Rescuing His Captive Mate: Saving The Future Luna

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Star

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The first thing I saw when I went into the room with Artem was Chay laying in a bed. She was propped up on the pillows with a tray of food sitting in front of her. She looked a little paler than usual and her hair was a bit of a mess.

There had never been a time that I had seen Chay when she was anything less than perfectly put together. Chay prided herself on her appearance. She always wanted to present the best of herself at all times. I had learned that about her pretty early on.

The second thing that I saw was Bailey sitting in a chair next to the bed, his empty plate from breakfast still balanced on his lap.

"Star?!" Bailey nearly yelled my name as lept to his feet, spilling the empty plate and the cutlery onto the floor. "Oh my Goddess, Star, I am so glad that you\'re awake. I was so worried about you last night." Bailey had rushed to me and thrown his arms around me. I noticed a slightly angered look in Artem\'s eyes but it only lasted for a moment before he turned back to look at his sister. 

"I\'m alright." I tried to smile as I hugged him back, I was still nervous about this whole situation. "I rested up and I am healed. Plus, my talisman came off."

"It did?" Bailey pulled back to look at me, the shock written all over his face.

"Yeah, it did. And I even shifted into my wolf."

"That\'s amazing Star. I am so happy for you. What did your wolf look like?"

"Well-." I started to speak but Artem had started at about the same time and he finished in a bit of a rush.

"It\'s green."

"Huh?" Bailey looked confused.

"Green?" Chay called from the bed.

"Yeah, it was green. But it was so beautiful. It\'s hard to explain."

Artem took my hand then and walked me over to sit next to the bed. He placed me in the chair closest to Chay\'s right side, across from where Bailey had been sitting. Bailey had walked back over but he didn\'t sit down yet.

"What do you mean her wolf is green?" Chay asked Artem when we were sitting next to her.

"I mean it is green. The base color was light, like grass green. She had darker green around her neck, eyes, and muzzle. And along her back and sides there were patterns like leaves in that same darker green. Then there was the fact that every strand of her fur seemed to be tipped in some shining, luminescent emerald green that was only visible when it was hit with the light."

Listening to Artem\'s description of my wolf left us all in awe. Chay and Bailey because they hadn\'t been there to see it, and me because the magnitude of it hadn\'t really hit me before.

"What does this mean? Why is her wolf green?" Bailey aksed.

"I think it is because she is half Fae."

"WHAT?!" Both Chay and Bailey yelled in shock when they heard Artem say those words.

"She\'s what?"

"How do you know that?" Bailey and Chay asked their respective questions in almost comepleye unison.

"Well, her great great grandfather told me that her mother admitted to her not being a full blooded wolf. And then there was Howard himself. He admitted what she was. How he knew I don\'t truly know yet, but it seems to be true. I mean, how else do you explain a green wolf?"

"This is so strange." Bailey looked like his head was about to explode. He should sit down or something before he falls over from exhaustion.

"Come on Bailey, let\'s leave these two to talk. Not to mention you look like you need some time to process all of this. Let\'s go get a drink."

With that, Artem rose to his feet and took Bailey by the elbow. It didn\'t seem like Bailey was in any state to deny the Alpha at the moment. He was really having trouble processing what he had heard.

With the two of them gone it was now just me and Chay left in the room. I felt nervous. I wanted to apologize to her. I wanted to make things good between us again. I wanted her to know that I had left her there because I didn\'t want her to be hurt anymore than she had already been.

"Look Chay, I-."

"Star, I\'m-."

We both started at the same time but stopped when we relized that we were interrupting each other.

"Go ahead."

"You go first."

We had done it again. We were starting at exactly the same time. That made the both of us smile and giggle a little, but it looked like the laughter still caused Chay some pain so she stopped quickly and coughed from the stain of it.

"I\'m sorry Chay." I managed to speak before she had recovered from the small coughing fit. But my words seemed to have taken her by storm and she was caught in the whirlwind of my words. Her face looked like she had not been expecting those words to come out of my mouth.

"Star? Why?" She was asking me why I left her, I knew that was coming.

"I didn\'t want to cause you any more trouble. I didn\'t want them to hurt you more than you already were. They attacked us, they hurt you all to get to me. It was my fault Chay. I\'m sorry."

"STOP!" She yelled at me and then immediately coughed. "Just stop." He voice was a little rough and course after the coughing but the force of her words was still there.

"It\'s true though. If it hadn\'t been for me then you would never have been-."

"Stop!" She said the word forcefully again but this time she didn\'t cause herself to cough with the volume and explosiveness of the words.

"Why? Why won\'t you let me apologize?"

"Because you don\'t need to." She was looking at me sternly. "Do you really think you need to apologize for what some stupid lackeys did on the behalf of a sick sadistic asshole?" She was leveling her gaze at me with so much force that I actually shrank back in the chair. "That fuck face Howard was the one who caused all of this to happen. He locked you up. He acted like a creep your whole life. He came after you once you escaped. It was never anything that you caused."

"Chay?"

"Hush. I\'m not done yet." She scolded me. "You\'ve don\'t nothing but try to get away from that torturous life of yours. You did nothing wrong. You didn\'t crash the fucking car. You didn\'t ram into the side of the car and push us off the road. So please try to explain what you did that caused any of this."

"I-I-."

"See, you have nothing do you? You didn\'t cause this." She was giving me a look that was so sharp I thought I was going to be pierced through at any time now.

"Fine, I didn\'t cause it. But I left you there. I left you behind."

"And I know why you did that. You didn\'t want me to be hurt. I wish you didn\'t have to do that, but if I had tried to protect you from him then they would have killed me. I should be apologizing to you for not being able to protect you."

"But you were hurt. You couldn\'t have protected me."

"So I guess neither of us need to apologize then, do we." 

Chay had crossed her arms over her chest and the rapid rise and fall of it told me she was holding back quite a bit of emotions. That stance didn\'t hold quite the impact that it usually would with her sitting there in the bed looking a little like a impudent child. I couldn\'t help myself, I had to laugh at the sight of her.

I laughed long and hard. I don\'t know how long it went on for but soon my laughing chuckles turned into sobs as tears began to stream down my cheeks. I was still trying to come to terms with everything that had happened to me lately and this seemed to be the moment that I was going to fall apart and crumble to tiny little pieces.

"Star, you don\'t need to be upset." Chay sounded distressed.

"I\'m not really. I am glad that Uncle Howard is dead. I am glad that all the members of my family that tormented me have been dealt with. I know that I don\'t need to be afraid anymore. But I don\'t know any other way of life either. And then there are the things that he did to me." I shuddered as I tried to draw in a deep breath, that gave Chay an opening to ask me her question.

"What did he do to you?" She looked murderously angry. "I swear I will resurrect that sorry sack of shit and beat him to death with his own dismembered limbs." That made me giggle a little but it wasn\'t enough to chase away all of the tears.

"I know you would too." I looked at her with the closest thing to a smile that I could muster. "I just feel so disgusted right now, with everything that happened. And I don\'t know if I can talk it out with Artem."

"Then tell me. I am here to listen to you as well, you know that."

"Thank you Chay."

I spent a good portion of the day talking about things with Chay. I told her everything that I remember from my time with Uncle Howard, she had been very angry about the wedding and everything that followed it.

After telling Chay what happened I told her how I wanted to become a new me. Someone that was a mix of the old me and the me I have been since coming to live with them. I want to be someone I can be proud of and someone worthy of their care and affection.

I set a plan in motion then. Something that I would work on with Chay, Artem, and anyone else who wanted to help me. I wanted to learn to be like all the rest of them, but I also wanted to stay true to who I really was as well. I was crafting a whole new person here.

And, best of all, I was making that box of my mom\'s the reward for doing all of this. I hadn\'t had time to open it yet but I really wanted to. However, I told myself that until I could be satisfied with who I am and who I will be then I would not be allowed to look at it. It was an extra motivation for myself.