Clare came back out of her room fully dressed. She quickly shared a hug with her parents beyond happy to see them.
Regardless of the circumstances that drew them together, Edward and Julia were one of the best people in the universe and the best she had ever met.
They took her in as their own child and treated her as such without expecting anything. She would always be grateful to them all her life.
"Light.... mmmmm... hmm." A cackling from behind her had Clare turning in shock. She saw in front of her, what could only be described as a mad woman.
She did not even mean that as an insult, it was just— the only word that could be used to describe the entity in front of her.
The woman had short thick and stiff locks of hair seemingly to whorl around themself and sticking in unnatural positions to form a nest atop her head especially with feathers, twigs and fur hanging precariously from the mess.
Her dress was no better, it was made out of fur like those type you see in depictions of cavemen from the stone ages. It also had all sort of things attached to it, things she didn't even know what they were but the serpentine eyeball was what made her take a step back.
"Your parents will return in two weeks time. When they do, they will bring a medium to unite you to your parents in a lunar bond."
This was getting more and more scary, her parents had indeed arrived fourteen days after they left and they had indeed brought this looney woman with them.
"Light." The medium looked at her with a wicked glint in her eyes.
"Clare, meet The Oracle." Her mother put a comforting hand on her shoulder then whispered in her ears. "She lived by herself for a very long time, just ignore the obvious."
"Hi!" Clare piped up.
The woman cocked her head at her, tilting it side to side, looking at her.
"Aradia," The medium suddenly bellowed and begins a weird dance around her and her parents. "Die, owls, blood, live, heal, fire, shift, ascend, Aradia!." She continued chanting in earnest.
"Should we be writing this down?" Clare asked in a whisper.
"She did the same thing to us when we met her, she will calm down in a minute." Alpha Edward whispered back.
True enough, the medium soon calmed down and started playing with her hair, singing in a strange language to herself.
"Princess, you know how your eighteenth birthday is coming up soon?" Alpha Edward asked.
Clare nodded not giving any indication that she already had an idea of what they were about to say.
"Okay, we heard that Oracle here has the power to create lunar bonds, so we had to try to search for her. We finally found her some days ago, so we brought her to perform the ritual for us, so you will be our child in every way." Luna Julia said with a bright smile.
"You guys... You didn't have to, I already feel that I am child, you have never treated me otherwise."
The Luna nodded with a smile. "You don't know how glad we are that you feel that way Clare but I— we know that the others do not respect you just because you are an Omega. We can sense your loneliness, we understand those two faced words pack members throw at you during dinner time. I can tell your bruises from the training grounds are more than you let on."
"We just want to do this for you when it is possible. You can grow stronger and everything can change. You can lead this pack after us, there is no one I trust enough to leave our pack to apart from you."
Clare looked at their kind faces lit with hopeful smiles. She wanted to tell them that she really didn't want to stay here for the rest of her life.
She wanted to go out and explore the world. She wanted to see places and meet people, people who will respect her regardless of her status or rank, not those that would be forced to be nice to her because she had Alpha blood running through her veins.
She would feel suffocated living amongst snakes like that. She would feel trapped all her life.
But as she looked into the faces of the people who had nurtured her and only wanted the best for her, she knew that there was hardly a thing she could refuse them.
"...there would be consequences."
The sad thing was that it might not work anyway so she could at least agree to make them feel better. When the ritual does not work out, they could all finally move on from this episode.
"Fine, okay."
"Good. Good!" Alpha Edward turned to the medium. "When do we start, Oracle?"
The woman stared out of the window at the sky for some seconds. "The full moon is upon us. We shall begin in three days time. I shall return then." She said and abruptly turned towards the entrance.
"How do we know that you will return?" The Luna called after the woman.
She paused and turned to them briefly, the wicked glint back in her eyes. "You have something I want, Alpha."
And with those words, she disappeared into the night.
Clare did not like that woman one bit, not that she got any chilling feeling from her but she felt like a really greedy person with the way she looked at both her parents and her "Dad, What does she mean?"
The Alpha gave her a small smile. "Don't worry about it Princess, it's just something we don't need anymore."