THE RIPENING (Dark Side of the Moon Book 1) (13 page)

              “It was our fault, Elders. We were far too lax with our son. We should have instilled in him earlier the impossibility of successful relations with humans.”

              “The law forbids this for a reason.” A reedy, Arabic flavored voice- that of Aremis, who sat to Agatha's right- interjected. “Any and all attempts at successful interactions between our races in the past have failed.”

              “Um...Elders?” Everyone, including Luther, looked to Yuna in surprise when she suddenly chose to address the five imposing figures before her. “Luther made a friend. That was all. He was a child, and every child needs friends. I don't believe there was ever anything... disobedient in his intentions.”

              “What's your name, girl?” It was Dame Strauss who spoke now, the velvet timbre of her voice by far the easiest on the ears. She was staring intently at the small woman standing before the group, her gaze unwavering.

              “Yuna.”  The young woman glanced around the room, and for a moment Luther thought she might be searching for him before he realized she was simply taking stock of all the faces present. “My name is Yuna Thompson.”

              “And how long have you been 'friends' with Luther, Yuna Thompson?” A male was the final member of the Elders to raise his voice, and Luther could clearly see why. The old man's tone was raspy with disuse, and he didn't think it was presumptuous of him to assume that he'd probably damaged his trachea in an errant right while in his ripened state. If that were the case, then he was certainly Ian Malcolm, the final member he'd heard about of the five.

              “All my life.”

              Yuna's answer was so simple and heartfelt that Luther's heart seized.

              “Which is exactly where the problem lies.” Agatha was speaking again now, her tone fierce. “A childhood friendship is one thing; dancing on the edge of discovery for an entire lifetime is not only dangerous, it's foolhardy.”

              “Our laws,” Aremis chimed in, “are for the most efficient protection of our species’ existence. We cleave to each other and avoid contact with the outside world as much as possible. It is these customs alone that have kept us from being discovered.”

              “Excuse me, Elder Aremis.” Viola's low tone came from among his cousins, and Luther's hold on his chair tightened. He'd barely spoken to his sister-in-law all week, angry at her for the part she was playing in Yuna's imprisonment. Even so, he'd been around her enough to know that, whatever had happened between she and Liam, it had changed her. She wasn't half as demure as she used to be, and she walked around the den with her eyes blazing with emotion more often than not. “I think we all know and accept that the laws are in place to protect us. My question is: How well do they account for deeper, underlying emotions?”

              Luther felt his brother stiffen behind him. “Everything that we do is for the preservation of our way of life, but, as I'm sure you know, there are things that I have done that have not been in the same vein.” Viola's hair caught the light of a lamp glowing from the room’s wall and cast bright fire over all seated when she stood. “I, a viable female, willingly mated myself to a male who I knew to be infertile.”

              “What?” The hollow disbelief in his brother's voice was enough to break Luther's uncaring facade. He looked over his shoulder to see Liam's voice lax in shock as his mate continued to speak.

              “My own clan begged me not to squander my birthing years,” Viola's voice trembled slightly. “They even went so far as to threaten disowning me if I tied myself to a man that couldn't give me his pups, but I didn't listen. I mated with Liam because I love him. Because beneath the surface, despite his blind abiding to law and tradition, he is a caring, kind man who puts his family before all else.”

              There was a moment of silence following her statement, and Luther could do nothing but stare at Viola in slight awe.

              As far as he had known, as far as anyone had known, Viola had only discovered that Liam couldn't give her viable children after they'd been mated for nearly a year. If their mother and father hadn't known, and if no one in the clan had known, how had his sister-in-law possibly discovered the fact?

              “You told me what he would be.” Viola's voice had lowered so that Yuna, the only truly human occupant of the room, had to strain to hear it. “You came to me in Germany, when I was a child, and you told me that the man I loved would be everything I wanted and care for me as no other had before. You also told me that I would never have his pups.”

              “So I did.”

              More than one sound of surprise colored the room at Dame Strauss' admission. “There is no law of ours that dictates who viable females can mate with. You made your choice, Viola.”

              “And Luther has made his.” The redhead fired back, her fists clenching at her sides. “Are we really so different?”

              “Luther will receive the Alpha strain,” Ian cut in sharply. “Your situations could not be more different. Luther has responsibilities that you could not even begin to fathom. Your clan is one of only two on this continent. It needs to propagate.”

              “So the fact that I chose not to propagate this clan means nothing? What of the pups I could have had? I was not punished so severely.”

              “But you were punished.” Dame Strauss' reply to the woman's outburst was soft and neutral. “Your blood will die with you, Viola. You can never feel the heartbeat of your children against your chest, or know that your offspring will carry the blood of ancients in their veins.”

              The pain in the dark-eyed woman's eyes was enough to curdle milk.

              But Viola had never been prone to fits of crying or tantrums. To Dame Strauss' cutting remark she had only one reply. “I have the man I love.”

              She seated herself primly, and from across the room Luther watched his cousins edge away from her as if she were poison.

              Yuna, for her part, was staring at Viola in something akin to awe-and was it... hope?

              Behind Luther, Liam still hadn't gathered his wits about him. He continued to stare at his mate wordlessly, his expression unreadable. If Luther knew anything about his brother, it would take a while for him to absorb this newest revelation.

              “Magnus, I thought you might have impressed upon your son the importance of and the duties involved with being Alpha of a clan.” Baccus' low tones cut through the silence. “To have the ancient magic flow through one's veins is not something to be taken lightly.”

              “Luther has always been worthy of the strain.” Magnus replied quickly, his voice proud. “He has merely been distracted.”

              “I'll say. He was distracted right on the grounds of our ritual grounds! Where old ancestors came and ripened beneath age-old moons!”

              Nita's gravelly statement garnered the murmured agreement of her husband and Luther's cousins. 

              “If I was a distraction, I was a welcome one.” Yuna's reply came totally unexpected, and the Elder's heads jerked around to look at her. The young woman's stance was calm, but her eyes spoke of her hesitance to reveal what came next. “Luther has always loved his family... but he's needed time off from them as well. Breaks from... well... what he is. The time we spent together served to soothe him-ultimately to make him a better and more balanced person, I think.”

              “There is no 'break' from being moon-ripened!” Aremis' voice cracked like a whip through the air, making even Magnus wince. “It is what we are, every hour of every day. To run from it is shameful.”

              “I was not running.”

              Luther could keep silent no more. His chair scraped brusquely against the marble floor as he rose to his feet to face the Elders head on. “Even as a boy I knew that the isolated life that we lead was missing something. We are lonely, ornery and desolate. When I found Yuna, my world changed irreparably. The time that I have spent with her provided me with lessons that our clan could never have taught me. Knowing her has made me more human than I ever thought that it was capable to be. I mated with her because it was at the center of my every instinct, including those wrapped up in whatever makes us what we are. The beast in me...it chose  her. How can you deny me that?”

              “You would end your clan's line for an unsure flare of emotion?” Ian's words, as well as his gaze, were highly disapproving. “You have been blinded, Luther.”

              “What if she could have my pups?”

              The entire room went quiet.

              The expressions of everyone present clearly showed how ludicrous they thought the notion-everyone except for Luther's mother, that was. Her face drained of all color as he rounded on her, adamant. “You know of a way, don't you?”

              “Luther, don't be ridiculous. Haven't you put your mother through enough?” Magnus' indignant words bounced off of his son as if he hadn't spoken. Luther only had eyes for Marilyn, and he moved around his family member's chairs to advance on her.

              “Mother, you can't keep this from me. I have to know. If there's any way... any at all besides murder-”

              “It cannot be done!”  The speed with which Marilyn leapt to her feet as her interjection cowed the room was amazing. Even Luther cringed slightly, though he towered over his mother.

              He was shocked, however, to see that far from blazing with anger, her eyes were bright with threatening tears. “Listen to me, Luther. Humans are too fragile. They break under the strain of living in two worlds.”

              “But it's possible.” The auburn-haired man pushed past his guilt to press on. He had her now. She would talk! “Humans can have our children!”

              “Rarely.” Dame Strauss' voice interrupted them and Luther turned to see her watching their exchange with dark eyes. “Perhaps one in one hundred million humans is genetically able to bear our offspring.”

              “A slim chance is better than any at all!” Luther burst. “It's better than killing!”

              “...tell him, Marilyn.” When his outburst had no other effect than to further darken Dame Strauss’ expression, the young man turned back to face his mother. Shock and guilt writhed in his gut as he realized that she was crying silently.

              “Mother.” Liam's words rang out over the crowd as he spoke for the first time in almost a half an hour. “Tell us. No more secrets.”

              There was silence for a moment before, haltingly, Marilyn began to speak. “Elias... your brother... he was mated with a human.”

              Luther's heart stopped.

              Mother never spoke of Elias.

              He had only been four years old when his brother had died, and he barely remembered him. Whenever he'd asked about his elder sibling, his mother had answered simply that he'd died in an accident, and refused to say anything more. Even Liam's once childlike charm had not gotten her to open up on the subject. Magnus, as far as Luther remembered, seemed to accept Marilyn's explanation as true and knew no more about his son's death than what she'd told him. He'd only been able to convey to Luther and Liam how devastated she'd been to lose her eldest, and how it had changed her.

              He looked thoroughly as shocked as his sons at the words coming from his mate's mouth.

              “He met her when they were young... much like Yuna and yourself. Though I forbid him from seeing her from the beginning, Elias snuck out to be with Laura whenever he could. I didn't tell you, Magnus, because I knew it would only upset you. You were so proud of the willingness with which Elias was preparing to take on the Alpha strain; it hurt me to think how much the revelation might disappoint you. I thought that it was infatuation... that our son would grow out of his adolescent feelings.” The humbled woman's face twisted in emotional agony. “But I was wrong.”

              “Just after his twenty-fifth birthday he came to me after the ripening and I knew. I knew what he'd done. I was shocked- so much so that I didn't even refuse when Elias took me to meet the girl.” Marilyn's mouth thinned as she lost herself in the memory. “She was a brittle, fragile thing. To her, the true nature of our condition was something to idolize and objectify. Elias was like Luther; he had more restraint than any of our kind. She never knew how truly dangerous we could be when our control was limited.

              “Elias promised me he would find a way to be Alpha and still have Laura, and a mother's love blinded me into believing him. When I found that Laura was indeed able to bear pups, I rejoiced. I was happy for my son.

              “Laura carried seven months into her term. The baby came early- and during the ripening. When her time came, the child was in its animal form. It was... ripping its way out of her. She barely made it through the labor, and after, she was never the same. She was convinced that our kind were monsters – soulless killers that wanted to destroy her. She hated and feared her child, and her love for her mate turned to paranoia and hatred for what he'd done to her.

              “Six months before Elias would have taken the Alpha strain, and a few days before the child's first birthday, she drowned her daughter in the bathtub. Then she waited for my son to come home and put a bullet through his heart before turning the gun on herself.”

**

              Horror suffused Yuna's body in a frigid fog.

              Luther's brother had been killed by a human?             

              A human who had not only taken out one of his kind but also killed her infant daughter?

              Reeling, the young woman threatened to draw a breath. How horrifying must the birth have been for Laura to turn on her family so? The idea of carrying Luther's children suddenly took on an edge of terror as she imagined what it must have been like to have a baby fighting to get out of you.