MasukShare
Chapter 2: The Morning After
Tanggal publikasi:
2025-12-13 16:58:09Rhiannon's POV
The cabin smelled like him when I woke.
Pine and earth and that indefinable scent that was purely Darius—the one that made my wolf stir even though she'd never emerged. I reached across the fur rug where we'd fallen asleep, my hand searching for warmth.
Cold. Empty.
I sat up slowly, pulling the blanket around my bare shoulders. Morning light streamed through the gaps in the wooden walls, harsh and unforgiving. The fire had burned down to embers.
He was gone.
He probably just went back early, I told myself, pushing down the flutter of unease in my stomach. The ceremony. He has to prepare.
I dressed quickly, my fingers trembling as I fastened the buttons of my thin dress from last night. The fabric was wrinkled, smelling of smoke and us. I'd need to change before the ceremony.
Before everything changed.
I walked back toward the packhouse, and with each step, memories flooded through me.
Six months ago. The first time.
I'd been scrubbing the floors of the Alpha's wing—late, because I'd been assigned double duty for dropping a tray earlier that week. My knees ached. My hands were raw.
"You're still here?"
I'd looked up to find Darius standing in the hallway, wearing training clothes, his hair damp from a shower. He was the Alpha's son. I was nobody.
"Almost done, sir," I'd stammered, dropping my gaze.
"Don't call me that." His voice had been softer than I expected. "And you don't have to look away. I don't bite."
I'd glanced up—and found him smiling. Actually smiling. At me.
"What's your name?"
"Rhiannon. Rhiannon Ashwood, sir—I mean..." I'd fumbled, heat flooding my cheeks.
He'd laughed. "Rhiannon. Pretty name for a pretty girl."
And just like that, something had shifted.
A week later, he'd found me again. Then again. Secret conversations in empty hallways. Stolen glances across the dining hall. He'd started seeking me out deliberately—helping me carry heavy buckets, walking me back to the omega quarters under the pretense of "patrol."
Two months in, he'd kissed me. Hidden in the storage room, surrounded by cleaning supplies and the scent of lye soap. Desperate and hungry and perfect.
"I shouldn't want you this much," he'd whispered against my lips. "But gods, Rhiannon, I can't stay away."
Four months in, he'd taken me to the cabin. "Our place," he'd called it. Where no one would see. Where we could be ourselves.
Where he'd made love to me like I was precious instead of worthless.
Six months of secret meetings. Six months of promises whispered in the dark.
Tomorrow, he'd said just last night. Tomorrow changes everything.
I believed him. I'd believed every word.
The packhouse loomed ahead, and my stomach tightened. I needed to get to the omega quarters, change into my nicest dress, make myself presentable.
Make myself worthy of standing beside an Alpha.
"Well, well. Look who's doing the walk of shame."
I froze.
Three pack girls stood blocking the path—all daughters of high-ranking families. Miranda Thornfield led them, her perfect blonde hair already styled for the ceremony, her silver gown probably worth more than everything I owned.
"Morning, Rhiannon." Her smile was poisonous. "Rough night?"
"Excuse me." I tried to walk past.
She stepped in front of me. "That's a lovely outfit. Is that what you're wearing to the ceremony? How... quaint."
The other girls snickered.
"I'm going to change," I said, keeping my voice level.
"Into what? Your other rag?" Miranda's eyes raked over me with open contempt. "You know, I almost feel bad for you. It must be exhausting, pretending you belong here."
"I do belong here. I'm pack."
"You're wolfless." She said it like a curse. "You're an orphan. You clean our floors, Rhiannon. That's all you'll ever do."
Something hot and bitter rose in my throat. "You don't know anything about me."
"Oh, but I do." Miranda leaned closer, her voice dropping. "I know you've been spreading your legs for Darius Nightshade. I know you actually think it means something. And I know—" She smiled, cruel and certain. "—that when he takes that Alpha oath today, he'll choose Isolde Ravenclaw as his mate. Not you. Never you."
The words hit me in places I can't name.
"You're lying."
"Am I?" She stepped back, adjusting her perfect dress. "Guess we'll find out in a few hours. Come on, girls. We have a real Luna to celebrate."
They walked away, their laughter echoing across the courtyard.
I stood there, my hands trembling, my chest tight.
She's wrong. She's just being cruel. Darius loves me.
But doubt had planted itself like a seed, cold and insidious.
I made it to the omega quarters and changed into my pale blue dress. It looked worse than I remembered—the color faded, the hem frayed, a button missing that I'd replaced with one that didn't quite match.
I tried to do something with my hair. Braided it. Unbraided it. Finally left it down, silver and straight, the only thing about me that had ever been called beautiful.
It doesn't matter what you look like, I told my reflection. Darius chose you. He chose you months ago.
The walk to the central square felt like walking to my execution.
The square was already packed with hundreds of wolves, all in ceremonial robes. The platform dominated the space—massive, draped in black and silver, the Crescent Moon banners snapping in the wind.
I'd never seen so many pack members in one place. My hands went slick with sweat.
More stares. More whispers.
"Is that the orphan?"
"Why is she even here?"
"Pathetic."
I kept my head up and pushed forward, weaving through the crowd toward the front. I needed to see him. Needed to catch his eye, to see that everything was okay.
The platform came into full view.
And there he was.
Darius stood at the center, his father beside him. He looked magnificent—every inch the Alpha he was about to become. Broad shoulders filling out the ceremonial robes. Dark hair swept back. Strong jaw set with determination.
He looked like he'd been carved from stone.
My heart swelled with pride and love and desperate hope.
His eyes swept across the crowd.
I waited for them to find me. Waited for that moment of recognition, that secret smile meant only for me.
His gaze passed over the section where I stood.
Right over me.
Cold. Distant. Like I was just another face in the crowd.
Like I was nothing.
No. He's just focused. Nervous. He has to stay in character until—
But something in my chest twisted painfully.
Something that felt horribly like the beginning of the end.
Bab terbaru
Alpha's Regret: The Forsaken Luna CHAPTER 147: THE LAST SCENE
Rhiannon's POVEvening. October. The cabin.Darius and I sat on the step outside with the fire laid but not lit, the stream audible, the trees making their autumn sound — the particular dry whisper of leaves deciding to let go."Do you remember," he said, "the night before the ceremony? Six years before the rejection. When I found you in the pack's inner courtyard."I remembered.I'd been seventeen. He'd been walking the grounds on some task I'd already forgotten and he'd stopped when he saw me and said something — a compliment, easy and instinctive, the kind he'd given without thinking about before he'd learned to think about everything. I'd been so unaccustomed to being spoken to directly that I'd gone slightly frozen."You told me I looked like I was carrying something," I said. "You asked if I needed help.""Did I?""You don't remember?""I remember you," he said. "I remember stopping because of you. I don't remember what I said." He paused. "What did you tell me?""That I was fin
Alpha's Regret: The Forsaken Luna CHAPTER 146: FULL CIRCLE
Rhiannon's POVI went back to the Forbidden Zone alone on a Tuesday in October.Not the family trip this time — Soren had come for that, and it had been right and necessary. This was different. This was private in the way that some things are private even from the people who know you best: not secret, just between you and the specific piece of the world you're revisiting.Three hours to ride there. The forest thicker now than it had been in my years of the Silver Claws — fifteen more years of growth since the last visit, the trees pressing closer together at the margins, old growth doing what old growth does. The particular smell of it unchanged, unchanged since I was eighteen, the smell of forest that hasn't been disrupted by anything for a long time.The cave.I sat outside it in the October light and didn't go in.I'd gone in at seven with Soren. At thirty-eight now, this was a different visit. I wasn't here to confirm anything or show anyone anything or make anything mean somethin
Alpha's Regret: The Forsaken Luna CHAPTER 145: THE CABIN
Rhiannon's POVWe built it in the summer of their twenty-first year.Not far — twenty minutes from the packhouse, at the edge of the territory where the old forest started. A low stone building with a view east into the trees and a stream audible from the doorway, in the same configuration as the safe house we'd borrowed for the honeymoon, which was not accidental.I'd wanted it for years. Not as a retreat — as a place that belonged to both of us the way the packhouse belonged to the pack. Something that wasn't architecture of function but architecture of choice.We built it over a summer with help from pack members who showed up uninvited and stayed for the satisfaction of the work, which was its own category of pack belonging — the decision to build something together, not because anyone had asked.Marcus built the shelving along the east wall.Thorne, who had never in our acquaintance indicated any interest in construction, showed up on the third week with tools and specific opinio
Alpha's Regret: The Forsaken Luna CHAPTER 144: THE PACK AT TWENTY YEARS
Darius's POVTwenty years after the Bloodletter attack, Crescent Moon was unrecognisable in specific ways and entirely itself in all the ways that mattered.The territory had expanded — not through conquest, through invitation. Three smaller packs in the surrounding region had petitioned for alliance in the years after the treaty became known. Two had formalised as subsidiary territories. The third maintained independence but participated in the combined training rotations that Thorne and Caelum had developed into something that had begun attracting interest from packs considerably further away.There were one hundred and sixty wolves in Crescent Moon's territory now.One hundred and sixty, where there had been eighty when Rhiannon had walked in masked and I'd felt the ghost of something I'd thought was dead trying to wake up.The council was twelve again, fully occupied. Eight original members — including Elder Moira, who showed no signs of slowing and had expressed approximately zer
Alpha's Regret: The Forsaken Luna CHAPTER 143: SOREN AT SEVENTEEN
Rhiannon's POVHe came home from Clearwater on a Thursday.The town was two hours south — not a long journey, but long enough that his absences had become a regular feature of the household, the particular texture of a family with a member who was beginning to live partially in the world beyond it. He was there twice a month, working with Moira's counterpart in the southern district on the cases that came through: injuries, illnesses, the occasional magical imbalance in one of the younger shifters.He was good at it.I knew this not from Moira — she was professionally restrained in her assessments — but from the letters that came, sometimes, from the families of people he'd treated. They were specific in what they said. Not the general gratitude of people who had been helped, but the specific accounting of someone who had noticed that the healer's hands knew what they were doing and also that the healer himself had understood something beyond the technical.He came home Thursday after
Alpha's Regret: The Forsaken Luna CHAPTER 142: ISOLDE
Rhiannon's POVI met her three months later.Not the first meeting — that had happened at the meadow during the ritual, though she hadn't been there in any form that constituted presence. This was the first meeting where she was real. Whole. A person in a room rather than a soul in suspension.She came with Malachar to the spring treaty review.He had said she might. The letter he'd sent ahead of the review had been careful about it — Isolde would like to attend, if the invitation extends to companions. She has questions about what occurred and who was responsible for it and I am not, apparently, the correct source of information on several key points.The last line had made me understand something about Isolde before I met her.She came into the packhouse great hall beside Malachar with the particular quality of someone who is looking at everything and finding most of it interesting. Small — he'd said small, and she was. Dark hair. Eyes that were the particular warm brown of someone
Anda juga akan menyukai
Mated to the Alpha Knight
Elizabeth Jane670.7K DibacaAlpha Gray
C.J. Primer1.2M DibacaFated to the Lycan King
Taylor West772.6K DibacaThe Broken Warrior's Daughter
Cooper1.9M DibacaMy Sister’s Fated Alpha Choose Me
Ella writes🌺72 DibacaFake Dating My Stepbrother’s Rival Alpha
Chyna Blue27 DibacaThe Mate He Rejected
Marcelinee368 DibacaMated To The Plus Size Model
Saraphina98 Dibaca
