Page 47 of Wishes in the Moonlight (Rocky Mountain Wolves #4)

~Amanda~

I awoke to the sound of someone clearing their throat.

Repeatedly.

Loudly.

For a moment, it didn’t register through the fog of sleep, but eventually, I groaned, forced my eyes open, and immediately regretted it. When did the room get so bright?

Savannah stood beside the bed, arms crossed and wearing a smirk that screamed trouble.

“Am I interrupting? You did say ten o’clock.”

It took a second, maybe two, for my brain to reboot, until a warm weight shifted beside me and it all came rushing back.

Troy. The mark. Our bond.Kalo and the warriors and… The ten o’clock meeting. In this room.

“What the…” Troy mumbled before freezing. His arm tightened around me, and he blinked toward Savannah with a groggy scowl. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

She didn’t flinch as she raised an eyebrow at him. “You should be glad it’s only me. The rest of them are all standing outside, waiting to come in. It’s five after ten.”

“Shit.” I scrambled upright, dragging the covers with me.

The room tilted and my head spun. It felt like I was hungover, even though I hadn’t touched a drop.

“I never sleep in,” I muttered, rubbing at my temple.

“Well, it’s hardly a mystery.” Savannah’s smirk widened. “The marks on your necks say it all.”

She was more right than she realized. Marking drained a wolf like nothing else. Soul-binding wasn’t exactly light work, and since we’d completed it in the middle of the night, our bodies were still playing catch-up.

My mind was catching up too, and as I straightened, I narrowed my eyes at Savannah. Her blunt honesty was one of the reasons I chose her as Beta, but there were limits.

“If you figured it out, why are you still standing there? Protocol says you bow to your Alpha’s mate.”

Caught out, her arms dropped, and after a beat, she bowed her head to both me and Troy. “Sorry, Alpha. And… Luna? Congratulations.”

The smirk had disappeared when she lifted her head again, replaced by a genuine smile.

“I want the full story later,” she added. “But for now, we really do need to have that meeting.”

I glanced at Troy and couldn’t help but smile at the faint horror on his face at the word Luna. Not that we’d settled on what his title would be, but it wouldn’t be that one.

“Can you stall them for five minutes while we get ready?”

She nodded and stepped out, leaving us to a frantic dash between the bathroom and bedroom. In under five minutes, we’d made ourselves presentable, if not entirely subtle. The scent change alone would’ve given us away, not to mention the fresh marks on our necks.

Just before I opened the door, I gave Troy a long embrace.

“Thank you for saying that,” he murmured into my hair before pressing a kiss to my forehead.

I didn’t need to ask what he meant. After everything he’d told me about his past, the way he’d been constantly dismissed and underestimated, most especially by my father, I knew he wasn’t used to anyone standing up for him.

But now that I knew the kind of man he really was, I would always be his champion, publicly and proudly.

Taking one last breath to collect myself from the whiplash of going from tangled in the sheets to hosting a meeting, I let the waiting wolves in.

Savannah hadn’t spilled the news, judging by the stunned looks on Leo and Darius’s faces when they walked in. Jasper, on the other hand, wore a knowing grin and bowed immediately. Savannah must have told him via mind-link and I couldn’t blame her. Some things, a wolf had to share with her mate.

“Congratulations, Alpha,” Jasper said. “And you too, Captain.”

‘Captain’ suited Troy better than ‘Luna,’ but even that wasn’t quite enough.

“It’s Commander now,” I announced. “As of today, Troy is in charge of pack security.”

His voice echoed in my head through the bond, deeper and stronger than ever. Are you sure? That position usually goes to…

… someone who’s proven themselves worthy of it, I finished for him.

I knew what he’d been about to say: traditionally, that role went to a Delta, someone who came from a ranked-blood family, but I didn’t care.

As Alpha, I got to make the rules.

Kalo, the only person who couldn’t smell the change or recognize the marks, looked between us with curiosity. “What are the congratulations for?”

Leo was the one who answered him, though he never once glanced in the genie’s direction. “They’re mates. Fated ones, unless I’m mistaken. That certainly casts a few things in a new light.”

He didn’t elaborate, but I could guess what he meant: my arranged match with his Alpha, maybe, or the way he’d seen Troy and I interact. Or maybe he was thinking about his own mate who stood five feet away from him, completely unaware.

“Ah.” Kalo’s golden eyes lingered on us a moment longer. “That explains it.”

Again, his words might have multiple meanings, but we had no time to unpack them now.

I turned to Troy. “Commander, let’s hear the update.”

Half an hour later, everyone was caught up and the day’s plans were in place.

Troy, Leo, and Darius would work from the barracks, refining our defense strategy.

Jasper would resume questioning the captives with Kalo accompanying him, and Savannah and I would focus on rooting out traitors before the barrier fell.

The men dispersed, Jasper kissing Savannah on his way out. Troy hesitated a step behind him, looking as if he wanted to do the same but unsure if he should.

I reached for his hand. “You can kiss me whenever you want,” I whispered, pulling him close. “You outrank everyone now, except me. No one tells you what to do.”

His smile was soft and reverent. “That’s going to take some getting used to.”

He stole one more kiss before slipping out the door after the others.

As soon as it closed, Savannah whirled on me, eyes wide. “What the hell happened? Two days ago, you were begging him to reject you!”

“Things change,” I said with a shrug. “Remind me: how long did it take for you to go from thinking Jasper was a dangerous rogue to falling for him?”

She flopped down into the seat by my desk with a groan. “Fair point.”

As I took my own seat behind the desk, she leaned closer, dropping her voice even though we were alone.

“You’re really happy about this? It’s definitely what you want?”

“I am and it is.” I let my own smile take over, the one I’d been hiding throughout the meeting in an attempt to remain professional. “He’s not the man I thought he was. He’s so much more.”

Savannah's expression softened as she took in my genuine delight. “Then I’m happy for you. But seriously… after seven years of tension, was the sex, like, epic ?”

I almost choked on my laugh, which set her off, and soon, we were giggling and chatting the way I never thought I’d feel comfortable doing with another woman. Not as Alpha, not the way I saw other women in my pack laughing with their friends.

My Beta really might be that kind of friend for me, and now I had my mate too. Life felt on the brink of something truly wonderful, as long as we could get through the next day unscathed.

Eventually, my stomach growled, and I instructed the guard at the door to have lunch brought to us. When he knocked at the door a short time later, I called for him to come in, but instead of food, the doctor who I’d spoken to the day before stepped inside.

“Is this a good time, Alpha?”

“Yes, of course.” I hadn’t told Savannah about the DNA testing I’d authorized for Troy yet, but I trusted her to keep it discreet. “Did you get the results?”

“I did.” The doctor walked over and passed me a file across the desk. “It’s pretty much as I expected, but also, a bit of a surprise.”

Savannah leaned closer as I flipped through the pages. Medical jargon blurred in front of my eyes, too much data and not enough context.

“What does it say?” I asked, handing the file back.

The doctor pulled out a page with three DNA charts and laid it on the desk. “I ran Troy’s DNA against the genetic database, as I said. This one is his father.”

I squinted down at it, as if the chart might suddenly turn into a picture. “You’re certain?”

“Without a doubt. And this one shares enough of Troy’s DNA to be a half-sibling on his paternal side.”

My heart thudded at that unexpected news. This would be a lot for Troy to hear.

“Whose DNA is it? Who’s Troy related to?”

“That was the surprising part,” the doctor said. “His father is Alpha Craig of the Battle River pack.”

Alpha? Cinder yipped in my head. Did he say Alpha?

The doctor carried on as if he were delivering the weather rather than monumental news. “Which makes the Alpha’s son and heir, Alexander, Troy’s half-brother.”

“Wait.” Savannah’s eyes darted between me and the doctor incredulously. “Troy is the son of an Alpha?”

“The bastard son,” the doctor corrected her, and before I could stop it, a growl rumbled in my throat.

The doctor leaned back in alarm, his eyes going wide.

“I’m sorry, Alpha, I didn’t mean any disrespect.

It’s simply a fact. Troy’s mother was not the Alpha’s mate, and he is not a member of the Alpha’s pack, which probably explains why, although he has the size, strength and healing ability of a highly-ranked wolf, he doesn’t possess any Alpha authority here in the Ravenstone. ”

Perhaps, but it didn’t change the fact that it was there in his blood. I relished the thought of throwing that in my father’s face when I told him about our mating.

“Troy and I are mates,” I announced to the doctor, gesturing to the mark on my neck. “We’ll be formally announcing it tomorrow, but I’m curious: as my mate, will his Alpha blood become more prominent?”

“Congratulations, Alpha,” the doctor said, dropping his head in acknowledgement.

“And yes, I believe so. It’s all there in his DNA.

It might not have been nurtured while he was younger through the pack link, but through your bond, it might still reach its full potential.

And this can only help him in the situation we discussed yesterday. ”

That was my hope too. I didn’t care about Troy’s lineage for myself; it made no difference to me if he were the son of an Alpha or the son of a rogue. But it could improve his chances of survival, and I’d take every advantage we could get.

Now, I just had to figure out how to tell him.