Chapter 4 His Luna

Esther

My blood turned to ice.

Six years of building a new name, a new face. All of it balanced on the next three seconds.

I met Celeste's gaze and let my expression go blank. "I'm new here. You might be thinking of someone else."

Celeste tilted her head. Her eyes narrowed, scanning me the way you'd inspect a stain on expensive fabric.

"No." She took a step closer. "I saw you downstairs this morning. With those men. Sneaking around the service entrance."

The knot in my chest loosened. She hadn't recognized Stella—she'd just seen me with Rita's contacts at the front entrance.

"That was my orientation," I said. "The supervisor showed me where to sign in."

Celeste's lip curled. She looked me up and down. Top to bottom, one sweep, verdict already made.

"You're the one from the Yards. The one who talked her way into staying."

I held her stare. I didn't drop my eyes the way a wolf from the Yards was apparently supposed to when someone like Celeste decided to speak to her.

She noticed.

"Interesting." She straightened. "No manners, either. You don't even know how to address the woman who runs this floor."

Someone behind her, an assistant with a tablet, leaned in and said something. I caught the words "no pack affiliation" and "filing temp."

Suspicion left Celeste's face. What replaced it looked almost pleased.

"I see." She smoothed the collar of her cream coat. "No education, no family. And somehow here you are, right where the boss can see you."

"I'm here to work."

"You're here to climb." Her voice sharpened. "Girls from the lower district don't apply to Silvercrest Holdings because they want to organize files. They come because they think a pretty face and a tight skirt will get them into the Alpha's bed."

Heat crawled up the back of my neck. The old Stella would have looked down and swallowed it. The current version of me wanted to introduce her face to the filing cabinet. I did neither.

"I applied for the assistant position," I said. "That's all."

"And you'll leave the same way you came in." Celeste adjusted her coat. She didn't raise her voice. She didn't have to. The filing clerks at the neighboring desks suddenly found their paperwork very interesting. "This company doesn't need women of questionable character near its leadership. You're dismissed."

She said it like a verdict. And nobody in the lobby contradicted her.

I looked at the faces around me. The supervisor, the guard, the woman at the next desk. None of them moved. They already knew what Celeste was. She ran this floor, and maybe the whole building. Maybe she'd worn Aaron's ring for six years and graduated from the Beta's daughter to the Alpha's luna.

The bitterness hit before I could stop it. Of course. Of course she was his luna. Celeste Whitmore always got what she wanted, and what she wanted was Aaron.

I picked up my bag from beside the filing cabinet.

"I wasn't trying to seduce anyone," I said. Quiet. Even. The kind of voice you use when you know the fight is already over. "But I'll go."

I didn't look back.

The elevator doors closed behind me. I pressed my forehead against the cool metal wall and held my shaking hands against my stomach until the trembling stopped. The elevator smelled like brass polish and other people's perfume. Nineteen floors down, and every one of them felt like swallowing something sharp.

She hadn't recognized me. That was the only thing that mattered. Celeste had looked straight at me and seen some nobody from the Yards, not the wolfless girl she'd cornered in a corridor six years ago. Not the pregnant teenager she'd had dragged away while Aaron's ring glittered on her hand.

If she'd known — if she'd seen my daughter's gray-green eyes, Aaron's eyes — she would have finished what she started on that highway.

My relief lasted three floors. By the time I reached the lobby, the money panic was already creeping back in. No job. No bonus. The employee apartment I'd walked into this building for was gone before I'd even started. The eviction notice was still sitting on my kitchen counter, and my landlord wasn't the type to accept promises. One month. After that, we'd be on the street.

I did the math while pushing through the lobby doors into the afternoon sun. Rent was due in three weeks. The kids' medication refill was in two. Even if I found another bar gig tonight, and bar owners in the Yards talked to each other, tips wouldn't cover both.

My phone buzzed in my bag. Rita's name. I answered before the second ring.

"Esther." Her voice was wrong. Too tight. Too careful. "You need to get to the clinic. The kids —"

My stomach dropped.

"What happened?"

"They're stable. Doc says they're stable. But you need to come now."

I was running before she finished the sentence.

Aaron

The photo on my screen didn't make sense.

Esther Hale. The Yards. No pack. No family name. No education worth listing. The kind of applicant that should have been filtered out before her file reached the second floor.

But my wolf pressed forward the moment I opened it. A low sound rumbled through my chest, and I shut my mouth before it escaped.

Her. The wolf's voice was rough, immediate. I want her.

I shoved him back. A flash of instinct wasn't the same as knowing, and my wolf hadn't known what to do with anyone in six years.

My wolf hadn't responded to anyone since Stella. Six years of silence. Not Celeste, not the women my Beta paraded through fundraisers and policy dinners. That part of me had gone quiet the day they found the wreck on the highway and told me there was no body.

Now it strained toward a blurry ID photo of a filing temp from the wrong side of the city. I pulled the photo back up.

The resemblance had hit me the moment she stood in the interview room. The jaw, the eyes. For half a second, I'd thought —

No. Stella was gone. Car accident, lower highway, six years ago. They found the wreck but not the body. I'd torn apart three offices demanding answers. Sent people to every hospital within a hundred miles. Nothing.

And this woman was nothing like her. Stella had been thin, quiet, always hovering two steps behind me. Wolfless. She flinched when I raised my voice and apologized when she hadn't done anything wrong. I spent half my time shielding her from my father's household and the other half pretending I didn't want to.

Esther Hale walked into a room full of purebloods and told them they were wrong. She had a wolf's scent on her, faint, buried under cheap soap, and a spine Stella never showed me.

Different women. Similar faces. That was all.

My office door swung open without a knock.

Celeste walked in already talking.

"That Yards girl is gone. I took care of it." She dropped her bag on the chair and began pulling off her gloves, finger by finger. "The nerve. These bottom-feeders think showing a little skin will get them anywhere. It's always the same story. Just like that Stella girl you used to keep around —"

"Celeste." My voice came out flat enough to stop her mid-sentence. "Knock next time."

Her hands stilled on her second glove. She studied my face, and I watched her read me and adjust.

"You're not still thinking about her." Not a question. An accusation. "That wolfless girl nearly destroyed your reputation. She took your father's money and —"

"That's not your concern."

The words landed harder than I intended. Celeste's jaw tightened. She opened her mouth again, but my phone rang.

Marcus. My Beta.

"Alpha." His voice was clipped. "I have an update on the search you ordered. The girl — Stella. We found her last known location."

I straightened. "Where?"

"A clinic. The Yards, east edge. She was treated there roughly six years ago, not long after the accident." A pause. "Aaron. The records indicate she was pregnant."

The room went very still.

"Pregnant," I said. The word lodged in my throat and stayed there. 

Six years. She'd been carrying a child when she vanished, and I hadn't known.

"The records aren't complete. But the timeline matches."

I was on my feet before Marcus finished speaking. The chair rolled backward and hit the window. Celeste said something, my name, a question, but I was already past her, already reaching for my coat, already through the door.