Ugly Pendant

Melindana’s POV

Julie had been stealing glances at me the entire thirty-five minutes she had been helping me get ready in this room, quick little looks she clearly thought I wasn’t noticing, moving around me like one wrong word would earn her a slap.

She still moved around me like I was something that might go off without warning. Every time she came too close she did this thing where she held her breath slightly, hands quick and careful, retreating the second she was done with whatever task she had assigned herself.

I watched her in the mirror while she worked and said nothing because I was still trying to understand what exactly the woman before me had done to this girl to make her this way.

Whatever it was, it must have been significant.

I turned back to my own reflection and looked at myself properly for the first time since last night. The face was genuinely beautiful, that much I had already established, but standing here in the full light of the dressing room with Julie hovering anxiously behind me I found myself thinking about what came attached to that face.

A husband who was one strong wind away from losing his mind completely, a mistress currently sleeping two doors down the hall in a room I had personally ordered prepared for her, and a pack full of people who apparently needed a moment to recover every time I said good morning.

I looked at my reflection for another second.

Beautiful face. Spectacular circumstances.

“Julie,” I said, watching her in the mirror as she straightened things on the dresser that were already straight. “Why won’t Luca just divorce me.”

She went still and turned slowly, looking at me like she was trying to figure out if this was a trick question.

“Luna…..” she started, then stopped, then started again. “Do you not remember? You fell in love with Alpha Luca at first sight at the wolf pack gathering. The marriage was officiated by the Lycan King himself.” She clasped her hands in front of her apron. “If Alpha Luca were to divorce you it would be going directly against the King’s order. Nobody does that.”

So the woman whose body I had woken up in had not just fallen for that man, she had loved him so completely that she had pulled every string available to her, used every connection, leveraged her father’s name and his relationship with the Lycan King just to be standing exactly where I was standing right now. In this house. Married to that man.

She had really dug her own grave.

“Right,” I said, and turned away from the mirror to look through the dresses hanging in the glass case along the wall.

The wardrobe was extensive and mostly good but leaned quieter than I would have chosen for myself. I liked clothes that said something when you walked into a room, that did not leave people wondering and guessing, and most of what was hanging here was beautiful but quiet. I pushed through the options slowly, making a mental note that a shopping trip needed to happen sooner rather than later. I kept pushing through the hangers until I found the ruby dress near the back.

Ruby red, with a fitted neckline that sat exactly where it should sit on a woman who had something to show and knew it. I held it against myself in the mirror and nodded once.

This would do for tonight.

By the time I was fully dressed and had done my makeup the way I liked it, which took some adjusting because the products on the dresser were not ones I was familiar with but I worked with what was there, I looked exactly the way I wanted to look. The ruby dress against the ginger hair, the top of well oiled skin visible at the neckline, everything sitting exactly right.

I had always believed that looking good was its own kind of armour and right now I needed all the armour I could find.

I was reaching for the perfume on the dresser when Julie made a sound behind me, somewhere between a gasp and a word, and I turned around to find her with both hands pressed to her mouth staring at the jewellery tray with both hands pressed to her mouth.

“Luna…..” Her voice came out thin. “Luna, I cannot find your pendant.”

“My pendant.”

“Your Luna pendant.” She was already moving, opening all the other drawers and checking boxes, her movements getting more frantic with every second that passed. “You always wear it to important occasions, the King expects to see it at formal events like tonight, Luna if you arrive without it….” she stopped herself, and took a breath.

“Where did you last have it?” Luna please think.

I had absolutely no freaking idea what she was talking about. I looked at the jewellery tray myself, scanning it, trying to identify which item might be the one she was panicking about, and came up with nothing useful because I didn’t know what I was looking for.

“What does it look like,” I said.

Julie’s hands stopped moving. She turned and looked at me with an expression I recognised immediately as the beginning of a question I did not want her to finish. Then she turned slowly and pointed at a framed photograph on the wall, a picture of the woman whose face I was wearing, dressed formally, something around her neck catching the light.

I looked at it. A pendant, heavy looking ornate, the kind of thing that had been designed specifically to remind everyone in the room that the person wearing it had a title.

“Oh,” I said. “That.” I waved my hand slightly. “Who even cares about it, the thing is honestly ugl…”

I stopped myself immediately.

Julie was really looking at me, it was starting to feel less than worry and more like she was putting something together piece by piece.

I straightened my posture immediately and let my face do something more appropriate. “Oh my God, where could it possibly be, I love that pendant so much, it has to be here somewhere, Julie where is it…..”

“Luna, it's alright.” Julie put her hand up gently, already moving toward the door. “I’m sure the King won’t make a big issue of it, not tonight. Let me go and check the sitting room, you may have left it there.”

She walked out and I watched the door close behind her.

I turned back to the mirror and looked at my reflection for a long moment.

God, that thing was actually ugly. Fuck it, I had a lot of shit to put up with in this body.