10 Responsibility

Carrie

A couple of minutes after Madeline had made her kind offer, my day rapidly plummeted to intolerable. Dane continued showing Heidi around the pack house, and of course he had to bring her down to show her the luna’s office.

I don’t know what he had been expecting, since his eyes widened as if he was somehow surprised to find me there. It was almost as if it had not been him who had forced me to temporarily resume the luna’s duties. All I knew was that I wanted to punch him in his imbecilic face.

“And this is Carrie. She’s been taking care of the luna’s duties and will show you the ropes,” he introduced, barely taking his eyes off of the silly girl he had brought back. She was blond and very pretty, but she looked terribly young, probably at least ten years his junior. It was a pretty big age gap for a mated pair, although that was the least of my problems with it.

I pasted a warm smile onto my face. “Nice to meet you, Luna.”

She seemed to have momentary misgivings, and I wondered if she saw through my best acting, or if she could sense the tension between me and her mate. “I’m looking forward to learning everything.”

“And I’m looking forward to teaching you,” I replied politely, only barely restraining myself from adding in an aside to Dane through the mind link, “And especially getting the hell out of here.”

She giggled nervously. I gritted my teeth. She sounded as peppy as a cheerleader, I half expected her to break out pompoms. Is this what fate really thought our pack needed? I was beginning to think fate or the moon goddess or whatever just pulled names randomly from a hat.

Or maybe it really was all about reproduction. She did look sickeningly fertile. There were a lot of theories, but no one really knew the truth behind matings and I was getting more agnostic by the minute.

Not that it mattered. Dane broke in. “If you want, you can start tomorrow, Heidi. What do you think?”

“I think that sounds great, Dane,” she said, looking up at him like he had said something purely amazing.

For one moment, I almost thought that Dane would be so insensitive as to start kissing her in front of me, but apparently even he was not that bad, as he gently pulled her away with a hand on her arm.

“See you tomorrow, Carrie,” Heidi trilled.

“Yes, until then,” I ground out in the most neutral voice I could muster.

At first, I had been hurt, but now I was genuinely beginning to worry about the fate of the pack with a luna like her.

My first day training my replacement did not relieve my fears for the pack in the slightest.

She was enthusiastic, but her attention span seemed shorter than a humming bird’s. I tried to work her through the forms and the duties, but there was always something else, whether a notification on her phone or a conversation with one of the pack members that distracted her from what she should be doing. All I found was my work started to pile up and my frustration grew while I made little headway with her.

I put up with the torture for two excruciatingly long weeks, before I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I gave her a task to work on and made my way down to Dane’s office alone. I knocked on the door and went in once he gave permission.

“Yes?” he asked coolly with a raised eyebrow. I hated this side of him. “Leave the door open,” he ordered when I went to close it.

I took a seat even though he never offered, and a flash of that one time he took me—no, that was in the past—and I needed to focus. I had managed to desensitize myself to so many memories already, I just had to do that with this room, as well.

“Heidi does not seem suited to the role of luna.”

His brow furrowed and every muscle stiffened in his form. I should have thought to phrase my concerns more delicately, but it was too late.

“She is luna.”

I inhaled. “I understand that, Da—Alpha Dane, but I mean the duties you expect of her. She’s not interested and she doesn’t focus on them. Maybe if you—”

“If I what? Reject her?”

I smiled stiffly at him, trying to reign in my temper all over again. “I wasn’t going to suggest you reject her, Alpha,” I said, because I knew he would throw a fit, even if it would be in the best interest of the pack. “What I was going to suggest is that you assign an assistant to also learn the duties so he can help her when I’m done.”

He frowned stubbornly. “She’ll figure it out.”

“Yes, but I don’t know how long that will take.”

“That’s fine.”

My anger raged again. “Listen, Dane.”

“Alpha Dane,” he corrected.

“Dane,” I repeated, not caring about respect because my own temper was flaring. “I can’t keep doing this forever.”

“You can if I assign you there.”

How had I never seen this side of him before? My heart began to pound furiously and my mouth spilled open. “No, I can’t. It’s not fair of you to force me to watch you and your mate forever while I pick up her slack. Maybe you don’t give a damn about me anymore, but you used to, and just because you’re finished using me, and think I’m garbage now doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings anymore. Nothing has changed for me, Dane! I don’t want to leave this pack because everyone I love is here, but you’re pushing me into a corner.”

“I’m not—”

I interrupted my alpha as if I still had the right to talk to him like an equal. Maybe I did. “Our relationship meant something to me, and it still fucking hurts, Dane! And you won’t even let me leave and lick my wounds, instead you keep shoving my replacement in my face!”

There was a small gasp from the hallway. Although I was facing away, I could tell who it was merely by the look of dismay on Dane’s face.

“Heidi,” he said softly.

She moved towards the door. “Is it true? Why didn’t you just tell me?” she asked in a voice that sounded so terribly broken I almost felt bad.

“I was trying to find a way to tell you,” Dane pleaded.

She sniffled, and I just sat there like I were just a piece of furniture. I was pretty sure they had already both forgotten my presence. I wanted to sneak away, but Heidi was blocking the door and Dane was moving towards her beseechingly.

“Have you slept with her since I got here?” she whispered.

“No, of course not. Not since I found you, love!”

He was so insensitive. It wasn’t like I needed my heart anyways, since I was apparently destined to be mateless.

She sniffled. “How can I trust you?”

“I just didn’t want to hurt you, Heidi. I swear, she means nothing to me. She’s just a she wolf I was with because I couldn’t find you. I’d never look at her twice again.”

Even my wolf had had enough, and I could feel her enraged pain boiling up inside of me. “Fuck you, Dane.”

He looked surprised to see I was there, as if they hadn’t been blocking the exit.

“You’re a piece of shit, you know that?” I turned to Heidi. “I meant so little to him that he proposed to me the night before he found you. He was always so sweet to me, you know? I used to share his room, but he tossed me out the moment he got back. This is how he treats someone he claimed to love. You should know the sort of male your mate is so you don’t get played, too.”

Dane growled at me, and my wolf growled back. Heidi looked horrified and she glanced at Dane as if hoping he could somehow explain away his actions.

“And I’m going to be honest with you because he won’t. You need to work harder to figure out the luna duties, because I can’t take being here to teach you much longer. It shouldn’t be my responsibility anymore.”

Dane’s head swivelled towards me. “It’s your responsibility if I say it’s your responsibility.”

My wolf was trying to bust out of my skin, how dare he disrespect me so? I held her inside, but my temper still slipped. “Fine! It’s my responsibility!” I focused on the young wolf beside me. “Fine! I challenge you, Heidi, for the title of Luna to the Greenwoods pack!”

As soon as the words had been loosed, I regretted everything, but once issued, they could not be unsaid. We all stood in silence for a long moment before I rushed to the door and Heidi leapt out of my way.