11. Self Control: Xander's Pov

QOTC: What font are you reading this in? (really random question, I know)

I notice the lust in his eyes as he looks at my mate. This is him. "I'm Jones, Dylan Jones."

"H-Hi." Charlotte stutters.

'KILL HIM!' my wolf howls in anger.

I repeatedly clench and unclench my jaw, trying to act calm. There are children around and killing this bastard in front of them will cause panic. 'Get mate away from him.' my wolf continues to growl. 'NOW!'

Charlotte leans closer to me and she nervously runs her wrist. I know that she hasn't hurt herself, it's just a habit that she has. "What time is it?" she asks.

"Ten thirty. Everyone's about to leave." I whisper in her ear. She's not really paying attention to reality right now- her eyes seem distant and she's blinking more often than she usually does.

"Does our room have a lock on the door?" her voice is barely above a whisper.

"Yes, why?"

"Just wondering..." she trails off.

She constantly looks behind us and the exit. I can tell that she doesn't want to say anything to me, but I want to get her to tell me that Dylan was her abuser. "It was nice meeting you!" she forces a smile as a family of five walk by.

'How many people are left?' I ask Brody for a report of the number of guests still in the room.

'About ten, they're all leaving right now.' he answers.

"Bye, Brody." Charlotte hugs Brody before he leaves as well. We're not going to be interacting as much this weekend since he's handling the Betas and I'm handling the other Alphas.

"What's wrong?" I already know the answer, I just want her to say it herself.

"Nothing. I'm just tired." she lies.

I try to make conversation during the car ride, but she keeps giving one word answers. "Is your old Alpha here?" I bring up the dreaded topic.

"No." she leans against the car door and starts breathing faster. I know that she doesn't want to talk about it, but he's already here. On our land. If she just talks to me, then I'll know exactly what to do will Dylan.

"You old Alpha is Dylan isn't it?" I get straight to the point.

Charlotte shakes her head and looks away from me. "Don't lie to me." I park the car near the guest house.

"I'm n-not."

Once we're in our room and the door is locked, I fix the the bed so that we can both lay comfortably. "Baby, talk to me. I can make your problems go away, you just have to tell me what's wrong." I pull her closer to me.

"Nothing's wrong." she mutters.

"Stop lying." I repeat. "I know that Dylan is your old Alpha. He's not leaving my territory unharmed."

Charlotte looks at me with tears in her eyes. "Do I have to see him tomorrow?" her voice cracks at the end of her question.

Nodding, I hold her tighter and rub her back. "I'm here to protect you now." I whisper in hopes of making her calm down. I can feel my shirt becoming damp, but I don't mind.

"What i-if he takes m-me back?" she looks me with fear in her eyes. Her eyes are glassy and her cheeks are once again tear stained.

"You're staying here with me, don't worry." I gently kiss her forehead. "I won't let anyone take you away. I promise."

I will do everything I can to keep Charlotte safe; from attackers and herself. I'll find a way to get her to stop harming herself and she'll realize that she doesn't need to do that to herself. She'll also start learning that I'm hers as much as she is mine. "When is he leaving?"

"Not any time soon." I already have a plan for tomorrow. "But the other Alphas are leaving on Monday."

"Why can't you just let Alph-"

"He's not your Alpha." I correct.

"Why can't you just let him go?"

"That's not happening. He is going to get the punishment he deserves for abusing you all of those years. Kidnapping wolves out of your pack is already punishable by death, he tortured you. And you want to just let him go?" I rant. He's supposed to be dead for kidnapping a wolf; he will be dead for kidnapping another Alpha's mate. Add on the abuse, starvation, blackmailing pack elders and he has even more coming his way. All of the crimes he committed is enough to let the council give me full access of what punishment he gets.

The only thing is that it'll draw the attention of all wolves across the world to Charlotte and I, even rogues will hear of the news. Charlotte will become an even bigger target to people who are trying to bring my pack and I down. Barely any of the things that wolves say about me are true; I do have a mate, I'm not immune to feelings, and I don't just murder living beings for fun.

All of the werewolf packs and vampire covens that I took down weren't innocent at all. I allow the pack members to join Lunar Shadow instead of killing them. I just do whatever I can to protect my pack and loved ones. The moment I get the suspicion that we're about to be attacked or that packs are teaming up to take us down, I do some investigating. 'Mate is cold.' my wolf tells me.

Looking down at my sleeping mate, I notice her shivering. I wipe away the tears that still remain on her face and move her hair back. "I can't believe you're mine." I catch myself saying.

Charlotte's lower lip sticks out a little more than her upper lip and forms a natural pout. I try to put her under sheets before I get in myself, but she doesn't let go of me. I gently pull her arms away and set her down on the pillow. I try not to make the bed squeak as I move.

Smiling as she mumbles my name in her sleep, I pull the covers over the both of us and position is in a spooning position. "Xander." Charlotte's awake now, but her eyes are still closed.

"Hmm?"

"If I'm ever the big spoon, I'll end up hugging you and pretending to be a jetpack." I laugh as I imagine that happening. I'm always going to be the big spoon, I like the feeling of holding my mate in my arms.

"Goodnight." she snuggles into me and makes her self comfortable.

"Goodnight." I concentrate on the constant tingles from where our skin touches until I fall asleep.

***

"If electricity comes from electrons, does that mean that morality comes from morons?" Charlotte asks me.

"No." I answer a couple seconds later. I really wish that I was able to read her thoughts. Maybe all of the random things she says make sense in her head.

"Bye." She waves as I stop in front of the meeting room. The other Alphas and I are having the traditional Alpha meeting.

"No goodbye kiss?" I bend down to her height and close my eyes. I don't open them again until after I feel her soft lips  pressed against mine. I've been taking every chance I can to get a kiss from her.

Charlotte's Pov

QOTC: What font are you reading this in? (really random question, I know)

Xander needs to shave.

One thought, and one thought only repeats in my mind. Xander needs to shave.

His stubble doesn't make him look manlier, it makes him look like he started using hair dye instead of shaving cream. 'We should refuse to kiss him until he shaves.' my wolf suggests.

'No, he'll get mad.'

'Probably.'

I make my way to the kitchen to meet up with Rose, Katherine, and Sadie, Alpha Alvarez's mate. Xander has been telling me that I'm not supposed to call anyone 'Alpha' anymore, but it's a rule that I've been taught. 'Charrrrrrrrrrr.' Brody's voice echoes in my head.

'Are you in the meeting?'

'Yes, I'm bored.' Brody complains. 'We can't do anything until Dylan gets here.'

I momentarily freeze as I hear Alpha Jones' name. I guess that Xander didn't tell him yet. "You must think you're so slick." his all too family voice growls from behind me.

Please just be my imagination.

"You better answer me, slut. You know what happens when you don't." I immediately turn around to see Alpha Jones standing directly behind me. I take a step back to put some distance between us, but he grabs my arms and yanks me closer to him.

"You think you can run away and pretend to be an Alpha's mate?" he tightens his grip on me. "You think you can do all of this and not get caught?"

"And not get punished?" I'm pushed against the wall by Alpha Jones, who doesn't seem to care what he's doing to me. At this point I can't even feel my arm anymore and I'm trying my best not to cry.

"You belong to me." he pins me up by the throat and shouts directly in front of my face. "ME!"

"Xander!" I yell with the little air that I have left. My fingers try to pry his hands off of my neck, but it's useless.

Alpha Jones lets go of me and sends his foot straight into my stomach. I cough and close my eyes; waiting for it to be over. I'm still panting by the time he pulls me up by my hair. "Disobedient whores like you don't get a happy ending." he squeezes my jaw with one of his rough hands.

"Xander!" I scream again. Why are all the rooms soundproof?

"Shut up, slut!" Alpha Jones slaps me hard across the face and slams me to the ground. I receive another punch to the jaw before he speaks again.

"When I leave here, you're coming with me." he says. "I know that you're pretending to be Xander's mate, he'll let me take you without hesitation."

"You'll get the rest of your punishment when we get back to the chambers." He walks away and leaves me to cover up the mess he's made.

I collapse the first time I try to get up and fall back onto the cold wooden floor. Since the kitchen was so far away, the girls weren't able to hear me. The crown of my head is burning from the hair pulling, but I ignore the familiar feeling and stumble into Xander and I's room. Luckily there's a connected bathroom so I don't have to go back in the hallway.

'Mate.' my wolf whimpers. 'He didn't come.'

'He didn't hear us.' I brush it off. No one ever comes to my aid when I'm getting beat anyways. I'm just worried about the punishment I'm going to get when Alpha Jones takes me back to Red Stone.

I turn on the sink and try to clean my open wounds. My vision is blurry and the only color I see is red from the blood going down the drain.

Locking the bathroom door, I take off my shirt to reveal my disgusting and unattractive body. Besides all of the scars that show up against my
pale skin, my ribs poke out and there's already a bruise forming where I got kicked. I'm just glad that nothing broke.

There's a red mark on my neck in the form of a hand and a pink one on my right cheek. 'Mate didn't come.' my wolf repeats.

'He didn't hear us.' I tell her again.

I look away from my ugly reflection and look through the drawers for some pain killers or Advil. Once I find the pills, I open the small container and put two little pills in my hands. 'Put it down! Put it down!' my wolf warns.

'It hurts to much.' Just as I'm about to put the medication into my mouth, everything gets even more blurry. A wave of nausea hits me and I soon feel my legs buckle from under me. My head hits the floor with a thud just like the rest of my body.

Pills are scattered all around me along with the bottle. The back of my head starts to feel moist as I lay motionless on the ground. "Xander." I whisper, wishing that he can hear me.

Xander's Pov

I try my hardest not to glare at Dylan. First, he comes to my meeting fifteen minutes late and he acts like we're best buds. The jackass fucking abused my mate!

No one says a word as they sense my anger. My posture is straight, my eyes are narrowed, and my jaw repeatedly clenches and I clenches with anger. "Meeting dismissed." I announce. I wait until everyone leaves the room until I do myself.

"Hey, Xander." Dylan calls from beside me.

How dare he call me that.

"One of my Omegas ran away-"

"That's not my problem." I quickly walk away and slam the door to my room.

"Charlotte?" I look around for my mate. Maybe she's in the closet. I know that she isn't in the kitchen because I didn't smell her over there.

"Are you changing?" I ask when I notice the bathroom light on and the door locked. "Why the hell do I smell blood?!?"

I forgot to hide the razors when we got here. Internally groaning, I start twisting the doorknob and try opening it without breaking the door. "You better not be doing what I think you're doing!"

Frustrated, I pull hard on the door and swing it open. "Oh goddess." I breathe out when I see her laying on the bathroom floor.

Her legs and arms are covered in still-forming bruises, there's a small pool of blood behind her head, and pills are scattered across the floor. Did she overdose?

I know for a fact that Charlotte wouldn't try to take her life anymore, but the thought still lingers. Rushing to pick her up, I check for a pulse and to see if she's breathing.

'I need you to open a room for your Luna.' I urgently tell the hospital employees. No questions are asked as I cut off communication.

"Oh my-"

"What happened?"

The girls gasp when they see me running out the door with Charlotte in my arms. "Keep breathing." I mutter as I speed on the roads.

There's already a couple of nurses and a hospital bed outside the building when we arrive. I concentrate on her faint heartbeat and shallow breathing. "She fell and hit her head." I tell Doctor Kale. "I'm not sure where the other wounds came from."

Brody pulls up in his wolf form and follows us into the hospital after he shifts and puts on a pair of shorts. "You can't go any furthe-"

"I'm her mate, this is her brother." I growl. I see panic in son of the nurses' eyes and immediately know that something went wrong.

"We need a blood donor." the same nurse says.

"I'll do it." Brody follows her into another room and leaves me standing alone in the hallway.

I'm given a pack of papers to fill out, but I can't concentrate on it. My mate is hurt. She's on the verge of life or death.

She may have overdosed.

I just don't understand! How come she didn't call for help? Why didn't she call for me?

I know for a fact that Dylan did this. He came late to the meeting, the only thing he could've been doing is attacking Charlotte. I had to call off the guards because apparently getting secret guards to protect your mate from other Alphas.

**** (a few hours later)

"Mmm." Charlotte makes a noise as she shifts on the bed. Standing up and watching her movements, I know that she's about to wake up.

"Xander." she whimpers.

"I'm here, sweetheart. I'm here." I hold onto a button to move half of the bed upward. Charlotte's upper body is elevated and she struggles to copy the bed's adjustments.

"Xander." she whimpers again, this time opening her eyes.

"I'm still here, I'm not leaving you."

"P-Please don't g-g-give me back." she pleads. Tears roll down her cheeks and she sniffles. I lightly caress her cheek with one hand and wipe her tears away.

"I'm not giving you to anyone." I promise. "Don't think for a second that I'm giving you away to those bastards."

She looks into my eyes and allows me to hold her hand. "He said that I was just pretending to be your mate.... He said you wouldn't hesitate to hand me over."

"This isn't pretend, right?" I can tell that she's genuinely concerned that our relationship isn't real.

"It's real, I know it is."

"Now who told you that?" I ask. "It was Dylan wasn't it?"

She whimpers when I say his name. "Tell me the truth." I give her a pointed look. She opens and closes her mouth, but no words come out.

"Alpha Jo-"

"HE ISN'T YOUR ALPHA!" I shout.

"D-Dylan," she looks at the door as if he's outside and eavesdropping on our conversation. "He was behind me in the hallway; he started hitting me..."

She takes a deep breath before continuing, "Then he told me that I was going back with him. I kept calling for you, but the rooms are soundproof. He held me up my hair and pinned me against the wall by my neck."

I crack my knuckles and tightly grip the steel bars around the bed. "What about the pills? When I found you, you were on the floor surrounded by them." I ask through gritted teeth.

"I wanted the pain to go away." she whispers more to herself than to me. "I couldn't stand up and I fell."

"You weren't going to..." I trail off.

"No." she answers. "I-I didn't want to leave you or Brody."

"Can you feel anything?" I look at all the IV's and tubes connected to her. There's a big bandage around her head, gauze on her leg, and multiple bruises and cuts all over her body.

"No. The only thing I can feel is my face." she tells me.

"We can leave whenever you feel okay, I already signed the papers." I lean in to kiss her cheek, but frown and pull away when she flinches.

"Doesn't the law say you have to give me back?" she brings up the topic again.

"I am not giving you away." I say slowly, making sure that she's looking into my eyes. "Stop talking about yourself like you're an object."

"Say something." I urge.

A full five minutes of silence passes until she opens her mouth to speak, "Can we go home?"

*** A/N I was going to stop here, but you guys are so awesome that I'm continuing.

Charlotte's Pov

Xander and Alpha Jones both stand stiff and alert, watching the other like a hawk. Alpha Jones tries to look intimidating, but my mate is at least three inches taller than him. Katherine, Rose, and Sadie are all standing behind their mates while I'm standing behind my big brother. "Humph." Alpha Jones holds in a laugh.

Xander doesn't say a thing.

"It's funny how you can't even protect your 'mate'." Alpha Jones snickers. My wolf and I can sense our mate's internal anger.

"You have her hide behind your Beta because you can't protect her yourself." Xander states blankly at him. He shows no emotion except for boredom.

"I'm surprised you're attracted to her at all." Alpha Jones' words usually don't faze me, but with Xander here it hurts a little. Is he only around me because of the mate bond? "The slut-"

Once he hears the first insult thrown at me, he lunges at Alpha Jones. "Don't you dare call her that!" Xander shouts.

He pins Alpha Jones to the wall by pulling his shirt upwards. Like always, Alpha Jones has to open his mouth, "I'm just calling it a slut." He receives a hard punch to mouth as he says this.

Xander glares down at the man and growls loud enough for everyone to hear, "The council are already on their way, you'll end up paying for everything you did to her."

Everyone understands that if he backs off now, he'll get to do torment Alpha Jones even more later. He violently pushes him to the ground and walks away. Everyone else leaves as well, nobody helps Alpha Jones.

Part of me wants to leave and pretend like none of this ever happened, but the other half of me feels like I'm going to get in lots of trouble if I don't go help him. Xander and I walk side by side until we get to our room. I look behind us a few times to make sure that Alpha Jones isn't going to attack us.

Xander will automatically know if he tries to, though. He locks the door behind us and closes the windows. "Are you alright?" he asks when he notices me backing away from him.

"Y-Yeah." I stutter.

Xander's Pov (sorry for switching so much)

"Don't be afraid, sweetheart. We've gone over this." I remind her. I sit on the bed and wait for her to come.

"What is the council going to do?" she hesitantly takes a seat on my lap. I cradle her against my chest and hold her protectively.

"They're going to give Dylan a wolf trial." I answer. "For evidence they'll ask you questions about how he treated you."

"What if they think I'm lying?"

"Why would they think that?"

"One time, they came to the pack house because some wolves were filing complaints about the pack. Alpha made me hide upstairs so that they wouldn't be repulsed by me." Charlotte starts. "They found me... and asked questions. Then they called me stupid for not knowing my own age, or name, and for not eating properly."

"Alpha kept asking questions that I couldn't answer." she whispers. "It wasn't the council's fault, though. Alpha told them that I was an Omega trying to get out of the pack."

"I have such great self control." I force a smile. "I already have a cell and chains ready for him."

"Xander?"

"Yes, baby?"

"What if the council makes me go back?" Tears are gathering in her eyes when she brings up that topic again. I can't believe how uncertain she is that I'm going to send her back.

"They won't." I growl. "And I'm not giving you back either. I've spent almost ten years searching for you, I wouldn't do all of that work just to give my girl away."

/&;&/&:$-@@:;&&:/

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Just wanted to say thank you guys! It makes me so happy when I read your comments and I honestly didn't think that My Broken Luna would get this far.

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QOTC: What font are you reading this in? (really random question, I know)

Adventures with Brody: Brody's Pov (age seven)

"Am I on your team, Bodey?" Char stumbles up to be. I nod and hand her a small foam dodgeball. Mom and dad took us to a trampoline place with Xander and his brothers.

"Am I allowed to eat the ball?" I watch as she squeezes the ball and hugs it to her abdomen; trying to make it small enough to fit in her mouth.

"No, you throw it." I show her how to properly hold and throw the ball. Xander, Collin, Alan, Char, and I are all against Theo, Vince, Ryder, and Logan. The reason we have more people is because Char is smaller than the rest of us.

"Bander." she jumps over to Xander. We've all gotten used to her pronouncing our names wrong, she's still not able to pronounce certain sounds.

"I'm onto your team!" she smiles.

We wait for my mom to yell the word 'go' and all hold ready positions. "FREE FOR ALL!" Char shouts as she tackles me to the ground. I could've stayed standing, but I didn't want her to hurt herself.

Making sure she falls on top of me instead of under, I ask, "Why?"

"Teo told me to do it." I sit down on the sidelines and watch as she jumps on top of Collin.

xoxo Priscilla