Aella sat in the foyer of the pack house, calmly reading her book. It had been two days since the incident with Louve and she had gotten over the initial embarrassment. She had become fast friends with Louve, who was the kindest person she had become very met.

The kindness sometimes scared her, as she wasn't used to someone being so nice and approachable. All her life, she had been used to hostile, sinister people, and Louve proved to be a pleasant surprise to her.

She smiled as she turned a page of her book. Perhaps she had made a best friend, who knows? Staying in this pack was definitely changing her in different ways.

She looked up as a sound distracted her and saw that it was Louve entering the foyer. She smiled as she saw the other woman and waved happily. When did you start waving happily? Her wolf asked but she ignored it.

"Hey! I was starting to wonder where you went after breakfast." Louve said, smiling. She closed the glass doors of the foyer behind her and walked towards Aella, then sat on the couch beside her.

"I wanted to finish this book before I come out. It's quite interesting." Aella said and waved the book in her face.

"Ohh!" Louve collected the book from her and examined the cover. "I know of this one. Logan and I were huge fans of Joan Aiken while growing up."

Aella smiled "Really?"

"Yes. This book used to be his favorite, but I didn't like it much. Too much killing of innocent children to me." she raised the book up. The title read 'The Stolen Lake.' 

"Really?" Aella asked. "So what's your favorite Joan Aiken book?"

"Oh, Cold Shoulder Road, easily. Much more slapstick humor. I absolutely love humor in any book. And I personally love the main character, Isabela Twite."

"Oh wow. Sounds interesting." Aella said, nodding her head. "I'll try to get the book and read it."

"You should find it in Logan's personal library. Have you been there?"

Aella frowned. "I don't think I have. I'd love to visit it someday."

"You should," Louve replied.

"But aren't Joan Aiken books too feminine for someone like Logan?" Aella wondered. "I mean, I thought he would be more interested in books like "The Werewolf of Paris" or something."

Louve laughed "Trust me, Logan wasn't the tough, brooding man you know him to be now. He used to be a very soft and shy boy."

"Oh?" Aella smiled, interested. "I would love to hear about that part of him. Because the part of him I know is "hella" annoying."

"Oh, you'll definitely wanna hear this. So..." Her voice trailed off as she realised that Aella's attention had been divided. The woman was staring at something behind her with a wistful expression on her face. Her own back was to whatever Aella was looking at, so she turned to look at it.

Aella was looking at Logan, who had walked into the foyer. He was walking towards the staircase and looked up as he noticed them. Louve waved gaily at him and he waved back.

"I'll come to join you when I'm done!" He yelled at them.

"Okay!" Louve yelled back and he walked out of the foyer. 

Louve looked back at Aella and saw that the other woman's eyes were still on Logan, even as he walked up the staircase. She remembered the tension that had hovered between them the other night at the dinner table, including the way they had held hands when she had barged in on them. She suspected that something was between them but she couldn’t quite say what it was.

"Aella!" Louve called her to bring back her attention and the woman slowly tore her eyes away from Logan. "Why are you acting so distracted all of a sudden?"

"What?" Aella snapped back to reality. "N–No. I'm sorry." She stanmered and smiled nervously.

"You know you're reminding me a lot of Logan right now," Louve said, staring at the woman. "He used to be so besotted with one particular female wolf when we were growing up."

"He did?" Aella asked, interested.

"Yeah," Louve replied. She was suddenly serious. "When his mom was around, Logan used to be a very inquisitive child. He looks like his mother in so many ways: physical and behavioral. She was a very beautiful woman, and a positive influence on her son too. Before she came along, Logan's father used to be a very brooding man. He actually thought himself incapable of love, till she joined the pack and he imprinted hard. He couldn't do without her. It was as though the trajectory of his life was changed and everything, he did revolve around her."

Aella listened with a wistful expression as she thought of how similar yet different her situation with Logan was. Sometimes she thought he was everything she had always wanted, other times she was so mad at him that she wanted to reject him.

"I understand." She replied Louve quietly "Trust me, I understand more than you could ever explain."

Louve nodded. "She was also a very good Luna. She was like a mother to everyone in the pack. They all loved her, aunt Jessica. She would put the safety of her pack members first when making any major decision. It was as though my uncle had found his perfect life partner.

"Then–then she died." Louve paused. Aella could hear how her voice broke. She cleared her throat and continued. "It was a huge blow to the entire pack, even more to our alpha. We mourned her for months. Things were never the same again.

"First my uncle began to brood, even more than he usually did. He would lock himself up in his wing for days, not talking to anyone, even his own son. Logan was a very confused fifteen-year-old boy at that time. He was extremely worried about his father, and I did my best to comfort him. But I guess it wasn't enough. He was hurt about his mother's death too, and he badly needed his father's reassurance. But his father had completely shut everyone off.

"You see, something about the mating bond is that it makes your mate the center of your life so that you cannot imagine loving anyone the way you would love them. So, when they die, something in you would die too, something that can never ever be replaced. Which is why people who lose their mates to death usually never get over the depression that follows.

Aella felt a sudden pang of anger. Why would the Goddess give an irreplaceable someone to you, then snatch them away and leave the person scarred for life? It sounded like wickedness to her.

"So, enough talk about depressing things," Louve said, smiling. "What part of Logan's childhood do you want to know about?"

"Start from the beginning, please." Aella replied.

So Louve told Aella all about her mate's childhood, from his embarrassing moments to his cute ones. Aella realised that Logan used to be a very lively child till his mother died. Her death had affected him a lot, turned him into the brooding man she knew today. He had also had a lot of alpha responsibility placed upon him shortly after that, and sadly his personality never recovered from it.

She laughed as Louve gave funny anecdotes about Logan, like the time he had cracked a nut with his butt, earning him the nickname of "buttcracker", how he had had a huge crush on an older female wolf and how he had cried on his mother's shoulders when the werewolf imprinted on another wolf and left the pack.

Logan came back into the foyer as Aella was laughing and she quickly stopped laughing. Louve noticed the change in Aella's mood, the way her expression changed from happy to wistful. Logan too looked at Aella with an unnatural fondness and longing, which made her even more suspicious. She perceived that they were mates because only two people who had been bound together by the Goddess would act like this. As though they wanted to be together but they couldn't. She smiled slyly as she thought of an idea to bring them even closer. She knew what to do.