Chapter 9
[Max’s POV]
I know I should care more about pack business, but my heart is heavy.
She was more than just my Luna. I didn‘ t realize it while she still breathed, but Valerie was the light and love of my life. Nothing has meaning without her here to
share it with.
I still remember the first time I saw her. We
were at the Spring Festival. The local packs were all gathered celebrating the passing of the season and finding love under the full moon. Although several young she–wolves had tried to convince me they were the one, I was 25 and still hadn’t found my mate. Now that I was taking over for my father as head of the Golden Eclipse Pack, I was hoping that I would finally find her.
My destiny.
When all the unmated wolves gathered in a
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circle to dance, I felt a stirring in my heart when I saw her standing across the field. The moonlight turned her golden hair silver as she laughed with her friends and I felt myself nailed in place, unable to move.
She was perfect.
“Please, Moon Goddess. Let her be the
one.”
As we danced in a circle and it became our turn to touch, my body came to life with electric sparks. My wish had been granted. This shining, confident, beautiful she–wolf
was the one for me.
“My name is Valerie,” she smiled when I asked her why I’d never seen her before.
“My father’s the Gamma for River Moon. I’ve been away at college, and I never come to these things,” she laughed. “I don’t believe in fate.”
“You don’t?”
“Do you?” she raises one mocking
eyebrow.
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“I do now,” I responded with a smirk. “Now that I’ve met you.”
I began courting her after that. As Alpha, if she agreed to be my mate, she’d be Luna. That meant I couldn’t rush things. It
needed to be right. It needed to be as perfect as she was.
When I proposed and she said yes, I thought I had misheard her at first, but then when she repeated it, I yelped with joy. That perfect she–wolf just agreed to be mine forever.
“I promise to protect you for the rest of my life,” I swore. “Thank you for honoring me by being my mate.
“I’m sorry, Val,” I apologize as I rake the leaves from her grave. I come every day. I just need to be close to her, to remember that shining girl who stole my heart all those years ago. “I failed you. I keep failing you.
“”
“Alpha,” Dex‘ s calm voice calls from
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the edge of the gravesite breaks me from my memories. “Phoebe was being transported for detainment when her caravan was attacked. I’m sorry Sir, but it was a group of rogues. By the look of it, the same rogues that took out…”
“Good.” I answer gruffly, wishing to return to my memories of Valerie.
“Sir?” Dexter watches me, confused. “Don’t you want to…?”
“Thank you for the update,” I dismiss him with a small smile. He bows, leaving me alone to think of my wife.
In my mind I see her beautiful figure, curved with tight muscles, lying beneath me in a field of flowers. Around her neck is my mating day present to her—a necklace of pure white pearls long enough to drape around her shoulders twice.
“I promise to always provide for you and our pups,” I said as we mated for the first time in the open air, with only the moon
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goddess watching.
“I love you, Maxwell Prince,” she exclaimed as I buried my seed within her, praying that our mating would be fruitful as I marked her and she became my Luna.
The next morning we promised ourselves to one enough in front of the entire pack.
“I promise to love, honor, and protect you,” she said, her golden curls gleaming through her veil of ivory silk. “In this life and the next.”
“In this life and the next,” I promised her as my ring slipped onto her finger and I kissed her deeply, the cheer of the pack around us deafening as they shared in our joy.
I thought it would be our happily ever after.
But marriage is not easy. With both of us running the pack, we lost one another and I lost sight of the most important person in my life.
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My Luna.
The woman I had waited my entire life to
meet.
“I will find you in the next life,” I
promise her as I place a hand on her grave.
“I love you, Valerie Prince.”
In this life and the next.
