I Refused To Be His Stand-In After Rebirth, Alpha Went Crazy

"There's a banquet tomorrow night. You'll come as my date. I'll pick you up myself."

Adrian set the invitation on my desk and walked out before I could answer.

I glanced at the date. Twenty-seven years ago. The year I first met him.

He hadn't asked me because he wanted me there. My sister was too sick to attend, and I was the next-best thing because we looked alike.

Right on cue, I heard her voice from around the corner. Soft and bright as a bell. "I'm so sorry. I promised to be your date, but I'm too sick to go."

Adrian's hand came up to stroke her hair, his eyes melting with a tenderness that almost spilled over. "It's fine. Your health comes first."

"My sister and I look so alike. Take her with you instead. It'll be like having me there."

Adrian smiled. "Selene is just filling in. No one could ever take your place."

They walked off toward the lobby, laughing together. Every word of theirs cut at me.

From beginning to end, I was nothing but Vanessa's stand-in.

At the fork in the hallway, Vanessa rose on her toes and kissed Adrian's cheek, gazing up at him. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Adrian froze, then touched the spot she'd kissed. Something complicated crossed his face. "Tomorrow."

I crushed the invitation in my hand. The pain in my chest was crushing.

In my last life, even after Vanessa died, his obsession with her never faded.

There was always a corner in our house where her favorite gown hung. An elaborate purple thing she'd loved. Sometimes Adrian would ask me to wear it to events.

He wasn't looking at me. He was looking through me, at someone else.

He filled the garden with the moonlight roses she loved. The curtains in my bedroom were her favorite shade of purple. At dinner he would put her favorite dishes on my plate.

Vanessa was dead. But her shadow was still in every corner of our life.

I didn't linger. I turned and walked away.

I hadn't gone far when a voice cut into my head. My mother, opening the mind-link.

It was sharp and shrill, the kind of voice that made my skull buzz.

"Selene, your sister is sick again!"

"And?" I said, flat.

That was all it took to set her off. "Your sister is sick because of you. You're a curse on this family. You ungrateful little. I should never have raised you."

Vanessa and I were twins. But she'd been frail from birth, almost dying as an infant.

A witch had once prophesied that I was a harbinger of misfortune. That my existence would kill Vanessa.

My parents believed every word of it. They sent me away to the countryside when I was small, blamed me for every illness Vanessa ever had, and grew to despise me.

My mother kept going. "Your sister's hospital bills won't pay themselves. You owe us. You're paying every cent—"

I cut the link. The silence was a relief.

Twenty years as Luna in my last life had not freed me from the inferiority carved into my bones. It had only proved, again and again, that I was a stand-in.

The Moon Goddess had given me another chance. This time I was getting out.

I was on my way home when my phone rang.

A familiar voice came through. "Selene. It's been forever."

My chest tightened. "It really has, Cassandra."

She had been a year above me at university. An Alpha's daughter who had looked out for me all through college.

"I've taken over my father's position as Alpha. I'm short-handed, and I know you graduated top of your class in healing. Come to my pack. I want you as my head healer."

In my last life, I had turned Cassandra down because I'd wanted to stay close to Adrian. I lost my one real chance to become a head healer.

"Yes," I said. "Thank you. I'll come."

She laughed, soft and warm. "Good. You won't regret it."

In two weeks, Vanessa's illness was going to relapse. Last time, I quit my job to take care of her, and she repaid me by making my life hell.

I drained every cent I had on her treatment. I went into massive debt.

Adrian eventually paid it off. But that money was a leash. It turned me into a body bought and paid for.Vanessa's stand-in.

A puppet, going through the motions for twenty empty years.

Not this time. This time I lived for myself.