Page 28 of Lunar's Ruined Alpha
“Go awa–”
“Dad?” a soft voice calls from within the house.
Both of us pause. Soft footsteps emerge in the silence, and then Noah appears at Alina’s elbow.
“Hi, Noah,” I say to him.
“Hi…Dad.”
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. I’m a father. A father. It’s incredible.
Alina purses her lips. She’s been caught at an impasse. She doesn’t want to hiss and snarl at me in front of Noah.
Then, all at once, she loses the fight, because Noah offers me a tentative smile and asks, “Are you coming in?”
Alina glares at me. A victorious smile tugs on my lips. With a subtle roll of her eyes, she steps aside just barely enough for me to cross the threshold and slip past her.
The door slams a little too loudly behind me. She whirls away andstomps back to the kitchen. Noah remains where he is in the entryway, craning his neck to look up at me.
“Noah, honey, please go finish your homework upstairs,” Alina tells him.
“But—”
“Listen to your mother, please,” I add gently. “We can talk later, okay?”
Noah lets out a huff of annoyance, but he does as he’s told. He’s a sweet kid. Not a pushover in his obedience, but respectful in the way he does as he’s told by his elders. He can recognize the importance of roles and hierarchies. Leadership will come naturally to him.
Neither Alina nor I says a word as Noah’s footsteps thump up the stairs. It’s not until we both hear his bedroom door close that Alina plants her hands firmly on her hips and faces off against me.
“You can’t barge in at seven on a school night like that, Rowan.”
“I’m sorry, but I had to come,” I insist. “We just got confirmation that Samson Blackburn is, in fact, scheming to claim Whiterose land for his own. You need to get out of here. You need to—”
“Come back to the Greenbriars?” She rolls her eyes. “That’s predictable. How convenient, that an old enemy is now once again stirring the pot, and it serves your purpose to get your son into your clutches permanently.”
“That’s not—I’m not lying, Alina. Henry’s Betas know it. That friend of yours, the healer, probably knows it, too, given that she’s treating the same elders who are allowing themselves to be forced inland from the western borders.”
Alina furrows her brow, confusion causing her hatred for me to cool slightly.
“Zahra wouldn’t keep something like that from me.”
“My point is that you need to get out of here before the Blackburns attack. You know how they move, Alina. One day, everything is fine. The next day, people are dead.”
She looks away, swallowing hard. “I know.”
“At least cross the border into our territory. I can set you up with a house there. It’ll be quiet. Nobody will bother you.”
Fury sparks in her dark gaze. “And what about Noah? He has to goto school, Rowan. He has friends. He has a life here. I’m not going to relocate us to the fringes of a pack that I’m destined to ruin just so that he can learn what it means to be ostracized by his own people before his tenth birthday!”
“It wouldn’t be like that. Trust me.”
“Trust you? Are you joking?”
Poor choice of words. I’ll give her that.
“It’s a matter of his safety, Alina,” I try again, opting for a different angle.
But she’s shaking her head before I’ve finished my sentence.
