Lucas sat looking at the girl who was jutting her chin out stubbornly, shivering under the blanket.

“Thank you for this,” she said, looking down at her bandaged feet.

“You need to warm up,” he told her.

“I’m fine,” she replied, becoming annoyed at his insistence, “I know I look like a kid, but I’m not. I told you before, I’m older than you.”

“Then act older than me and take care of yourself,” he chuckled, throwing a towel at her. “If you are not going to take a shower, you should at least dry yourself off. How did you get wet? You didn’t say.”

The river… she shivered more violently recalling it. “I had to jump into a river to get away from the Alpha of my old pack and this weird old man who found me.”

“Where is your old pack?” he asked curiously, wondering how far it was that she had seemingly traveled through space to end up back at their fire.

“In the Appalachian mountains,” she mumbled, hating this topic. She would prefer to never mention it again. Hopefully she never had to return there. “I need to talk to Graeme. It’s important.”

“I will make you a deal, Neoma,” he said, making a point to get her name right. “Dry off, change your clothes, blow dry your hair, and I will get Graeme for you.”

She rolled her eyes in response, but the effect was lost with the way she was trembling under the blanket. He was right that she needed to warm up, and she knew it.

“I will take that as your agreement,” he chuckled and stood, turning to leave.

“Lucas?” she called after him.

“Yes, Neoma?” he smiled.

Why was he so adorable with that wavy blond hair of his that fell over those bright blue eyes? It was annoying. And he should really stop smiling like that. It was starting to do something weird to her heart.

“Do you really like the new name?” she asked softly, embarrassed to even ask.

“It’s different, but it’s perfect. ‘New moon,'” he nodded, recalling the meaning.

Lycans knew all of the names associated with the moon, and this one fit her. She had a new chance at life—a kind of rebirth, which is exactly what the name referred to.

“That’s what it means?” her one non-swollen eye grew wide, and a different kind of goosebumps spread over her body.

“You didn’t know that when you picked it?” he chuckled.

“I… I didn’t pick it. I heard it in the river,” she mumbled. “I was certain I was going to die, and all I kept hearing was the rush of water in my ears repeating that word. I didn’t even know it was a name.”

“So the river named you?” Lucas asked, impressed. Why did that not surprise him? She was alyko, after all—an alyko capable of passing through a portal to the one place, he guessed, she associated with home.

“The river named me,” one side of her mouth tipped into a smile. “I like that.”

“Get warm, Neoma. I will go find your Alpha,” he winked before closing the door behind him.

“My Alpha?” she repeated once he was gone. Could she be lucky enough to be a part of this pack?

—————————

Graeme, Selah, and Sam were all seated in the Alpha’s office. Graeme was looking around, startled to be sitting behind the desk that was his father’s. Apparently all of this about him being Alpha was actually true. He had moved his father’s desk into the office where Andreas had been, as had Sam with his father’s desk. It was uncanny—like walking into the past.

“My mother is there… with the vampire Zagan. I was born there. I sort of grew up there, at least part of the time. That’s how I knew how to get back,” Selah explained. “My brother was born there, too.”

“Sage,” Graeme repeated the name she had said previously. He was doing his best to pretend that his memory wasn’t affected, but it was difficult. Occasionally he would glance at Sam to judge whether or not he was being believable.

“Yes, and now Zagan knows Sage exists,” she said, a deep frown settling on her forehead.

“Wait… he didn’t know about Sage?” Graeme asked, confused now.

“No, he doesn’t know about me either,” she replied.

“How? How is that possible when you were born there and grew up there?” he asked.

“Well my mom has her own house, her own cottage. She’s the most powerful alyko he has. She is the one who created that portal for him, and she’s done so many other things to ensure the alyko are kept happy and secure…” she started to explain.

There was so much backstory to give him, but she was desperate to get her brother and August back as quickly as possible.

“Can we just skip to the part where I lead you back there and we sneak in and get them back?” she asked.

“Do you think that will work?” he asked, twirling a pen in his hand. “Won’t he see they are missing and just come right back for them? And kill us all in the process?”

Selah’s frown deepened. This didn’t sound like someone whose mate had been taken just a few hours ago.

“It may not work, but isn’t it worth it to try?” she scoffed.

“We need to know how to beat him first,” Graeme replied, running his hand through his beard. “What is your mother’s name? Can she help us?”

“Her name is Nedra. I doubt she’ll help us. She has given up trying to fight him,” she said bitterly.

“Tell us more about how you were able to exist within this portal world of his without being discovered,” he said, “maybe we can use that.”

“My mother is able to come and go as she desires, within limits. He can’t know about it, obviously. But he leaves her alone most of the time, and she is able to create alternate portals to use rather than the main one that everyone else knows of and uses. When she was pregnant with me, she spent most of her time outside of the portal. There was one lycan who knew how to find her if she was summoned. Zagan rarely comes to find her himself. They don’t get along,” Selah explained.

“Why did she spend most of her time outside when she was pregnant?” Sam asked, realizing this was going to be important for their Luna as well. Graeme’s gaze flickered his way.

“Time is weird there. It seems to go faster. Like… days could seem to pass while only a few hours have gone by here. But at the same time, the sun doesn’t go down. There is no moon. And people just don’t seem to… age,” she shrugged. “I can’t explain it. My mom really couldn’t either… something about there being different natural laws within different dimensions. Anyway, she realized when she was pregnant that the pregnancy wasn’t… progressing. She wasn’t getting bigger. And she couldn’t tell Zagan that she was pregnant, because she didn’t know what he would do. He might have experimented on her or, at the very least, taken the baby… me. So she snuck out.”

Sam and Graeme exchanged a look.. So this meant that August’s pregnancy was… on hold? That sounded like it could be good news as long as the vampire didn’t find out about it.