Chapter 281
Lanie
I pulled up one site that listed a few facts about hybrids, but nothing I didnât already know. That site led me to another one with a
little more information. Mostly speculative rather than first-person experiences. A lot of it seemed wrong.
I was desperate to find out anything that I could use to prepare for raising Stella, but my next hit turned out not to be
about hybrids, at least not directly. It was an old message board where someone had been asking if it was possible that a Luna
could ever be stronger than her Alpha.
There hadn't been much activity in the past few years, but what I first read chilled me and sent my heart racing. The person
who'd made the initial post described, well...pretty much everything Iâd been feeling lately.
Astrong connection to the Moon Goddess. Knowledge about things previously unknown. The ability to send emotions to her
mates, or rather, an inability not to send them. There were more items on the list, and as I read them, I felt my palms start to
sweat. The final entry took my breath away.
The ability to compel
Alphas could do that, sure, but it wasnât something Lunas were meant to be able to do. But I could, and had. Even now, when I
thought back to the strange push of power that had flowed through me when I was using that ability, I could hardly believe it. I
mean, sh it, I could hardly believe anything that had happened to me since that Mating Day, so why was this such a hard thing to
swallow?
After all, I knew I was a hybrid.
The person who'd written this post, though, didnât seem to have any idea that hybrids existed. She wa Luna from a pack
someplace in the Midwest, a tiny one by the description. Sheâd been mated to her Alpha a
her Beta practically from birth, arranged by agreement between both sets of parents. Her father had been her Alphaâs fatherâs
Beta. It seemed a little tangled up to me, but who was I to judge? I had two brothers as my
mates.
According to the post, this Luna, who used the screen name âDarkLuna,â had first discovered that she
could access and control Luna powers immediately after her Mating Day.
That wasnât the weird thing.
It was that after a few months, sheâd started to notice that her Alpha was getting stronger, too...but only
when she was around and, as the poster put it, âgiving him a push.â
I sat back in my chair to study this. Xander had been strong when I met him, and he was even stronger now. But that hadn't
seemed unusual. It certainly wasnât something I could directly attribute to anything I'd
been doing for him.
My strengths were definitely growing, though.
I read through to the end of her post, and my heart went out to her. For poor DarkLuna, the stronger she
1/2
treated bar. And all
actually helped him!
Frowning, I scanned the first set of comments. There were the usual trolling sort, telling her she should never have let herself be
stronger than her Alpha. âLet,â like she could help it? Like it was her fault the Moon Goddess had gifted her with more than what
her Alpha had?
Xander would never resent me for my strengths, I told myself. But there was a small part of me that connected so much with
DarkLuna and it made me worry.
mall,
Other than the initial post, DarkLuna hadn't responded to any of the comments. I read them all, even the ones that made me see
red with anger. I needed to find out if the reason why she was stronger had anything to do with being a hybrid. And finally, in one
of the final comments, left much later than the others, I got a glimmer of an answer.
It was from someone whose username was âSeek The Truth.â They had a short comment, only a few words, but reading them
sent a shard of ice right to the base of my spine.
âYou need to ask your parents about a fox in the henhouse,â the post read. âBecause the only way a Lunat could ever be
stronger than her Alpha is if sheâs got mixed blood.â
There were a bunch of comments piling on that one, most of them nasty. It seemed even the idea of a hybrid to these people
was so disgusting, they had to scream in ALL CAPS at strangers on the dark web about
it
A few comments pointed out that Alphas can be weak for a lot of reasons. And any Alpha that treats his Luna like s hit because
she makes him insecure was also probably not too strong to begin with.
But most of the posters were slinging around derogatory terms for hybrids. Or they were saying hybrids were âonly theoreticalâ
and âimpossibleâ and âcrimes against the Goddessâ and, to me, worst of all, âmonstrosities that should be put down at birth.â
Tears flooded my eyes as thoughts of my sweet Stella flooded my mind. My little girl was not a
monstrosity. My sister wasnât. My mother wasnât. I was not
Words on a screen were only words and couldnât hurt me. I dashed away my tears and got back to work. I was onto something.
First, I clicked on DarkLunaâs screen name, hoping I'd be able to find a way to connect with her.
The link took to me to another site, and what I saw there had me gasping aloud,