Result is out

I didn’t move for a long time after everyone left the room. The silence felt heavy, as if the air itself had memories I did not know how to carry. The moment Alpha Ryan walked out and the door closed behind him, everything inside me collapsed — not loud or dramatic, but in a quiet way that felt like drowning. A drowning that no one noticed because my face remained still. I stared at the ceiling above me, wondering how a day full of pain could suddenly become a day full of impossible questions. One moment, I was a banished Luna running from rogues; the next, I was sitting in a strange bed, being told I could be a daughter to a father who spent his entire life searching for a ghost. I pressed my hand against my chest, feeling the slow beat of my heart — as if it were unsure whether to hope or to bleed.

Hope. That was the problem. It was a dangerous, sharp thing. I had learned that the hard way with Kharl. I had loved him with all my innocence, believing that the mate bond would protect me, that love meant something sacred. I had slept next to him every night for three years, whispering prayers to the moon goddess that one day he would look at me the same way he looked at the titles he desired so much. But love wasn’t enough. Not when a whole pack wanted to see me break. Not when the man I trusted believed a lie so easily — that I was cursed, that I brought poison into his bloodline. The last time I hoped for something beautiful, it destroyed me.

I could still hear his voice from that night, sharp and merciless, cutting deeper than any physical wound ever could: “You were a mistake. I will forever regret the day I mated with you.” Those words sometimes repeated in my dreams like a command I couldn’t escape. Even now, lying in a luxurious clinic, roots of that pain wrapped around my heart, whispering that believing good things is foolish — because they always vanish. If I allowed myself to hope that I might be the lost daughter of Golden Sky Pack… what happens when the results say I am not? Will I break again? Will I be that girl standing in front of wolves who look at me like nothing? I don’t think I have the strength to survive another rejection.

I turned to my side, hugging my arms around myself. The sheets were warm, soft, comforting — so different from the cold stone floor of the corner house where I slept as a child. In Blood Moon Pack, I was the girl no one wanted. The orphan with no history. The chosen Luna who never fit the crown placed on her head. Even when I wore silks and walked next to Kharl at ceremonies, people still called me witch girl, still spat the word barren like it was my name. So what if I didn’t come from that pack at all? What if every insult, every nickname, every hateful look… was built upon a lie? My eyes stung, and I squeezed them shut. Part of me wanted to cry for that girl — the one who suffered without a reason, abandoned without a truth.

The doctors explained the story earlier: a baby stolen from her crib during a dedication ceremony, vanishing into the night while the pack was under attack. The parents — Alpha Ryder and Lady Seraphina — searching everywhere like mad wolves, turning every forest inside out, burning through allies and enemies alike. That kind of love sounded unreal to me, like something from the stories the corner house children used to tell themselves to fall asleep — the stories about parents who rescue their children, hold them, whisper their names like prayers. I never had that. I never had a name whispered with love, only spoken with obligation. Celeste. I never knew where it came from or who gave it to me. Was it them? Or did someone else give me this name before dropping me in someone’s arms to erase my past?

My mind kept circling the same questions until my thoughts tangled so tightly that I felt breathless. What if I am their daughter? What if I’m not? Both answers terrified me. If I’m not — I lose the possibility of belonging. If I am — then everything I knew about my life was stolen from me by someone cruel enough to take a newborn and bury her identity under lies. I don’t know which is worse. Being unwanted, or being wanted once and taken away.

I sat up slowly, pulling the blanket around my shoulders. The room was quiet, except for the occasional distant sounds of footsteps outside — healers moving, nurses talking, warriors exchanging short greetings as they passed the clinic hall. Somewhere beyond these walls, there was a man who once searched for his missing daughter until he broke himself trying to find her. If the story was real — if I am that daughter — then my existence is wrapped in someone else’s grief. How do you walk into a person’s life knowing your disappearance almost killed them? How do you meet a father who spent years praying for a child only to be handed tragedy?

A bitter laugh slipped out of me, small and sad. I used to dream of my parents sometimes during the lonely nights in Blood Moon Pack — especially when I was younger, before Khael came into my life. I imagined a mother who smelled like warm bread, a father who lifted me into the air and called me his little moon. But those dreams always faded in the morning, replaced by the reality of insults and chores and bruises on my ankles from racing away from older children who took pleasure in hurting the orphan girl. If those dreams belonged to Lady Seraphina and Alpha Ryder — then the universe played a cruel joke on all of us.

I pressed my palms into my eyes, breathing in deeply. The truth was somewhere in an envelope. A scientific answer to a life full of unanswered questions. A DNA test felt too small to carry a destiny this big — just a paper deciding whether I belonged to people I don’t know or if I was just a girl trying to survive. I wondered how many babies in this world had their worth measured by blood. My lip trembled. If the answer said no… I would still be a banished Luna with no pack, no family, no mate, no name. If it said yes… then everything before this moment becomes a nightmare someone else forced me to live.

I lay back, staring at the ceiling again. I didn’t want to jinx it by imagining anything — not happiness, not belonging, not love — because the universe has never been gentle with me. Every time I asked the moon for something beautiful, I was handed the opposite. So now, I tried not to want. Not to dream. Not to expect. Hope was a painful blade, and I have bled enough.

I focused on breathing instead — in and out — until calmer air settled in my lungs. But the memories kept coming. Kharl’s face when he banished me. The crowd cheering Lydia’s name. The Seer declaring that I was barren because I came from evil blood. The humiliation of being stripped of the Luna title without a single voice defending me. If Kharl had truly loved me, even a little, he would have questioned the Seer, fought for me, stood beside me for just a moment. Instead, he threw me away and then claimed it was for the “good of the pack.” My hands shook as I remembered his last words — regret and cruelty combined into something fatal. The time I spent being his mate felt like a curse, not a bond.

I was so lost in my thoughts that the knock on the door startled me, snapping the thread of memory. I sat up quickly, wiping the corner of my eye. The door opened slowly, and Ryan stepped in, closing it behind him with quiet care. He held an envelope in his hand — thick, sealed, official. My breath stopped. My heart forgot how to move. For a long second, he didn’t speak; he just looked at me — not as a leader looking at a stranger, but as a man who understood that the world inside one small envelope could shatter someone’s life or rebuild it from ashes.

He walked toward me, each step slow but certain, and when he reached the side of my bed, he sat in the chair next to it, resting the envelope on his knee. His eyes softened, barely visible through the armor he always wore, and he spoke in a voice that tried to be steady, even though something moved behind it.

“The result is out,” he said quietly. “I thought we might check it together.”