Chapter 6: A New Luna?

My stepsister moved into Alpha Manor that morning, and by midday it felt as though the whole household had already crowned her.

I stood at the top of the staircase and watched servants haul her belongings inside, trunk after trunk, each one handled with a gentleness I had never seen given to anyone but Kane himself. They bowed to her the way they bowed to me. Some bowed lower.

"Careful with that," one maid said, steadying a chest before it tipped. "We wouldn't want anything upsetting Miss Ashcroft in her condition."

Another nodded fast. "Of course. Her comfort first."

I stood there, unseen, watching my own home reshape itself around a woman who had not earned one thread of the respect pouring toward her.

She chose her room herself. Out of every chamber in the east wing, she picked the one right beside Kane's, separated by nothing but a narrow hall and a single door.

When I heard where she had settled, something cold twisted low in my gut.

The servants noticed too. I caught two of them near the linen closet, voices hushed, not hushed enough.

"Did you see which room she took?"

"Right next to the Alpha's. Bold."

"Bold, or planned. I don't think that woman does anything by accident."

I kept walking before they saw me, my chest tight around a feeling I refused to name.

By the next day she was already giving orders to the staff like she had been born into the role.

She told the kitchen what to prepare. She told the maids how to arrange her chambers. Some servants obeyed instantly, eager to please the woman everyone assumed would soon carry the next Alpha.

Others hesitated, glancing my way first, waiting for permission I was no longer sure I had the power to give. I was still the Luna. My word still carried weight, at least on paper. But the manor was splitting quietly down the middle, servants pulled between the woman who might be the future and the woman who might already be the past.

I watched it happen slowly, day by day, the way ice cracks under weight long before it finally breaks. Every small choice, every quiet nod toward her instead of me, chipped away at whatever authority I had left. Nobody said it out loud. Nobody needed to.

I felt it in every room. The hesitation. The glances that lingered too long. Conversations that stopped the second I walked by, as if no one knew anymore which version of me they were speaking to.

That evening, during a small gathering in the eastern hall, an elder raised his voice loud enough to fill the room.

"Perhaps it's wise to begin preparing a ceremony," he said, "in case the child is confirmed as the Alpha's. We should not wait until the last moment to name a new Luna."

The words spread through the hall like cold water. No one objected. No one even looked surprised. I stood near the doorway, unseen by most of them, and every word landed like a stone dropped into still water.

A new Luna.

They were already preparing my replacement, discussing it as casually as border patrols or the harvest count. As if I were already gone. As if I had not spent three years standing beside Kane, learning this pack, loving this pack, quietly healing its sick and solving its crop failures, believing every day that I belonged here.

I walked away before anyone noticed me, hands clenched so tight my nails cut into my palms.

That night Kane came to my door again. I almost did not let him in, but something in me needed to hear it, even knowing it would only hurt more.

He stepped in slowly, tired eyes, shoulders carrying a weight I recognized because I carried the same one.

"Aria," he said. "I know this hasn't been easy."

I said nothing at first. I studied his face, searching for something to steady me, some proof the man I had loved three years was still standing in front of me.

"I heard what the elders said tonight," I told him. "About the ceremony."

His jaw tightened. "No decision has been made."

"But it's being discussed. Openly. In front of the whole council."

He did not answer that.

I took a breath and asked the question that had been building in me for days.

"If I were the one carrying another Alpha's child," I said quietly, "would you still stand beside me?"

The silence that followed stretched longer than any silence I had ever survived. Kane opened his mouth once, then shut it again. His eyes searched mine and found nothing to say. Not one word.

I watched him struggle, watched the war behind his face, and understood his silence was answer enough. Clearer than anything he could have spoken aloud.

I did not wait for him to find his voice. I did not need to.

I walked to the door, opened it, and stood there until he finally stepped through. He glanced back once, mouth parting like he wanted to say something at the last second.

I shut the door before he could.

I leaned against it, listening to his footsteps fade down the hall, and for the first time since becoming his Luna, I understood exactly where I stood in this pack.

Nowhere at all. A wife with no husband beside her. A Luna with no pack behind her.

A woman standing in a house that no longer felt like her own.

But that folded paper was still hidden under my pillow. And after Reading every word written on it, I knew now here would not last much longer.

I would burn this pack to the ground. Starting with that backstabbing bitch sleeping just down the hall from my mate.