Início / Werewolf / TOO FAT TO BE LUNA / CHAPTER 3: Breaking Point

Compartilhar

CHAPTER 3: Breaking Point

Autor: Sunkissed
last update Data de publicação: 2026-04-04 23:02:38

ARIA’S POV

Six months.

That’s how long I’d been living in hell.

Six months of scrubbing floors until my knees bled. Six months of serving meals to Derek and Celeste while they pretended I didn’t exist. Six months of whispers and cruel laughter following me everywhere.

Six months of surviving. Barely.

I stood in the kitchen at dawn, washing dishes with raw, cracked hands. The water was freezing. My back ached. My stomach growled—I hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning.

“Faster, Omega!” Marge barked. “The Alpha and Luna want breakfast in thirty minutes!”

I scrubbed harder, biting back bitterness.

“Did you hear?” A servant named Marie whispered nearby. “Luna Celeste is three months pregnant. The pack’s throwing a celebration tonight.”

My hands stilled in the soapy water.

Three months pregnant.

“Alpha Derek is over the moon,” Marie continued. “He hopes it’s a boy—a future Alpha.”

I forced myself to keep scrubbing, breathing through the pain in my chest.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

I was nothing. Nobody.

“Aria!” Marge snapped. “Take this tray up to the Alpha’s quarters. Now!”

I dried my hands and carried the breakfast tray upstairs.

Each step felt like walking to my own execution.

I knocked softly.

“Come in,” Derek called.

Derek sat at the table, already dressed. Celeste lounged on the bed in silk, one hand on her barely visible bump.

“Your breakfast, Alpha,” I said quietly, setting the tray down.

Derek didn’t acknowledge me.

But Celeste did.

“Oh, Aria. Perfect timing. I need you to clean the nursery today. Top to bottom.” She smiled. “Derek and I have been shopping for baby furniture. It’s being delivered this afternoon.”

The nursery.

Where she’d raise Derek’s child.

“Of course, Luna,” I managed.

“Make sure you do a good job,” Celeste added sweetly. “I’d hate for my baby to get sick because you’re too incompetent to clean properly.”

“You’re dismissed,” Derek said flatly.

I fled.

The nursery was beautiful—soft yellow walls, large windows, space marked for a crib and changing table.

This was where Celeste’s baby would grow up. Loved. Wanted. Cherished.

Everything I’d never been.

I spent hours scrubbing every surface until the room gleamed.

Around noon, Elena appeared with a sandwich.

“You need to eat,” she whispered.

I took it gratefully. “Thank you.”

She looked around sadly. “This must be torture.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

By mid-afternoon, I’d finished.

I was gathering supplies when voices echoed in the hallway.

“Perfect for a boy,” Celeste was saying.

Derek and Celeste walked in with pack members carrying furniture boxes.

Celeste’s eyes landed on me. “Oh good. You can help unpack.”

For an hour, I assembled furniture while they directed like I was performing for their entertainment.

“No, not there,” Celeste said when I placed a stuffed bear wrong. “Move it.”

I moved it.

Over and over, they gave orders. I obeyed.

Finally, everything was in place.

“Perfect,” Celeste declared. “Our baby is going to love it here.”

Derek wrapped his arms around her, hands on her stomach.

“I can’t wait to meet them,” he murmured.

The tenderness in his voice broke something inside me.

That should have been me.

“You can go, Aria,” Celeste said dismissively.

I turned to leave.

“Oh, and Aria?” Celeste called.

I stopped.

“Thank you for your hard work. I’m sure you’ll make an excellent nanny when the baby arrives. After all, what else are you good for?”

Laughter followed me down the hallway.

I made it to my room before I broke, sobbing into my pillow.

Six months of this. How much more could I take?

Later, Helen knocked. “Pack-wide announcement in the main hall. All members required.”

I cleaned my face and headed downstairs.

The hall was packed. Derek stood on the platform with Celeste.

“Thank you all for coming,” Derek announced. “Celeste and I have wonderful news.”

He placed his hand on her stomach.

“We’re having a boy. A future Alpha!”

The crowd erupted in cheers.

I stood in the back, invisible, watching my former mate celebrate a life with someone else.

“Tonight, we feast!” Derek declared.

The crowd dispersed, already planning the party.

I turned to leave but froze.

“Aria!” Celeste’s voice rang out. “You’re helping with the feast tonight. Serving tables. And Aria? Wear something nice.”

Laughter rippled through the hall.

“Yes, Luna,” I whispered.

That night, I served while the pack celebrated.

I watched Derek dance with Celeste.

Watched them toast to their future son.

Watched my stepsister glow with happiness while I faded into nothing.

Around midnight, I slipped away.

I couldn’t do this anymore.

I walked to the forest border and kept walking.

Maybe if I ran far enough, I could escape this pain.

“Going somewhere, Omega?”

I spun around.

Three male warriors blocked my path.

“I was just getting air,” I stammered.

The tallest one—Marcus—stepped closer. “At midnight? Alone? That’s dangerous.”

“I’ll head back now.”

He grabbed my arm. “Not so fast. We’ve been watching you. The rejected Luna. All alone. No one to protect you.”

Fear spiked through me. “Let go.”

“Or what? You’ll tell Alpha Derek?” He pulled me closer. “No one cares about you anymore, Aria. You’re fair game now.”

The other two laughed.

My wolf surged forward, fear transforming into rage.

I wouldn’t be a victim anymore.

I drove my knee hard into Marcus’s groin. He released me with a howl.

The other two lunged but I was already running.

I ran into the forest, deeper than I’d ever gone before.

Behind me, wolves snarled and gave chase.

I ran faster, branches tearing at my clothes.

I had to escape—

The ground disappeared beneath my feet.

I was falling, tumbling down a steep embankment, hitting rocks and roots.

I landed hard at the bottom. Pain exploded through my body.

Above me, the warriors stopped at the edge.

“She fell into Lycan territory,” one said.

“Should we go after her?”

“Are you insane? That’s the Lycan King’s land. Let him deal with her.”

Their footsteps retreated.

I lay there, broken and bleeding, staring up at the night sky.

Lycan territory.

I’d crossed into Lycan King Kael Blackthorne’s territory.

Everyone knew the stories. Ruthless. Brutal. Powerful.

If he found me here, I was dead.

But as consciousness started slipping away, I realized something.

Maybe death was better than the life I’d been living.

Maybe this was the Moon Goddess finally showing mercy.

My eyes closed.

And the last thing I heard was a low, rumbling growl echoing through the trees.

Continue a ler este livro gratuitamente
Escaneie o código para baixar o App
Comentários (2)
goodnovel comment avatar
OkI’mCommenting
So I had to go back because I’m confused. This “warrior” is named Marcus. Further along the story there’s a nice guy named Marcus that I think is the Beta to the good guy (trying not to give too much a way to new readers), but then there’s a Marcus who I thought was Derek’s Beta. What’s the deal?
goodnovel comment avatar
Samantha Bradley
I was hoping Derek would never have a son
VER TODOS OS COMENTÁRIOS

Último capítulo

  • TOO FAT TO BE LUNA   CHAPTER 3: Three Generations Of Rivalry Walk Into A Dining Hall

    NOVA'S POVThe dining hall was the Common Ground's morning version.Same space — the large central building that occupied the academy's social center, the specific location that everything else organized itself around. At night it was the Common Ground proper — the gathering place, the performance space, the specific location where The Ranking's social architecture was most visible. In the morning it became the dining hall, which was the same architecture with breakfast added and the performance at a lower register.People were still performing.Just with coffee.---Bex had opinions about breakfast.Specifically: that it should happen early, before the dining hall filled to the level where the social architecture became the primary feature of the room."Six forty-five," she had said, setting an alarm. "Before the Apex Circle arrives. They do eight o'clock. It's a whole thing."I had agreed to six forty-five.We were there at six forty-seven.The dining hall — half-full, the specific

  • TOO FAT TO BE LUNA   The System Here

    NOVA'S POVThe full briefing happened at nine.Bex had acquired, in three hours, the specific quality of intelligence that most people took a semester to assemble. She presented it sitting cross-legged on her bed with her laptop open and her phone beside it and the particular focused efficiency of someone for whom information was not background noise but primary material.I sat across from her.Ate the dining hall food I had brought back in a container.And listened.---"The Ranking," she said, "is not just a ranking.""It never is," I said."It's a governance system," she said. "The top ten — the Apex Circle — they control the social infrastructure. Which study rooms get allocated to which packs. Which tables in the dining hall are reserved. Which events get academy funding. Which wolves get the good training slots with the senior faculty." She held her laptop. "It looks like a points system. It functions like a government.""Who controls the points," I said."Three things," she sai

  • TOO FAT TO BE LUNA   A New Beginning

    NOVA'S POVThe academy had its own app.I found this out approximately four minutes after my rideshare pulled through the gate — the notification arriving on my phone with the specific aggressive cheerfulness of something that had been waiting for me to enter the geofence and was very pleased I had finally arrived.*Welcome to Voss Academy. Your student profile is now active. Check The Ranking to see where you stand among your cohort.*I looked at the notification.Then at the gate.Then back at the notification.The gate was — beautiful, actually. Old stone, the specific quality of something that had been built when the world still built things to last, wrapped now in the particular combination of ancient and contemporary that the academy apparently committed to as an aesthetic. Security cameras in the stone. A keycard reader beside iron hinges that had been here for a century.The app notification still waiting.I closed it.Opened it again.Closed it."That's probably not going to

  • TOO FAT TO BE LUNA   DECADES LATER…

    Hi lovely readers readers… A quick one. Twenty years after. The wolf world has modernized significantly — packs still exist but they operate with contemporary infrastructure. Pack meetings happen via group chat AND in person. Alpha heirs go to Voss Academy — the most prestigious wolf institution in North America, recently relocated to a sprawling modern campus in upstate New York. Think Hogwarts meets Harvard meets I*******m. Social hierarchy is brutal and documented. Everyone has a following. Pack rankings are posted publicly. The mating bond still exists but nobody talks about it openly — it’s considered embarrassingly old-fashioned until it happens to you. Royal Wolf lineage is history class material. Most wolves know the name Blackthorne the way humans know historical royalty — real, significant, but distant. Nova is not distant. Nova is the heir to all of it. She just doesn’t know how much. NOVA BLACKTHORNE-VOSS: 18 years old Lyra’s gold eyes — but they’ve never activat

  • TOO FAT TO BE LUNA   CHAPTER 173

    Morgana arrived on a Saturday. Of course she did. Not the Tuesday of significant things — the Saturday of things that had their own timing and arrived at it without consulting anyone else's schedule. She came through the Blackthorne territory's main gate at seven in the morning with the specific quality of movement that was hers — not fast, not slow, the particular pace of someone who moved through the world at exactly the speed the world required and never faster or slower than that. She looked — Like someone who had been expecting to arrive at this moment for a very long time and had arrived at it and found it exactly as she had expected and was satisfied with the confirmation. She stopped at the gate. Looked at the territory. At the house — the light on in the kitchen, the specific warmth of people awake and present inside it. At the training ground. At the garden — the space where the stone had been, empty now, the grey gone, the specific quality of somewhere that had h

  • TOO FAT TO BE LUNA   CHAPTER 172

    LYRA'S POVThe training began on Thursday.The Blackthorne territory training ground — not Caden's pack's, the other one. The one that had been empty for eight years and that Baba had walked through on Wednesday afternoon with the specific quality of someone taking inventory of something that had been his and was his again and required assessment before it was used.He had assessed it.Declared it structurally sound.Added three things to the equipment configuration with the focused efficiency of someone who knew exactly what was missing because he had known what was there before.Thursday morning.Mama and I.---She arrived at six.The specific quality of her morning — I was learning it, the particular rhythm of Aria Blackthorne in the hours before the day's formal requirements began. The east-facing window of the Blackthorne house — the light in it when she was awake, the particular quality of someone who had been a six-o'clock person for longer than I had been alive and had return

  • TOO FAT TO BE LUNA   CHAPTER 4: MINE

    KAEL’S POVI smelled her before I saw her.Blood. Fear. And something else—something that made my Lycan surge forward so violently I almost shifted right there.Mate.The word echoed through my mind like a gunshot.No. Impossible.I’d already had a mate. Sera had died five years ago, and second cha

  • TOO FAT TO BE LUNA   CHAPTER 2: The First Night of Hell

    ARIA’S POV I ran through the pack grounds, past the training fields where warriors stopped mid-drill to stare. Past the gardens where I used to play as a child when my parents were alive and the world made sense. I ran until I reached the edge of pack territory, where the forest grew dark and th

  • TOO FAT TO BE LUNA   CHAPTER 1: You’re Too Fat To Be My Luna

    ARIA’S POVThe Moon Goddess hated me.That was the only explanation for why my fated mate—the man destined by the universe to love me unconditionally—was currently staring at me like I’d crawled out of a sewer.“No,” Alpha Derek whispered, his blue eyes wide with horror. “No, no, no… this can’t be

  • TOO FAT TO BE LUNA   CHAPTER 38

    ARIA’S POV“PLEASE—”The word dissolved before it finished.Not because the pain stopped.Because something else started.Vivian’s working hit the original curse the way she’d designed it to — finding the architecture she’d built twenty-three years ago, feeding it power from outside while it pulled

Mais capítulos
Explore e leia bons romances gratuitamente
Acesso gratuito a um vasto número de bons romances no app GoodNovel. Baixe os livros que você gosta e leia em qualquer lugar e a qualquer hora.
Leia livros gratuitamente no app
ESCANEIE O CÓDIGO PARA LER NO APP
DMCA.com Protection Status