My Lycan Mate of Suicide Forest

"Everything is going to be different now," Graeme mumbled into her hair.

They were lying next to each other in bed after he felt she had been properly fed, and he couldn't stop nuzzling into her neck, breathing in her scent, nibbling her mate mark. And August just let him love her like this. It had been too many days since he had been like this with her. She had missed it.

"Everyone is going to stare," she said self-consciously.

"Weren't they already staring?" Graeme smirked, playing with a lock of hair on shoulder.

"No, not like this. Why does the Luna have to glow?" she grumbled to herself

"Every pack is very protective of their pregnant females. It's instinct. But it's even more the case when the Luna is carrying the Alpha's heir. She carries the future of the pack—it a sign of hope, of a legacy continuing," he explained, thinking of his parents as he did. Of their legacy. He didn't deserve this—this beautiful mate carrying his child. But his parents did. They deserved to be immortalized in this way, with their genes carrying on.

"Will this help you?" August asked, turning to search his eyes.

"With what?" he frowned at the way she phrased it like it was strategic.

"With everything. With the elders and with people doubting me," she answered, wiggling further into his warmth.

"I think anyone who is against the alyko with find a reason to doubt us regardless," he grumbled. "We could have the Moon Goddess physically manifest in front of the whole pack to bless us, and people would still question it."

"I have some things to tell you," August spoke against him, reveling in the warmth of his chest and the joy that was burning there for one moment more before she pulled away from him to sit up in the bed.

She tucked her legs beneath herself and searched for the best way to relay all of this, bracing for his reaction to it. They had both become absorbed in discussing the pregnancy, and Graeme hadn't yet thought to circle back to what she had learned during her little dungeon visit.

"I spoke with Zoe. She had a lot to say," she started. "She wanted to know more about me, and I agreed to tell her a little bit in exchange for information about the elders."

"It's not a good idea to tell her anything," Graeme growled.

"Why? What are we hiding?" she chuckled. It was an honest question. "I didn't tell her much, but at this point—everyone knows that I can do things. Everyone assumes I am alyko."

"It's not that we are hiding. It's that we don't know what her creepy intelligent little mind is up to. Who knows what else she is capable of," he growled again, becoming further agitated at the mention of her.

"Well, it was worth it. I assure you," she glanced at him.

"Why? What did she say?" his voice lowered in suspicion.

"Three really significant things. First, she confirmed that Livvy was taken because she was alyko. Apparently there was another pup as well, though she didn't say who. And…" she faltered, grasping her own hands for support. "The miscarriages Greta spoke of. The elders were responsible for that as well. They suspected those babies would be alyko."

"How would they even know that so early?" he asked skeptically.

"She said it was based on statistics or something. They used some kind of drug," she replied.

Graeme exhaled deeply. Miscarriage was a kind of disappearance, wasn't it? Alyko disappearing before they even had a chance to live. His eyes stung when his thoughts started wandering to the females in his pack who had suffered. Like Greta. Now his own mate was pregnant, and the thought of the elders conspiring to end it…

"What else did she say?" his eyes flashed with the question.

"She is apparently some kind of… other creature. She's not lycan. She's not alyko. But she couldn't tell me what," her eyebrows pinched at this.

"What?" he chuckled in disbelief. "Andreas described her as lycan when he first told me about her. What did she say that led you to believe otherwise?"

"Well, she said that despite her appearance, she is older than me. Apparently she doesn't age the same or… I don't know," she was trying to recall Zoe's words. It sounded crazy the way she was repeating it. "Her intelligence is advanced but her emotions aren't. It sounded strange, but she literally said she was 'a different kind'."

Graeme frowned, searching his memory for what that different kind could be. "We'll have to ask Greta about it," he mumbled. "Anything else?"

August took a deep breath. This was going to be the big one.

"Yes. I was so angry when she told me about the miscarriages and one pregnancy they had to stage an accident to… to terminate. That must have been when you felt those emotions from me. I was about to leave, and she didn't want me to. She sounded desperate for me to stay," she recalled. "She told me that she would tell me everything and that there was one huge thing that would condemn the elders. It was also part of why she was 'gifted' to Andreas, as she described it."

August fidgeted with her fingers in her lap, picking the words.

"Just tell me, Moon," Graeme put a hand over hers, and she met his eyes.

She took another deep breath. "Zoe said that the elders made a deal with someone—someone she couldn't name."

"What kind of deal?"

"She said the deal was for this… someone to orchestrate a group of strays to… to kill your parents in exchange for the alyko from this pack," she told him.

He stared blankly at her, the words not registering, not sinking in. "That's ridiculous," he finally huffed in response. "We can't trust Zoe. She could just be trying to get out of there," he said dismissively.

"But Graeme, she said she could prove it. Andreas requested to have your mother's ring returned to him after she was killed. Zoe said it was a purple stone and that he had shown it to her, apparently joking about how it was supposed to protect your mother," she rushed on, hoping the information would help convince him.

"Where is the ring?" Graeme's voice had gone flat. And so deep. It sent a shiver down her spine.

"In his desk," she replied, and he jolted up out of bed.

"Wait!" she called after him.

"You need to stay here," he told her, fixing her with his eyes. "I'm going to look for it."

"But there's more," she said. "There's so much more.. Don't you understand? That means the alyko—Maggie—may be alive!" she exclaimed.