Another Half

May 2012

Blade felt an acute curiosity towards Caroline. She felt familiar, but Blade knew for certain that she had never either seen her or heard of her before.

“Thank you for, uh, helping me with that guy,” Blade said.

Caroline smiled and nodded.

“Griggs is—I would love to say he’s harmless, but he’s not. None of them are these days, unfortunately.” Caroline motioned for her to sit on the cot in front of them. “My mate has been training them all to be ruthless warriors, which has been hard because we were all raised during what were supposed to be perpetual times of peace,” Caroline sighed deeply. “Lately, though, Maverick’s been following the advice of my grand-uncle, and—”

Caroline stopped and looked at Blade, as if waiting for her to say something. But Blade just stared back at her, confused.

“Anyway,” Caroline went on after a long pause, “I thought you might be hungry. There’s some chicken soup I made this morning in the thermos, and I hope you like ham and cheese sandwiches.”

“Thank you. You didn’t have to do this, but I appreciate it,” Blade said, grabbing the water bottle and opening it. She took a long sip while Caroline sat next to her.

Caroline stared at her for a long time. She squinted at Blade’s hair, and it began to unnerve Blade.

“Are we related?” Caroline asked before lowering her voice. “Y’know, through the Lobos and the Nightshade Pack?”

The question surprised Blade, but she frowned, rubbing her right temple as she thought.

“No,” Blade said. “My family is from back East, so we’re definitely not from the Nightshade pack. That’s a pack up north from here, isn’t it?”

Crystal and Rachel had mentioned that pack with a mixture of fear and reverence more than once, and Caroline confirmed with a nod what they had told Blade.

“And I’m pretty sure I would have remembered you if I had ever met you.”

“Hmmm.” Caroline stared at Blade’s hair again. “You have a unique shade of black. Nightshade black.”

Caroline was close enough to gently take Blade’s thick black braid in her hand. She looked at it closely.

Blade didn’t feel threatened, but the gesture and Caroline’s curiosity behind it confused her.

It was true, however. Most people didn’t notice, but her black hair had a purplish tint under certain light. Rarely did anyone say anything about it, and Nick had once commented that he once saw a dog with that shade of black, but Blade wasn’t sure if he was lying, telling the truth, or just being mean. It could go in any way with him. In life, her grandfather, her father, Uncle Danny, and even Joaquin had this particular shade of black hair. It was why she took care of Andy’s hair with so much love; he had it, too, and it reminded her of the men she had lost.

Wanting to change the subject, Blade moved to take the sandwich from the tray, and Caroline released her braid.

“When are you due?” Blade asked looking at Caroline’s protruding belly. She then swallowed, cursing her lack of tact. “I’m sorry--I mean, you are pregnant, right?”

Caroline laughed, and for a moment she looked relaxed and happy. Her blue eyes sparkled with mischief, and the creases in her forehead disappeared.

“Yes, I’m definitely not just fat. The pack doctor says any day now.” She rubbed her belly in affectionate circles. “What about you? Where are you from? Why did Rick and Griggs pick you up?”

Blade shrugged. “I was in the park, minding my own business, and all of sudden they took me.”

Caroline frowned. “Just like that?”

Blade nodded. “I don’t have a pack. I left my family about a year ago to come to school here.”

“What part are you from?”

Blade shrugged again. “We moved around a lot back East, so we don’t really have a location of origin.”

Watching Caroline absently rub her belly made Blade think of Andy. True, he wasn’t hers, but to her, Andy was as much as her pup as if she had given birth to him.

“Do you have any pups?” Caroline asked.

“No,” Blade said. She liked Caroline, but not enough to trust her with Andy’s precious life.

“But you want to have pups of your own, right?”

“I don’t think I can,” Blade said, negotiating with herself on behalf of Caroline: one lie for one truth. “My mate rejected me, so I’m pretty much done.”

Caroline’s face crumpled into a grimace of pain, and she looked away but not before Blade noticed her tear-bright eyes.

“I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve that. I’m sure,” Caroline said, her voice slightly above a whisper. “The day will come when he will regret it. I promise.”

Blade looked at her, confused. “Don’t be sorry. He traded me in for the alpha’s sister, so I’m sure he’s happy now.”

Caroline's grimace deepened, and she shook her head. “No, he will never be happy. His other half is missing, and when he realizes that, he’ll come looking for you.”

“He tried to kill me.”

Caroline finally looked back at Blade, and she looked as if her eyes held all the sadness in the world. “Even so. You’re his other half. He’ll never forget that. I promise—Oh!”

Without warning, Caroline grabbed Blade’s hand and placed it on a moving bump on her belly.

There had been many times when Amalia had done the exact same thing when she had been pregnant with Andy, and Blade had let her. This didn’t seem to be different at all, and Blade enjoyed feeling the pup slide and stretch inside of Caroline.

“I hope and pray to the Moon Goddess above that she will be born well and healthy,” Caroline whispered, “and that She will look after her.”

Blade froze. “It’s a she? It’s definitely a girl?”

To Blade, this was an odd thing for Caroline to say. Despite their half-human nature, human technology, such as birth control, didn’t work on wolves, and ultrasounds and other scans tended to be unreliable. That said, alphas rarely fathered female babies. It wasn’t unheard of; it was just rare.

Blade heard Caroline take a sudden intake of breath while she stiffened. Caroline looked panicked all of a sudden.

“Please,” Caroline whispered, “please, don’t tell my mate I said that. It’s just a hunch, really. This pregnancy just feels different.”

Blade was saddened, but she wasn’t surprised. Most alphas didn’t want any daughters even when they rarely fathered them. Blade sighed. It was disappointing how theirs was a male-dominated world governed by strength and savagery, with rarely a place for reason or kindness. She’d often seen that with Nick, who Blade didn’t remember ever showing any kindness towards her or anyone—until she saw how he treated Nadine, that is. No wonder the gentler wolves, most of them females with crappy mates, ran away and lost themselves in the human world, which was rumored to be at least a little better.

“How many children do you have?” Blade asked as she took her hand back. She bit into a ham and cheese sandwich.

“None,” Caroline said with sadness. “I’ve had five pregnancies in two years and, except for this one, I’ve lost all of them before the second trimester.”

Her suspicion confirmed, Blade stopped chewing and stared at her, finally understanding. If Caroline was right and she indeed carried a girl, then she had every right to panic because this was very bad.

As the Luna, Caroline’s first and most important order of business is to bear and raise the next Alpha. It was predictable among their kind: a Luna’s first three or four children were always males to ensure that the pack remained within that Alpha’s lineage. Sometimes a Luna would bear a girl, but that baby usually marked the last of a Luna’s fertility. Rarely did a Luna bear any more children after the birth of her only daughter, which would usually later go on to mate with an Alpha of another pack and thus strengthen his lineage. No such strict restraints existed for the mates of betas and gammas and definitely not for omegas, which had a high and very varied birth rate when compared to the babies of the three ranking lineages.

Blade’s grandfather explained all of this to her and Joaquin, her twin, and she was relieved they were lowly omegas without the social pressures of birthing the right children at the right time. Blade guessed that it was why omegas almost always mated with other omegas. This was why it was a regional scandal when Joaquin found his mate in their Alpha’s daughter.

“An omega is the Alpha’s son-in-law?”

Like everyone else in the pack, Joaquin had been shocked and shaken, but their grandfather–their Abuelo–had laughed and laughed about it for over a week. Thanks to many years of Uncle Danny’s training, however, Joaquin proved to everyone his worthiness by beating all three of Amalia’s brothers without issue in three very public fights. Blade had been so proud of her twin brother that day and, to her surprise, the Alpha himself was proud of him, too. But Joaquin was gone now, and she felt the painful absence of her best friend every single day.

Blade finally gulped the bite of the sandwich she had been chewing. Not that it mattered. She had no idea what to say to the Luna whose life currently depended on birthing a boy. Her mate could chuck her aside—-if he didn’t outright kill her-–and take another mate for the sake of procreating a son. It was rare, but it could happen and the blame would fall on her as the Luna.

Blade walked to the cell’s door and she looked out the hallway. It was empty, but she closed the door without shutting it all the way. Caroline looked at her with tired eyes the entire time.

“What are you going to do?” Blade whispered when she got back to her seat next to her.

Caroline let out a soul-deep sigh. “Run. With her. As soon as she’s born.” She took a deep breath and looked into Blade’s eyes. “I have no one left. Will you help me?”

“Yes!” Blade said without thinking. “What do you need me to do?”

At that moment, they heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall and both women froze, the strong scent of an alpha reaching them at the same time.

The door suddenly slammed open, and a blonde male with a full red beard stepped in. He was muscular, but not very tall in Blade’s opinion.

Short king, anyone? Talon said.

Shut up, Blade said, doing her best to ignore her unruly wolf.

“What do you think you’re doing here?” the male said. “A Luna in your condition should be at home. Resting, not sharing gossip with a fucking prisoner.”

His cold pale green eyes flickered over to Blade. “We have no idea what kind of danger you could be in with this she-wolf.”

“Yes, well–”

“Silence, Caroline!” He crossed his arms. “Go back to the Pack House.”

“But–”

“Now,” he said, and both she-wolves felt the heavy force of his authority in his voice.

Caroline began to try to get up, and Blade immediately stood up to help her stand up, for which Caroline gave her a grateful smile.

Blade liked Caroline, and it hurt her to watch her waddle away so sad, scared and defeated.

As soon as Caroline was gone, the male in front of her turned back to her.

“I am Alpha Maverick, and, upon pain of death, you will address me as ‘Alpha’ or as ‘sir.’ Is that clear?”

He looked at her like he would like nothing more than to slowly kill her with his bare hands. His thin lips seemed to be frozen into a perpetual sneer, and he smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a couple of weeks, not that he seemed to care about those he inflicted with his body odor. Blade wondered how a sweet woman like Caroline got stuck with such an asshole for a mate.

She nodded, and he continued, but not without deepening his frown.

“Alright. I expect a clear, truthful answer. Who the hell are you and why are you on my lands?”

Blade took a deep breath. “My name is Blade Zamora. I am a student at Lazuli University. I’m from the East Coast.”

“Oh, really?” He didn’t sound convinced. “And what pack do you belong to?”

“I’m a lone wolf, sir. I’ve always been a lone wolf.”

Maverick made a face as if Blade had just told him she ate three-day-old roadkill for breakfast.

“I recently learned that lone wolves make the best spies,” he said slowly, stepping closer to the bed where she sat. Instinctively, she stood up and found Talon had been right. He was only slightly taller than her.

“No, I didn’t know that, Alpha,” she said, standing straight up to gain any amount of height over him. She refused to be intimidated by this bully. Something told her that he had beaten Caroline on more than one occasion.

On the other hand, Blade actually did know that about lone wolves, and her grandfather taught her how to befriend and persuade them to work for and be loyal to only her, too—-but Blade quickly figured that this idiot didn’t need to know all that.

Careful, babe, Talon whispered. Pissing off an Alpha is rarely a good idea.

“With respect, I’m not a spy, Alpha. I’m an education undergraduate student,” she said firmly. “And I have no interest or intention of harming Luna Caroline or her pup.”

“Then answer me this. Why the fuck is an alpha female a lone wolf?”

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Author's Note: This one was a tricky chapter to write! If you like what you've read so far, please like this story and/or subscribe to this story. Thank you!

-Rio