Chapter 36 36
Lena’s POV
The sun rose in pinks and golds along the horizon, a colorful sky that should’ve been beautiful but just left some tight ache in my chest somewhere close to grief. I had sat at this window the entire night, with my hand on the small soft rise of my belly and watched darkness turn into light while I thought myself in circles until exhaustion overcame me.
“Maybe she’s right,” I whispered to the life inside me. “Perhaps we should just leave, maybe everyone would be happier.”
“You’re being dramatic,” I said to myself, attempting some rationality to the waves of irrational thoughts. “It’s just that your hormones are making everything worse while you’re pregnant.”
But was it just hormones? Or had I finally woken up and realized that for months, I’d been kidding myself into thinking that I belonged in a world I’d never wanted to join?
I thought about my father’s house, the forced wedding to the twins I’d run from, how every major moment in my life had been determined by men deciding what would happen with me. Hell, even choosing Lucien hadn’t been a choice—had been an act of desperation to avoid something even more terrible than this.
“Maybe that’s all I mean,” I said, low. "A woman who goes from one man to another and belongs nowhere."
The baby stirred then, a flutter so light that I could have dreamed it. And my hand pushed harder against my stomach, trying to create presence of that little life which was then wholly on my protection.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. “I’m sorry you have this kind of coward for a mother. That she’s talking about walking away from the only home we’ve got because she doesn’t like to compete.”
But competition was only part of the equation, wasn’t it? It was seeing myself being erased from my own life. Watching every choice, every burden, every significant connection being shifted gradually to someone more fit, more experienced and worthier.
By full daylight I had reached my decision. Or, more accurately, the decision had made itself due to simply an overwhelming accumulation of evidence that I was ill matched for such a place.
I would exit with grace, without drama and without a confrontation. Selena had tried to set up safe passage and I would go with it. It would be spun as temporary leave for health reasons.
Finally, once I was safely out of the way, I could send word that I’d decided not to come back. That I believed it was better for all involved if I were to raise the child in a separate environment, without the complications me being around brought.
It was the loving choice. The selfless choice. The best way to minimize hurt for all parties.
Then why did I feel like my soul was dying?
I was packing—quietly, deliberately, thinking what I could take without rousing suspicion—when a knock interrupted the work.
"Luna?" A young voice rang out beyond the door. "I brought your breakfast."
I promptly stashed the half filled bag under the bed and answered the door to find Mira, one of the younger omegas, holding a tray full of food I had no desire for.
"Thanks, Mira," I managed as she passed the tray to me and I took it with hands that tremored. “It wasn’t necessary for you to bring it all the way up here.”
“I did,” she replied with a shy smile. “You always find time to speak with me when you’re in the kitchens. Not everyone does that."
I was flabbergasted by the easy statement. "Of course I talk to you. You're part of this pack."
“Lady Selena never even knew my name,” Mira murmured. “In all her time before you being here, I was but a common servant. But you remembered my birthday last month! You inquired how my mother is. You made me feel like a person.”
There was a knot in my chest at her words. "Your mother—is she doing better?"
“Ten times better thanks to the healer you sent to our cottage. We wouldn’t have been able to pay for that care on our own, but you said the pack should cover it.” There were tears in Mira’s eyes. “My mom says now she’s going to get well, and it’s only because you cared enough to tell when I felt bad.”
“I… I just wanted to help,” I said, feeling more helpless than ever as tears began to pool in her eyes.
“That’s why you’re such a good Luna,” she answered. "You see people. See them, truly see them, not just as functions in the pack structure.”
I sat with my breakfast, uneaten now that Mira had gone and her words running through my head. Did I really impact the younger pack members that greatly? I’d been just learning everybody’s name, what made each person different.
The day would be fraught with instances where I questioned my choice to leave.
Several hours later I saw Elder Ruth in the hallway around lunchtime. The old wolf had been one of Selena's strongest followers, one who had never made any secret of the fact that she preferred things as they once were.
"Luna," she acknowledged me with a nod. "Just wanted to say thanks for the new digs in infirmary.
"The arrangements?" I asked, confused.
“Those ones you recommended last month. Dividing up the treatment rooms by type of wound or severity, rather than by rank. It’s just made everything so much more efficient.” She smiled warmly
“Lady Selena had everything sorted by rank—she accommodated alphas first, followed by betas, and last omegas. But your system undoes that logic, caring for everyone according to need, not status. It has rescued many lives.”
I’d forgotten about that idea, from one of my early attempts to do something good for pack handling. It had seemed then more like common sense than innovation.
“I am so glad that did something,” I said.
"More than helped, child. It changed the way we did emergency care.” Ruth eyed my face long and keenly. “And don’t let anyone tell you that inexperience means low value. On occasion, new eyes can see solutions that decades or centuries of habit have blinded I's to.”
As the day progressed, other members of the pack came to me with similar tales. ‘The pregnant omega who told me that my emotional support helped her survive and get through a bad first trimester’. The young alpha who said my mediation had settled a territorial dispute that had been simmering for years. Kids who’d circled near me at pack meetings,?cause I did pay attention to their worries and not just tell them they didn?t matter.
Every subsequent encounter chipped away at the story Selena created: that I was well-meaning but utterly unhelpful. That I was more of a burden than help. That everyone, myself included, would be better off if I just disappeared.
By the evening, I made my way back to my window and looked down at the bag I had packed, tried to make sense of what I had been told about myself and what I’d seen all day.
Perhaps I wasn’t totally useless after all.
The moment that altered everything happened, as such moments do, by surprise.
I was walking past the main hall, and heard some voices—Selena talking to Elder Marcus about the upcoming harvest festival. I shouldn't have waited to listen, but I heard my name spoken.
“The Luna had wanted to bring some traditions from her father’s land,” Marcus was saying. “Something about a bonfire ceremony to…to honor—”
"Well-intentioned yet naive," Selena cut in with a laugh that lacked any real feeling. “She does not understand that blending territorial traditions only weakens both rather than one of them. These things require the sense of cultural sensitivity that only comes with experience.”
"She acted like she knows the meaning of the ritual,"answered Marcus cautiously.
“Oh, she means well. Young people always do. But well-meaning acts without knowledge of consequences may be more harmful than malice.” Her tone was the same soft, caring one she had taken countless times before when discussing my insufficiencies. “The nicest thing we can do is to steer her away from decisions that are going to embarrass her down the pike.
Something inside me finally snapped.
I opened the door and marched down the hall, my back stiff and my chin up in that defiant way Lucien always told me showed him what he'd first seen in me.
“I wonder,” I said, clear as a bell across the enormous facility. “If my strategies are so naïve and dangerous, why did so many of them work well in the recent months?”
Selena eyed me perfectly composed, changing her expression to one of warm concern. "Lena, dear. I didn't realize you were—"
"Listening? Hearing you, behind my back, belittle what I bring and pretend to be supportive?" I stepped closer, trying not to tremble. “Selena, what are you doing here?”
"I'm helping," she replied simply. “The pack needed help at a low moment.”
“The pack was working just fine before you showed up,” I shot back. “And what they certainly didn’t need was someone actively undermining their Luna while pretending to be her friend.”
Just for a moment—one brief instant—Selena’s mask faltered. I saw in her eyes cold rationality, a predator weighing up whether she had to keep pretending or could give me the truth of it.
Then it was over, replaced by wounded innocence so convincing I almost doubted what I’d seen.
"I know you are under a lot of pressure," she said gently. “Pregnancy can bring emotions that are very, very hard to control. Perhaps you should rest—"
"Don't," I interrupted sharply. “Do not weaponize my pregnancy to respond to me about the things I’m saying that are legitimate concerns. I know what youve been up to, Selena. The gentle adjustments, the advice you give that points out what I’ve done wrong, the way you let yourself be portrayed as responsible adult while treating me like an idiot child.”
"That's not—"
“You tried to help me get out of here,” I went on, my voice getting louder with each word. “You made it seem like the loving thing, a selfless act that would rescue everyone from my insufficiency. But it wouldn’t be that, would it? It's only you removing the field of rivals."
Marcus was deadly silent, watching our back and forth with visible discomfort. But I couldn’t turn around now, not after finding the courage to say out loud what I’d concealed for weeks.
“This is my house,” I said defiantly. "These are my people. And that..." I pointed to my stomach "is my pup who will grow up here, with the pack where they belong. If you can’t tolerate that, maybe you need to be the one who leaves.”
Some trace of warmth had left Selena’s gaze now, all acting gone in the face of confrontation.
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” she replied, softly. “You’re a child pretending to be Luna, and sooner or later Lucien will recall what it means having an authentic partner by his side.”
"Then he can choose that," I said. “But I’m finished letting you make it for him by manipulating and sabotaging.”
I spun and left before she could say anything else, my heart hammering in my chest and my hands trembling from the adrenaline rush. But underneath the fear and the anger, I was feeling something else — something that had eluded me for weeks.
I felt like myself again.