Chapter 408

Pippa and Elias argue quietly for a few moments at the center of the room as I quietly work my jaw back and forth, attempting to ease the pain as I go over my options in my mind. I pick up on about half of their words – Pippa’s insistence that I absolutely cannot go to anything tonight since my confinement is started, Elias’s counter that if I don’t go, Gabriel will see it as subterfuge and find a way to punish me for it.

I only really snap back to the moment when Elias murmurs his farewells and storms from the room, pulling the door shut hard behind him.

I look up to see Pippa standing with her hands on her cheeks, looking anxiously at the door after her Alpha.

“Is he okay?” I ask, dropping my hands to my lap. “Are…are you?”

Pippa quietly turns to me, her eyes moving slowly over me. “He’s fine, he’s just…worried.” Her voice is soft, motherly, used to taking care. It doesn’t pass me that she ignores my question regarding her own welfare as she moves to my side. “Are you all right, darling?”

“I’m fine,” I say, taking her hand as she crawls onto the bed next to me. “I’m so sorry, Pippa, if I got you in trouble.”

“Oh, they were fools to make me your jailer anyway,” she says, smiling a little as she squeezes my hand looks at me with those pretty brown eyes. “I was never one to keep things caged. But Ariel – it’s important to me that you know that whatever you’ve heard about Atalaxia and the way women live here…it’s never okay for an Alpha to hit his Luna. That is…that is not all right.”

My eyes fill a bit with tears – both at the pain in my face and the fact that this is what this sweet girl is worrying about right now.

“I’m glad that’s true,” I whisper.

She shakes her head, her eyes moving to my jaw, and she grimaces – which lets me know that a bruise is probably forming. “I hope you hit him back.”

A little laugh bursts from me. “I didn’t get the chance. Though trust me, if I could have, I would’ve.”

Pippa gives me a smile and then, to my surprise, asks me if I’m up for another bath. When I ask her what on earth for – I just got out of the last one – she laughs and tells me that I rather ruined that by getting all covered in dirt from the Land of Darkness. “Plus,” she adds with a sigh, “the confinement bath is all lavender, which is supposed to be a message to anyone who happens to smell you to leave you alone. Because your month has…begun. So,” she sighs. “We have to find a way to get you…un-lavendered, if Gabriel is going to insist on you being in public tonight.”

“Oh goodness,” I sigh, pulling myself out of bed and following her to the bathroom. “If you say so, Pip.”

She gives me a small smile that lets me know her worries aren’t totally gone and gets to work again filling the bath and moving to the wall of scented soaps and oils, picking out something that will sufficiently cover the lavender scent. She also pulls a bell rope on the wall, which I know orders up a tray of tea when pulled.

I just stand by the tub, letting her work, thinking that Atalaxians spend a great deal of time in the bath. My mind drifts, then, to the big tub in our Alpha Academy bathroom. And the rain shower next to it. And to being in that rain shower, with Jackson, his skin flush against mine…

“Ariel?”

I jump a little and then blush as I see Pippa peering at me curiously, the bathtub completely full.

“Sorry,” I murmur, untying my robe and letting it slip from my shoulders. “I got…distracted.” Pippa turns slightly to give me some privacy I don’t need – Moon Valley wolves don’t tend to be shy about nakeness, even if Atalaxian ones do – as I slip into the bath.

When I slip under the water, opaque with bath salts and oils and bubbles and soap, Pippa turns back to me and sits on a stool at my side, handing me shampoos and conditioners and more soaps as I go through the process of bathing, keeping me company as much as she’s helping me.

“Did you know,” Pippa says, her voice a bit distracted and dreamy as she leans against the side of my tub, “what Gabriel meant, when he said he wants you to be the perfect picture of an Atalaxian Luna tonight?”

I shrug a little, looking at her with interest as I rinse shampoo from my hair. “I mean, I think I know. But…I’m not sure I do. Not really.”

“I’m not sure he knows either,” she says, turning to look at me, her face more serious than I’ve seen it before. “I’m not sure any of them do.”

I stop moving my hands, letting them fall into the water. “What do you mean?”

“We spent a lot of time on a country estate when we were children,” Pippa says, looking away again, surprising me with this turn in the story. “It belonged to my uncle – my mother’s favorite brother. He never took a Luna.” She shrugs. “Some don’t. Perhaps there aren’t enough perfect Luna’s for all the Alphas who are left wanting.”

She smiles a little and then scoots her stool back, taking a little cup off of the back of the tub and filling it. I tilt my head back as she pours the water over me, beginning to rinse the rest of the shampoo out of my hair like I’m a child.

“But we had a very idyllic childhood there,” she continues. “We spent a great deal of time wandering through the meadows, and making up stories in the mountains, and building forts up in trees or beneath them. There was a great deal of freedom to that life which…I think we all lost when we came back to the Castle for the winters. And when we started living here forever.”

I listen carefully, still confused, as Pippa puts the cup back onto the edge of the tub and takes up the conditioner, quietly beginning to massage it into my hair.

“My uncle, he never came with us to the Castle,” Pippa says quietly. “I think he would have missed the freedom too much. He had a very special friend there, you see – his gamekeeper. He raised my uncle’s hounds, and tended his horses. He was a very nice man – always with a ready smile. I haven’t seen him in years. Duck in, darling, and run your hands through your hair, please. It’s faster that way.”

I glance at Pippa, wordless, and then does as she says, ducking under the water. As I float beneath the water, running my fingers through my hair, I wonder if…

…god, is Pippa telling me the story I think she’s telling me? Or…

Breathless for want of information and, indeed, air, I resurface. She’s waiting for me, a towel in hand, and she gives me a gentle smile as she offers it to me so that I can pat my face dry.

“You see,” Pippa says, quiet soft and fond, “Gabriel doesn’t understand that that’s the true role of an Atalaxian Luna – seeing more than they think we see, and keeping men’s secrets to ourselves. Tucking them away to deep that they don’t even know that we know. Elias – as good to me as he is…he doesn’t know either. What it is Atalaxian Lunas hold for our men. What we know.”

I turn to her suddenly, shocked. Because…

“Yes, Ariel,” Pippa says quietly, taking the towel back from me. “I know. I’ve known…for a very long time. I notice everything about my Alpha’s life, and the way he loves me, and the way he…looks at others. And I noticed when he came home from his trip to Moon Valley at Midwinter that…everything had changed.”

I continue to just stare at her, not really knowing what to say, my face slack.

“Don’t pity me, darling,” she says quietly, reaching out to stroke my cheek. “I have a better Alpha than most. He keeps my secrets too.”

“You have secrets?” I whisper.

She nods a little. “Gabriel and Elias taught me to read when we were children, which they ardently were not supposed to do. And…Elias gave me this baby,” she says, looking down at her belly and putting her hands on either side of it. “Even though we’ve never lain together.”

I stare at her in shock. “Is it…that’s his baby though, right?”

She looks up at me with a wide grin. “Yes, Ariel, I’m not a complete harlot. We were just…creative,” she says, laughing and looking away with embarrassment. “With the transfer of the seed.” She blushes a deep red. “Though, I hope that if you’re in training to be a perfect Atalaxian Luna that you will…help me by keep that secret as well. As well as the others, which I know you hold.”

I shake my head in wonder at my friend. Because who knew that she had so many secret hopes and dreams beneath that calm and sweet demeanor? Especially those that her own culture would see as acts of sin and blasphemous betrayal, desires worthy of death.

“Pippa,” I say quietly, reaching to cover her hand with my own. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

“Because I want you to know my secrets, Ariel,” she says quietly, turning her head back to me. “So that you’ll tell me who my Alpha’s mate is, if you know. And so that…when I ask you when you’re planning to escape from all of this, you’ll trust me enough to tell me the truth. And so that you’ll take me with you when you go. And this little baby. And Elias as well.”

I stare at Pippa, shocked at the depths she’s revealed. Because, I mean, I never thought her truly stupid – just incredibly innocent - but…

Damn, did she have me fooled.

“Well shoot, Pippa,” I murmur, smiling at her a little as I shake my head and squeeze her hand. “With the ability to maintain a life-long poker face and keep secrets like that…we’ll have a role for you in the Espionage unit at Alpha Academy whenever you want it.”

She stares at me in shock for a moment before we both burst into laughter.

“Oh dear,” Pippa murmurs, shaking her head and pressing a hand to her cheek. “Oh, I don’t think I could do that. With all those Alphas? And all from Moon Valley where they…where they kiss girls before they’re married?” She shakes her head like it’s all kind of terrifying and wonderful.

I grin and lean back in the tub. “You know they do a lot more than kiss the girls.”

Pippa’s eyes dart to my neck and then back to my face as she bites her lip, hesitating. But then she breaks, leaning forward with an eager smile on her lips. “What’s it like?” she whispers, breathless. “Is it great?”