was the man who had done so much to keep me safe, devoting pack funds for me while I lived in seclusion for so many years.

“Tell Aiden I love him and I’m proud of him.”

Then the voice disappeared into the whirr of the background noise as another voice came to the forefront. It was that of an elderly lady.

“Child, you must let your wolf submit to your alpha. Complete the process. We can sense it’s not complete. Go now.”

And the voices disappeared almost as quickly as they had appeared. The yellow sparkle of the temple dimmed. The stones reverted to their normal gray tinge. The warmth emitting from my fingers flickered out. So it seemed that they weren’t at my beck and call. Josie had warned me that the ancestors were not a helpline and there were times that they never answered questions at all. Most of their guidance was cryptic but my first encounter had been quite straight forward. I got up carefully, going out into the morning sun to see Aiden leaning against a tree.

“Your father says he loves you and he’s…proud of you,” I said with a smile as I encased myself in Aiden's arms.

He looked at me stunned, arms wrapped around my waist.

“So it worked. It worked and my father reached out to me.” Aiden chimed.

“Yes… but they also said that we need to complete the process. My wolf needs to submit to yours,” I stated. I stepped away from him and began to divest myself of my pants.

“Rose, wait.” Aiden brought his hands up to run up and down my arms soothingly. “You should know that they mean mating. Your wolf needs to let my wolf mate with her. Are you OK with that?”

I nodded off-handedly. It really wasn’t as big a deal as Aiden was making it out to be. “I’m familiar with the process, Aiden.” I gave him a cheeky grin as I took off my hoodie and shimmied out of my underwear. “You have to catch me first.”

With quick successive pops, I changed into my wolf form and bounded into the woods.

“You’re on.” Aiden laughed, changing into his wolf. not caring that he had just destroyed his clothes in his wolf’s rampant need to mate. The ground was still damp under his paws as he sniffed her out, running towards her. Only one thought ran through his wolf's mind. I could hear it through our mind-link

Finally.

"Is this the right way to do the ceremony?" I queried after I'd read the text for Dylan's ceremony to the ancestors. The temple was awash in yellow, and the cacophony of voices was silent while I had been speaking.

“What about his luna?”

"He hasn't found her yet,” I replied to the elderly lady I'd realized was named Diane.

“Have you asked him? His luna is integral. Do not bind the land to an alpha who's luna will not look out for it. It is why the land's magic only marks a luna born on our pack soil. We cannot divert from the old ways.”

"I can ask about his luna but there's not much we can do if we don't know who she is. He just turned eighteen. If he had found his luna, he would have told us,” I said hesitantly. But I wasn't sure if what I was saying was a hundred percent correct. Therehad been so much going on, maybe he had found her but was waiting until things were more under control to tell everyone? The elders sensed my uncertainty.

“Ask him.”

And the voices disappeared. The room was no longer tinged in yellow. I had been dismissed.