Claiming My Wolf
Chapter 40

~~Logan’s PoV~~

I’m not quite sure how we’ve gone from talking about Sadie and I kissing to the conversation we’re having now, but I’m really impressed with her. She saw something so clearly that the rest of us had completely missed.

Of course the mating bond was messed up because something had happened to the moon goddess’ vessel. It was so obvious now that she’d said it, but it hadn’t occurred to me nor to my dad or any of the other Alphas.

The vessels were one of the most shadowy and least understood parts of our werewolf culture. As my dad said, no one knew who they were. But we all knew the legends, that the moon goddess would choose at least one person from an area to hold her power, to ensure that her plans were carried out. She visited them in person to make the transfer, so they were the only people who ever got to look on the goddess’ face.

As far as I knew, it was always a woman, and some people thought the power was passed down by birth to her daughters, generation after generation, until a line died out and the goddess would choose a new vessel.

That way all the wolves in the world continued to receive her protection, even when she couldn’t be with us.

I didn’t know what the goddess did with the rest of her time, but it was one of those things we were just never meant to know, I supposed.

And the issue with the mates, it was affecting us and the surrounding packs, but not all werewolves around the world. My dad had reached out to other packs further away and they weren’t having any problem. So it made sense that something had happened to our vessel, and no one else’s.

That was all Sadie’s idea, but what had just occurred to me was: what if someone wanted this to happen? What if they did it on purpose? If they found out who the vessel was, they might have killed them intentionally to mess things up, to get us all confused and thrown off, though what they might want to accomplish by it, I wasn’t sure.

And of course, when I thought of anyone being hunted down on purpose, my thoughts went immediately to my mom and Kara.

Was my mom the vessel? Is that why they targeted her? And then they killed Kara too, because she would have inherited it? But me, I was just a boy, they didn’t have to worry about that, so they left me alive.

It makes sense. More sense than any other explanation I’d ever come up with, and I share the idea with my dad now.

He listens to me carefully and there’s a long silence when I finish. Sadie seems to be holding her breath waiting for him to respond, and I am too.

“I can see why you think that,” he agrees finally. “But the mate bond wasn’t affected when they died. That was a year ago, and the mix-ups only started happening recently.”

My spirits deflate a bit. That’s true, of course. Damn it. I really thought I was onto something there. “So who’s died recently?” I ask, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice. “It wouldn’t have to be in our pack, it would be any of the packs that are affected. It must be someone who was killed unnaturally. If we can replace out who the vessel was and who killed them, maybe we can figure out what they’re after.”

My dad agrees and says he’ll get in touch with all the other Alphas right away. He praises both Sadie and I for our contributions before hanging up.

“That was really smart,” I tell her once we’re on our own again.

She blushes a little. “Not really. I think you just needed an outsider’s perspective.”

Maybe that’s true. Sadie does have a really different way of looking at things, and that brings me back to the whole reason we started this conversation in the first place.

When she told me that she likes me, I felt a happiness and hopefulness that I had never expected to feel again. It makes me feel glad and guilty all at the same time. Glad, obviously, because I like her too and I think we could be really good together. But guilty because I still need to wait for my mate, and also because this is just one more experience Kara never gets to have. It feels like I’ve taken over the life she was meant to have, and I wish it wasn’t that way. I would gladly give it back to her.

Sadie’s obviously not thinking about that right now though. She’s still focused on the vessel. “So if this vessel woman, whoever she was, was killed, why doesn’t the moon goddess pick a new one?”

I had no answer for that. “I’m not sure. Maybe she doesn’t know it happened?”

Sadie frowns. “I thought a goddess would know everything?”

I can only shrug. “I don’t know. It’s one more thing we need to figure out.”

That makes her smile. “There are quite a few of those things, aren’t there?”

Is she talking about me and her now? Are we one of the things we need to figure out? I’m not sure, but I smile back. “We’ll get there. I promise.”

I don’t know if that’s a promise I can keep, but I do know that I’m going to do my very best.