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Walkies I - Luna POV

Luna had been awake for hours. Had felt the sun rise on her back, waiting for Darcy to wake up. To confront what the hell had happened to them last night.

“I’m scared.”

Those words had hurt. After everything they had overcome, the thought of her soul-mate still feeling threatened by her was nauseating. It was her worst fear.

Darcy’s dark eyes blinked open slowly and sleepily. Her long lashes were clumped together into pretty points, turning her eyes into cartoon sunshine.

“Are you okay?” Luna asked lamely. She didn’t know where to even begin apologising for her weird behaviour last night. She didn’t understand it fully herself. It had been pure instinct, barely contained by her fear of scaring her mate.

Darcy nodded, but her eyes were low. Then the light shining from them seemed to magnify and suddenly tears were streaming out and sobs were shaking her entire tiny body. Darcy pressed her wet face into Luna’s half-bare chest and she dropped her arms around her.

“Darce,” she gasped. “My love, I’m so sorry.”

“You scared me!” Her tiny palms were clutching at her shirt, hanging open and limp from the night before. The wound that had barely scabbed over burst open again. She was still the boogie monster in Darcy’s life.

No better than the alpha that had sat across from her last night, refusing to look at her. Luna wasn’t stupid, nor did she have any issue picking up behavioural cues, but it wasn’t enough. Alpha Nico was known to be introverted and socially stunted, her behaviour at the dinner table had been nothing new to anyone that knew her. But Darcy had confided in her. And as much as Luna was running out of ideas to approach the problem, of course she still believed her.

“It scared me, too,” she said softly. She still felt dazed. “I’m sorry, babe.”

“What was that?” Darcy managed to ask through her sniffles.

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “But you know when you’re in a dream and you just know something is true, even if it makes no sense?”

Darcy nodded. Her lashes were still wet, but Luna fought the urge to swipe them with her thumbs.

“I knew if you left, I was going to lose all control. I felt like my wolf form was trying to push through my skin. Like my fur was prickling just beneath the surface.”

“Why if I left?”

“Because the thought of you out there-” Luna barely suppressed the ripple of rage that came with the memory. “-alone in the dark… it was setting off all these alarm bells inside of me.” A feeling, no, an understanding, that if she left Luna was going to hurt someone. Anyone close enough to be seen would be a target. Anyone who walked into her eye-line would be in danger. And once again she would become the monster that Darcy was afraid of. “I don’t normally get those kind of instinctual warnings unless I’m sensing some kind of danger,” she added. “Like, if I see a rogue wolf getting too close to our lands or something.”

And never that intense. Never to a point where her wolf was trying to shift out without her permission.