Chapter 1
I was never meant to be Luna.
I was meant to be the ghost of the pack house, the forgotten shadow trailing behind the Alpha whose voice commanded all, but whose mate was nothing more than a servant in her own
home.
I never asked for jewels. Never asked for roses. All I ever wanted was one promise. One damn
promise.
A cruise.
Shawn, Alpha of the Ravenshade Pack, had sworn it back when he still had a soul left in him. When his arms felt like home instead of chains, when the scent of his wolf was strong and true and not drowned in the metallic tang of blood and gunpowder.
“One day, when we’re rich,” he had once whispered into my hair, his Alpha aura warm and protective, “I’ll take you around the world, baby. Just us. The moon and the sea, no one else.” But that was before the empire. Before money and power corrupted his wolf. Before his heart turned to steel. Before, I became his Luna only in name and his servant in practice.
And today, today was my forty-eighth birthday. No one greeted me. No candles, no howl to hono my years, not even the smallest offering at the hearth. The pack celebrated everyone else. Just
never me.
Maybe, just maybe… I thought it could be mine tonight.
I brought it up after dinner. He was in his leather chair, running that old, oil-stained cloth over a wolf-bone blade, polishing it like a relic passed down from blood to blood. The flatscreen muttered some forgotten Western, but no one was watching. My wolf whimpered inside me, small, weary, still clinging to a shred of hope.
“Do you remember what you told me… on my eighteenth birthday?” I asked, my voice quiet but steady.
He didn’t look up. “Which part?”
“That we’d travel. See the world together. You said once the business settled and our boy was grown… we’d go. On a cruise. Just us.”
Alpha Shawn chuckled, low and cruel, the sound rolling out of him like a growl from a wolf who had long since forgotten compassion. “Are you out of your damn mind? Do you think you deserve a cruise? Look at you, Stella. You look like a bamboo stick about to snap. You think any captain would roll out a red carpet for you? No, they’d mistake you for some stray mutt dragging fleas on board,”
My chest tightened. “But today is-‘
“Today’s what?” His gaze finally rose, and I saw it, those amber wolf eyes, dulled, heavy, older now. “You’re not young anymore. The world isn’t kind to women like you. You’re not like Marga.” The name hit like claws against my throat. Marga. My sister-in-law. His brother’s widow. Slim, blonde, all sharp perfume and silk dresses, a she-wolf who always carried herself like she
6:40 pm
belonged on the cover of a magazine. She judged me with her eyes every time we shared a room, and Alpha Shawn never once defended me.
“She’s younger,” he continued, “travels for business, makes appearances for the pack, represents the family. She’s part of the image. But you… You’ve always been the one behind the scenes. That’s where you belong. The house. The family. You keep things running.”
Behind me, the twins snorted. My grandsons. Wolves with fangs are already sharper than their
manners.
“Yeah, Ma, you look like a skeleton in a funeral dress,” Ken sneered, his young wolf aura buzzing
with arrogance.
“Smells like old mop water and dead cats,” Kurt added, pinching his nose.
They burst into cruel laughter. No one stopped them. No one ever did.
Mark, my son, both my pride and my shame, leaned against the fridge, his scent sour with beer and frustration. “Hey, Ma. Wash my clothes, yeah? My wife’s busy. And bleach the white ones this time. Unless you wanna ruin another set.”
“I’m not your maid,” I murmured.
His head snapped up, wolf energy crackling in the air. “What was that?”
“I said I’m not-”
A half-empty soda can slammed at my feet. “Then what the fuck are you? Because you sure as hell ain’t doing anything else in this house! You don’t bring money. You don’t bring status.”
My blood boiled, my wolf stirring weakly inside me, though too suppressed to rise.
“I raised you,” I hissed. “Fed you. Keep you alive when your fever nearly took you. I’ve beer working since before you were born.”
‘Well, maybe you should’ve worked on smelling better,” one of the twins piped up.
‘Yeah,” Kurt sneered, “our classmates say you look like some rogue wandering in from the wilds. Ugly enough to scare a whole pack.”
They laughed, voices ringing like knives in the hollow of my chest.
Alpha Shawn only reached for his wolf-bone blade,inspecting it as if it were worth more than me. ‘We’ve got money, Stella. Plenty of it. But I’m not wasting it on useless help. You’re here. You’ve got two hands. Why the hell would I hire a maid when you’re already chained to this house? Besides, I never liked more omega wolves running around the pack house.”
The woman of the house. That’s what he called me. But I owned nothing. Not a car. Not a card. Every cent I needed, I had to beg for. And if I dared to ask for more, he demanded receipts, penny by penny, like I was some rogue to be monitored.
That night, when the noise died down and the wolves retreated to their rooms, I pulled out the old red suitcase from the closet. The one Alpha Shawn had bought me in Australia before our wedding, back when he had sworn to be my Alpha, my mate, my world.
I stared down at my hands. They no longer looked like mine. Lined. Broken. Calloused from work that was never acknowledged.
I used to be someone. A Vale. Daughter of the strongest Alpha. A she-wolf born of fire and dominance, a Luna by birthright. I gave it all up for love. turned my back on my bloodline.
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thinking an Alpha like Shawn Ravenshade’s bond was enough.
And now?
Now I was nothing. A ghost in a house of wolves.
No kingdom. No crown. No mate is worthy of the bond we once swore under the full moon.
Maybe… Just maybe, leaving this family, leaving this pack of ingrates, was the best gift I could give myself on my birthday.
Because I was done being a ghost.
And somewhere deep inside, my wolf stirred, whispering that the night was still mine.
Chapter 1
Lucia Morh is a passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.