My brother’s best friend is trouble

Ellie's POV

I knew I was dying, and all I wanted was to see my mate Dominic one last time, but…

“Luna, Alpha…is very busy,” said my handmaiden Abigail.

"Please." My voice cracked. "Just tell him his mate is dying."

Abigail looked hesitant to leave me by myself, but after I urged her again, she nodded and left the room with tears.

Then I heard someone open the door to my room, and my heart leapt. It had to be Abigail returning with Dominic!

However, I saw my stepsister Vivian walking in. She wore an elegant white dress and held my golden tiara in her hand, a small smirk on her face.

I stared at her in utter shock and confusion.

“How are you feeling, sister?” she asked, her voice full of mockery. “It’s a shame you missed my coronation as Luna. I know Dominic would have loved for you to be there.” She placed the crown delicately atop her own head, dragging a finger on it with greed.

I grunted in pain, the poison spidering up my side where I’d been stabbed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she hissed like a snake, “that Dominic just couldn’t wait for you to die before putting me in your place."

My head began to pound, and probably for ten seconds, I couldn’t hear anything.

Deep down, I knew I’ve always been the one chasing after Dominic, while he treated me with a cold kind of indifference.

Even after we found out we were fated mates at the mating ball when we turned eighteen, his reaction had been disappointment. I remembered the way his jaw tightened when he realized the Moon Goddess had chosen me for him.

"I suppose we have no choice," he said afterward. Those words had cut deeper than any blade.

I told myself it would get better once we are mated.

But now I was left longing for his presence when I was dying, while he crowned my stepsister Vivian?

Even when I was dying because of him?

How could Dominic be so cruel?

I still remember a week ago, an assassin attacked us at home, appearing out of the dark with a knife.

The assassin was after Dominic.

Dominic was about to be crowned the Alpha King, but he had made more than a few enemies over the last few years.

We absorbed the weaker packs around ours until we were the fastest-growing, strongest and most successful pack in the realm.

When I saw the assassin, my every instinct screamed to protect my mate. I pushed Dominic out of the way, and took the brunt of the attack that was meant for him.

I was able to dodge a fatal blow, and the enforcers guarding the house quickly rushed in and subdued the attacker. However, when Dominic’s personal doctor checked the wound, the telltale swelling and red streaks running up my neck and down my arm revealed the truth: the assassin’s blade had been tipped with the deadly wolfsbane toxin.

Despite the devoted efforts of our best pack doctors, my health quickly deteriorated. In a matter of days I went from healthy and in my prime to wasting away in my sickbed, barely able to move.

For a couple of days after that, Dominic did come to stay with me regularly. And I got some caring touches and gazes from him that I never had.

But then Dominic ended his visits abruptly.

The more I thought, the more restless I became.

“I’m going to see him.” I struggled to sit up by myself and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

I was dying, but I’d be damned if I didn’t get to see Dominic one last time—and get the answers I deserved.

However, Vivian stopped me.

"Save your energy, Ellie. You know, Dominic never wanted you as his mate. He only used you once he realized you two were Fated. He’s always loved me more—he just didn’t want to put my life at risk. Actually, I would have replaced you even if you lived.”

“You’re lying.” But, honestly, thinking back to how he always had more patience, more time, more empathy for my little sister than his own goddamn mate—it hurt to think that it made sense. The pain blossomed higher, to my chest.

She laughed at me and drew something out of her pocket. A small recording device. “You don’t believe me? Listen to this.”

And she pressed play:

“Let's make you my Luna queen. It’s the way things should have been all along...."

Shocked by Dominic’s voice rumbling out of the recording, I collapsed back onto the bed.

Vivian quickly turned it off. She met my stunned look with a sharp, cold smile.

“You see, big sister? Dominic never really loved you. You’re too pathetic and needy to love.”

Tears filled my eyes, and the pain wrapped tight around my heart. The purple veining of the wolfsbane had begun stretching up my neck, encircling my throat like a chokehold.

Before I could fully process what I just heard, Abigail burst into my room.

“Luna!” she cried. “Your mother!”

My mother?

She was here with me everyday and she always refused to leave until midnight.

I was wondering why she wasn't here today.

Vivian’s face grew smug. “Mother objected, naturally, to my coronation. Threw a big fit about it, started screaming and throwing things. Dominic had her arrested for it.”

What?

“She’s to be put on trial for obstruction and heresy.”

The wolfsbane tightened in my throat—or maybe it was my own anguish.

“No…” I whimpered. Surely, Dominic wouldn’t have made such an order. Surely Vivan was lying to me. Surely my mother was about to walk through that door and hold me in my last moments.

But no. Abigail’s expression confirmed what Vivian had said—my mother had been arrested.

I couldn’t even cry. It was too hard to breathe, and I frantically grasped at my chest while falling to the floor in a heap of tangled blankets. Abigail cried out and ran to my side—Vivian took a step back, now forced to face the passing of her stepsister and Luna.

Behind the thickening veil of death surrounding me, I heard a commotion.

Dominic burst into the room, the nurse hot on his heels. He started shouting, and Vivian began crying—I recognized it as the fake sob she put on for our parents.

Dominic gathered me into his arms and began whispering something to me, but I was too far gone to understand it.

The world faded to black, and I felt my heart give its final, painful beat. I was dead.

My last thought before the darkness claimed me was a wish—a desperate, furious wish that I could do things differently. That I could make them all pay for what they had done to me. That I could have another chance.

Then I heard it.

Ring! Ring! Ring!

An alarm clock. Shrill and insistent. I gasped and opened my eyes to see sunlight streaming through familiar windows.

I was…back in my childhood home.