Chapter 1 ：The Stolen Moon

[Sera's POV]

Mira slides the results across the desk. "Five weeks," she says. "You're pregnant! Sera."

I should be happy. An heir. The thing every Luna is supposed to give her Alpha.

But my first thought is not joy.

It is Kai.

What will he do when he knows?

What will he say when he realizes the child is mine, not hers?

My hand presses against my stomach.

No!

Not yet!

I think of the last night Kai came to my bed — how he left before the sheets cooled, how he was gone past the border by morning. Looking for her.

This can't be happening. How could I be pregnant??!!

"No." The word comes out sharp. "No one can know."

For one terrible second, I think of ending it.

Quietly. Cleanly. Before Kai ever hears the word pregnant. Before he can look at me like I have ruined the only heir he ever wanted.

"Sera." Mira's hand covers mine. "Breathe."

I breathe. It doesn't help.

He wants a strong heir. One who'll lead Ravenhold to the glory the prophecy swore, the Luna with the eclipse mark on her arm would birth the most powerful Alpha the pack has ever seen.

Liri was the one the prophecy named , the Luna marked by the eclipse, the one who would carry the Wolf King's heir. Kai's, since childhood. His true mate.

Then she vanished, and I found him bleeding out in the pines and threw myself over him without thinking. Gratitude, he called it later. A second-chance bond, granted by the Goddess.

But gratitude isn't love.

He calls me Luna. In three years he has never once said my name.

He's never stopped searching for Liri. He snaps at anyone who suggests she might be dead, his voice raw with something that looks a lot like grief. Or love.

I'm the legal Luna, but I'm not his Luna. Not the one he wants.

"The pack's talking again," Mira says carefully. "About your wolf."

"I know." My throat tightens. "They think I'm failing."

Maybe they're right. Ever since I become Luna, my wolf has been growing quieter, until it is almost gone. I know what people think. The Goddess is taking it back. The title was never hers.

Kai feels it too. I see it in the way he looks at me now, or doesn't look at me. The disappointment he tries to hide. Every Alpha wants a strong Luna. He could have had the prophesied one, the Luna marked by destiny itself.

Instead, he got me. The placeholder.

The one whose wolf is vanishing.

That Luna was supposed to be Liri.

Not me.

"I need you to keep this secret," I tell Mira, meeting her eyes. "Please."

She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. "Of course. But Sera, you can't hide this forever."

"I know." But I'll hide it as long as I can. Until I figure out what to do. Until I know whether this child will be rejected the same way I am.

Voices drift through the door, high-pitched, mocking.

“She can barely shift anymore!” a woman says. She does not even lower her voice.

“Good!” another spits. “She stole the Luna’s seat! She stole it from Kai’s true mate! Maybe the Goddess has had enough! First, she lost her mate’s heart! Now she’s losing her wolf too！”

Maybe I'm not the woman Kai loves. But that's between him and me. It was never theirs to laugh over.

I open the door calmly before Mira can stop me, the hallway falls dead silent.

Three female wolves stand in the hallway, eyes wide with false innocence.

"We're only saying what everyone says."  

"Everyone says I'm your Luna." I let it settle. "Recognized by your Alpha and the Goddess both. Say otherwise to the council, if you're brave enough to sign your name to it. I'll wait."  

Her neck bares before she can stop it. Whatever's left of me still outranks her. 

"Hold your tongue," I say. "Or I'll have it held for you."

The alarm hits the pack link.

Medical emergency. Alpha inbound.

They say nothing moves the Alpha. He is the calm one. The reasonable one. The wall the whole pack leans on. In three years I've never seen his hands shake. 

He comes through the doors with his voice already breaking.

I've never seen him like this. His moss-green eyes flash with his wolf's gold, barely controlled. His entire body vibrates with tension, with something that looks like desperation.

He passes close enough that I feel the heat off him. He doesn't look at me.

"Mira!" His voice is a command and a plea. "Prepare the surgical suite. Now."

"Alpha, what..."

"Now!"

Mira rushes past me, already moving.

That's when I see the stretcher behind him. The woman on it.

Dark hair matted with blood. Pale skin covered in cuts and bruises. And there, barely visible on her arm, a mark that shimmers with starlight.

The eclipse mark.

Liri.

The world tilts. His face is open in a way I have never once seen turned toward me — raw, wrecked, alive.

So it was never that nothing moved him.

It was only that I never did.

And I'm standing here, pregnant with his child, watching him look at her like she's the only thing that matters in the world.

I turn for the door while he's still saying her name, her name, the one that comes so easily to him, one hand pressed flat and hidden over my stomach.

This is what you get, I tell myself. For taking what was never yours.