The Lunam Ceremony (Book One), page 26
“I don’t want you to go, but if you feel like you need to...” I fold my hands over my chest.
“Alright, cool. I’ll just be outside or hanging with Lucky. Call me when you feel better.” He hands me a business card. “That’s my cell.” He points to the phone number in bold. “I’ll come back if you need something.” Jase bolts out the door and I sit in his trailer stunned.
What the hell just happened?
How did I not see that Jase is a selfish asshole? Maybe because I don’t really know him. I’ve spent less than fifteen hours in his presence. Each time I see Jase, I’m running away from Dillan. I run to Jase like he’s my savior. When all I am to him is a booty-call. I don’t know if he lied to Delilah about his feelings or if she just lied to me. I feel vomit creep up the throat. I open the ginger ale and take a drink, as I place my hand over my belly. Deb is right, the world has another plan for me. Maybe this is a sign that I belong with Dillan. Jase was just a fling. He doesn’t have to mean more than that.
I leave the trailer with Jase’s card sitting on the table. I don’t need it. I don’t him or anybody.
I walk back through the party and see Jase is sitting on the tailgate of a truck with a bottle of beer in his hand. He’s laughing with a group of guys, it’s like I’m not even here.
“Kal, you feelin’ better?” Bill calls from the doorway to his apartment.
“Yeah, I think I’m going to head home before it gets too late.” I turn back and scan the crowd. “Have you seen Delilah? I want to tell her I’m leaving.” For good.
“She’s inside with Deb, they’re huddled up in the back bedroom plotting God knows what.” Bill moves to the side to let me in the door.
I’m walking through the apartment towards the back bedroom when I spot a familiar logo on a business card pinned to a cork board on the wall. It’s a Sierra-Duke business card with the name Othello Weston foiled stamped in the center. It can’t be the same Othello Dillan told me about. He said he was fired. I pull the card from the board and hold it in my hand. Dillan is going to be elated when I tell him Othello still works for his father. Wait a second. I can’t tell him I found Othello, he’ll ask where I got the card.
“Kalysia.” I look up and see Deb watching me. “Are you feeling better?”
“Where did you get this?” I hand her the business card.
She examines the card then says, “A man came by a week or so ago. He was asking about Jase, he said Sierra-Duke was looking to partner with local businesses. He wanted to list Jase’s repair shop to their vendor list as a local repair shop for their trucks. It’s a great opportunity for him.” Deb places the card back on the wall then walks towards the kitchen and checks something cooking in the oven.
That might be true, but it’s too much of a coincidence. I take the card from the board and place it in my pocket. “Deb, I have to go. Please tell Delilah that I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye.” Deb walks out of the kitchen and meets me at the front door. “It’s best for everyone if I leave. You know why,” I say.
Deb takes my hands and gives them a squeeze. “I know. Your life isn’t your own anymore. You have a child to think of.” She pulls me into her arms. “Don’t you worry about us. We can take care of ourselves, have been for years.”
She is referring to the years of conflict with the Shasta pack. Keeping the unwanted half-breeds safe and cared for. Deb is strong and I have no doubt she can take care of herself. But they have no idea what is in store if the Sierras get involved. “Tell Jase.” I search for the words to finish that sentence but they don’t come.
“Jase has a lot of growing up to do,” Deb says. “I don’t think he was ready for someone like you. Someone that made him feel.” I look out the window and watch him sit with his friends like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He doesn’t. I’m not his to care for. “He’ll be just fine,” Deb says with her angelic smile.
I get in the truck and drive. This time, I don’t look back. My eyes are glued to the road in front of me. For the first time in my life, I know exactly where I’m going. I’ve made such a mess of things. I don’t even know if Dillan will take me back. I have to work out all the thoughts swirling in my head. I need someone that will help me make sense of it all.
I need my mom.
I pull over in Marysville to get gas and call Layla. She doesn’t ask why I’m calling in the middle of the night; she just gives me a few instructions and tells me to drive safe.
According to the clock on the dash, it’s just past one in the morning as I park in front of Layla and Monte’s home in San Francisco. The house is an old Victorian in the fancy Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. The porch light flickers on when I near the gate. Monte opens the door, wearing an honest-to-God smoking jacket with a cigar burning in his left hand.
“Hi, Mont…I mean, uh Dad.” Feels strange calling an actual person Dad.
“Hey sweetie.” He pulls me in for a one-armed hug, careful to hold his cigar away from me. “Your mom is waiting for you in the library, top of the stairs to the right.” He points to the staircase behind him. “Can I get you something to drink? Have you eaten? We have some left-over pot roast.” Monte’s doting is sweet, but I need to get this over with.
“No, I’m fine.” I start up the staircase. “Thank you though.” I disappear up the stairs while Monte remains on the bottom floor.
I find Layla standing in the middle of the room. She’s wearing a pair of black yoga pants and her favorite teal workout jacket. I half expected her to be in a lavish nightie, but she’s still the same old Layla. I pause at the door, unsure what to say. After the argument I mounted for not having a baby, I feel stupid, careless. Layla’s eyes fill with tears and she holds her hand out to me. The gesture causes the floodgates to open, and I fall into her arms.
“Everything will be fine.” She strokes my head and sits me on a small sofa. She’s always been there for me. Sacrificed for me.
I hear the door open and look up to see Monet set a glass of water on small side table. Layla says thank you, her face is glowing as she looks at him. I was wrong all these years, they love each other, always have. My tears finally slow, and I sit up as Monte closes the door to give us privacy.
“Have you finished?” Layla hands me a box of tissue.
I pull a sheet from the top of the box and dab my nose. “For now.”
“What’s going on? Why did you leave camp?”
I inhale deeply to steady my breathing. I have to tell Layla everything.
“I wasn’t at camp. I was in Quincy.” I brace for her reaction. She just nods and waits for me to continue. “I didn’t want to be in camp for the full moon.” She nods again, without the contempt in her eyes. I tell her I went on the Truckee run with Rusty and leave out the part about him spending the night with Carrick. I also skip the part about getting a text from Delilah and knowing it was her birthday. The how and why I was in Quincy aren’t important.
“You went to him.” All empathy has been drained from her face. I hate her tone, but I won’t deny my reasons for being there. “Well, what happened? Did Dillan find out?” I shake my head. I can’t say it. Once I tell her it’s real, there is no turning back. I will have to return to camp.
I stand up and retrieve the water from the desk.
“Kalysia, honey, please tell me what is going on. Did Dillan call you? Did he tell you Cassie is pregnant? Is that why you’re here?” She stands and looks out the window, into the fogless sky. “You knew this was going to happen. You planned it for Christ’s sake. I can’t for the life of me figure out why.”
I gulp down the water and stare at her back. I can’t believe I was going to betray her by running away. Now she is going to lose everything to Lowell and Conall. If I tell her everything now, she might be able to do something about it. “I was going to leave the pack. With Dillan.”
Layla sucks in a breath and spins around. “You were going to what!”
“Don’t worry.” I set the glass down harder than necessary on the wooden desk. “I’m not leaving now.” I cross my arms like a sullen teenager, not a soon-to-be mother. “Dillan would never leave his child.”
“Goddamn right he wouldn’t. I can’t believe you even entertained the idea. Dillan can’t leave the pack. Lowell would never allow it.” Layla paces between me and the window.
“Dillan was going to leave, with Lowell’s permission. As long as he had a child…”
“And you decided to offer up Cassie as a surrogate to give Lowell his heir so you and Dillan could ride off into the sunset?” Layla is yelling now. “How could you be so ignorant?”
My heart races and my skin grows warm. I know I won’t phase, but I don’t want to get sick either. I return to the sofa and sit down. I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
“I don’t understand what is going on with you, Kalysia. You orchestrated all of this, and now that it’s come to fruition, you can’t handle it. I thought you were stronger, smarter…”
Her words hurt.
“I’m sorry to say this, but you made your bed…”
“Stop!” I yell, and Layla’s face turns white. I’ve never yelled at my mother, but I can’t take it anymore. “We didn’t look at the baby as being anything more than a business transaction. I know it’s stupid and childish, but I didn’t know back then. I didn’t realize the connection.” I choke up at the thought of Taylor’s chubby hands on my face. “I never even held a baby until I went to camp. I thought it would be easy to walk away.” I cry into my hands. Layla joins me on the sofa and rubs my back. “After I saw the connection Dillan had with Cassie, I knew things would never be the same. I knew he wouldn’t leave. So, I decided to leave.” I look up and find Layla is crying. “I’m sorry, Mom.” I throw my arms around her.
“Oh, Kalysia.” She squeezes me tight. “All I’ve ever wanted was for you to be happy. Bringing you to Lunam, setting you up with Dillan, it was only to ensure your place in the pack, so you would have power. I thought you’d embrace it once you figured it all out.” Layla plucks a tissue from the box and blows her nose. “If you want to leave, I understand.”
I’m confused by what Layla is saying. I pull away and stand up. “What do you mean, set me up with Dillan?”
Fear creeps into my mother’s eyes.
“You said you set me up with Dillan?” I don’t give a shit about being used as a pawn in her game with Lowell and Monte. I do care about her messing with my fate.
“I didn’t mean set up.” Layla stands and paces the room. “I might have spoken to Lowell and Monte. I wanted to make sure you had an equal.”
I remember the way Dillan looked at me across the dance floor that night, and the way Leah assumed we would match. Dillan said he was thinking about leaving, until he saw me. “It wasn’t fate at all. Dillan chose me because his father told him to.”
“No,” she says adamantly. “Dillan loves you, everyone can see that. I know he does. Even Adel thinks so.”
I shake my head in rebuttal. “I’m not talking about Dillan. I mean me.” Layla stops pacing and focuses on what I’m saying. “I thought my connection with Dillan was real, unbreakable. Then I met Jase and I felt the same way. I was wrong about both of them.” I think about Dillan’s eyes when I told him it was over. I remember Jase laughing at the party like I didn’t exist. I’m the only person I can count on. I don’t need a man to define my happiness. “None of that matters now.” I wipe my face with my sleeve, remembering why I’m here.
“You’re right.” Layla points at me. “Monte and I have discussed the possibility of you leaving camp if something like this happened. You don’t have to go back; you can stay here with us. He will call Lowell in the morning and declare that Dillan has taken another for his partner.” I literally choke when I hear what she is planning. “Lowell thinks he’s pulled a fast one on us to gain control, but he forgets the clause in rule seventy-five. If you do not conceive a child with your partner and he takes another, then he voids his partnership with you.” Layla is almost smiling as she tells me this. “That means you can leave and find another partner.” She crosses the room and takes my hands. “I think you have, right?”
She searches my eyes for any hint of hope. She can’t mean, no it can’t be. “You mean, Jase?”
“Yes. We did some digging.” She flits to the desk and pulls out some papers. They look like birth records. “The Dunsmuir pack is a cesspool of half-breeds. I doubt Conall is even a pureblood. I know his daughter isn’t.” She shows me the Dunsmuir pack family tree. “Cassie’s mother, Stacy, was a second generation half-breed. Making Cassie a third generation. The pure blood overpowers the human blood, giving them the ability to phase.”
I look through the names on the sheet; my eyes suddenly stop when I see his. I point to Jase’s name. There is no father listed beside it. “Why is Jase on this list?”
“Shasta keeps record of all the births connected to their pack. I think they’ve known about the half-breeds phasing for years.” Layla looks at the page over my shoulder and points to a black dot beside Jase’s birthday. “For some reason they believe Jase didn’t phase.” She looks at me suspiciously. “But you’ve seen him turn.”
“Yes.” I don’t tell her why they think Jase didn’t phase. I don’t want to involve anyone else in this situation. I read the rest of the list until I find her name. Delilah is listed near the bottom. I realize the names are in order by birthday. No black dot appears by her yet. “Is there another list somewhere?” I don’t see Lacy’s name on the sheet.
“This is just the Shasta list. Sierras don’t keep track; they didn’t think they half-breeds mattered.” Layla returns to pacing. “They’ve lost years of records. There is no way we will ever find them all. That doesn’t matter now. We need to focus on who fathered Jase. If my research is correct, it has to be a pureblood. It looks like only half-breeds with links to purebloods phase.” Layla is babbling about who the candidates for Jase’s father could be, when there is a soft knock on the door. “I don’t want to interrupt, but the truck is in the neighbor’s driveway.” Monte’s head appears in the doorway; he avoids eye contact with either of us.
“Sorry.” I walk to the door and hand him my keys.
“Everything’s, uh, working out?” he asks.
“Yes, darling, everything’s is working out just fine.” Layla blows him a kiss and he leaves. When the door closes, she continues talking about Jase. “Another thing we learned about these half-breeds is that they phase on their eighteenth birthday, regardless of the moon.”
My mother confirms what I already know about them being more powerful than even an Altum alpha, because they don’t have to wait until the harvest moon to phase. “That means any child you have with this Jase character will be eligible to lead regardless of when you conceive.” She picks up a new stack of papers and shuffles through them. “We just have to convince the elder council that this is the future of our kind.” I can’t believe my mother is even contemplating me being with Jase. I can’t have her fighting to allow me to leave Dillan for Jase, when Jase doesn’t even want me.
“Mom, I have to tell you something that will change all of this.” I point to the papers on the desk.
“Are you ok? You look pale.” Layla puts down the papers and gives me her full attention.
“I can’t be with Jase.” I take a deep breath. “I have to go back to camp, back to Dillan.”
“Honey, why? I just told you he violated his partnership with you by only conceiving with Cassie. You can leave and be with Jase.”
Why does the idea of me and a half-breed appeal to her all of a sudden? Even if Jase’s father is a pureblood, he’s still tainted, by her own admission. “Why do you want me with Jase so badly?”
Layla looks shocked. She starts to backtrack a little. “I don’t want you with him. I want you to be happy.”
I raise an eyebrow at my fibbing mother. I know her too well. “What’s going on? I thought being with a half-breed would muddy our bloodline.”
“That’s what we thought, but it turns out Conall is right, the line does purify itself. This is how the Dunsmuir Shastas have kept their numbers so high. They figured out how to make an alpha with humans.”
All the Shasta alphas are real; they have the numbers to take over the pack. My hands are shaking, then my legs. My body convulses. I double over, ready to vomit all over a very expensive-looking throw rug.
“Kalysia!” Layla kneels beside me on the floor. She yells for Monte, and he arrives in half a second.
Monte asks if I’m hurt, sick, thirsty. Layla screams at him to do something, but there is nothing he can do. He can’t fix me. Nobody can. Layla and Monte help me to the sofa and lay me down. I feel stupid having them dote on me, but then again, they are my parents. Caring for me is their job. A job Monte was robbed of because Layla selfishly stole me away. I won’t do that to my child. He or she will grow up with the love of two parents.
“Do you need a doctor, honey?” Monte asks as leans over Layla, who remains by my side.
I finally find my voice. “Not yet.” I look at Layla’s worried eyes. “Not for at least nine months.” Realization seeps into Layla’s face. I can’t believe I’m about to say these two words. Something I didn’t think I would say for a long time. My mother smiles. She knows without having to hear it. I need to hear it. I need to say it. “I’m pregnant.”
When Monte leaves to get champagne, I drop the bomb on Layla.
“I thought it was Dillan’s, until you said Jase is a pureblood alpha,” I whisper. “I thought for sure it was Dillan’s. I think it’s Dillan’s.”
Layla paces in front of me, biting her thumbnail. She only does that when she’s plotting. “Why do you think it’s Dillan’s and not Jase’s?”
“Because Dillan is a pureblood.” I shrug. “And, we had sex the morning of the full moon. I wasn’t with Jase until the third night.”
