Chapter 1: Too Fat A Luna

Rachel's POV

A shiver ran down my spine. I had never been this nervous in my life — not even the day I saved Annular Moon Pack territory from my own kind's invasion.

“It's okay, Rachel. You can do this.”

I whispered it like a prayer, exhaling slow, willing my hands to stop trembling.

It was the night of the Unencumbered Festival — the night that marked my turning point. From nobody to heroine. That was supposed to be me.

I grabbed my phone to check the time, and the wallpaper hit me square in the chest. Not fear this time. Nostalgia. The woman smiling back at me from that photo — young, pretty, ordinary — had no idea what she would become, or what it would cost her.

I looked up at the mirror instead. The glucometer sat heavy in my hand, its number climbing higher than it should. My breath started to catch, shallow and uneven.

My pills. I'd left them at the pack house

I bolted for the restroom door, fumbling for my phone, dialing Jacob. Unreachable . Alice. Switched off. I stared at the screen like it might change its mind if I waited long enough. It didn't.

Each second stretched my lungs tighter. By the time I pushed into the crowded hall, sweat had already started melting the makeup I'd spent an hour perfecting for a night that was supposed to be mine.

"We love you, Luna Rachel!"

"Luna Rachel, you're the best!"

Hands reached for me from every direction — wolves grinning, pressing close, asking questions I couldn't hear over the roar building in my own ears. I smiled back, forced and brittle, while my vision pulsed at the edges. The room tilted, and the crowd blurred into a wall of noise and color I had to fight through like riptide, every step costing more than the last.

Just breathe. Just get out.

Someone caught my elbow — a well-wisher, laughing, oblivious — and I nearly went down. I steadied myself against a pillar, apologized through gritted teeth, kept moving. The floor felt too far away and too close at once. My own name kept ringing out around me, a hundred voices calling for the woman who was quietly dying in front of them, and not one of them could see it. Not one of them knew how close I was to collapsing in my own honor.

By the time I broke free of the hall, my dress clung to my back, soaked through. The world had gone soft and swimming, the torchlight smearing into long gold streaks.

Then my phone buzzed. Lucy.

“Girl, hurry up and come quick. Am in the pack house and I have a surprise for you”

I didn't answer. I just walked — half-ran — toward the pack house, each step a negotiation with my own body. The building was empty. No soldiers at the gate, no maids at their posts. Everyone was at the festival, I told myself. I didn't think anything of it.

I should have.

I dragged myself up the stairs, one hand braced against the wall, sweat stinging my eyes, my heartbeat loud enough to drown out my own footsteps. My room. I just needed my room.

I shoved the door open — and froze.

A sound reached me first. Low, breathless, wrong. My fogged vision couldn't place it, only shapes moving in the dark where my bed should have been empty.

I staggered to the drawer, hands shaking so badly I nearly dropped the bottle. Two pills. I swallowed them dry and pressed my palm flat against the wood, waiting for the room to stop spinning, praying whatever I was hearing was nothing.

That's when I heard it clearly. Not desperate. Not urgent.

Longing

I turned around. And my whole world rearranged itself into something I no longer recognized.

"Surprise, bestie." Lucy's voice slid across the room, honeyed and cruel. "It's so nice of you to invite yourself during our intimacy. Would you care to join?"

My lungs forgot how to work. Every inhale felt like a bomb going off in my chest. Every exhale, an arrow through it.

"It... it can't be." The words barely made it past my throat.

Seven years. Seven years of trusting her with everything — my fears, my marriage, my son, the parts of myself I'd never shown anyone else. And there she was, tangled in my sheets, wearing my husband like a trophy she'd been waiting years to claim.

"Lucy," I breathed, and she laughed. Not her usual laugh. Something colder. Something that had clearly been waiting a long time to come out.

She pressed herself against Jacob without breaking eye contact with me, like my presence was part of the thrill, like watching me shatter was the entire point of tonight.

But it wasn't her that I was disappointed at

It was him.

Jacob — my Alpha, the man I'd given up my humanity, my body, my entire life for — looked at me and felt nothing. No shame. No flicker of regret. Just pride, cold and open, like he'd wanted me to walk in on this. Like he'd planned it.

He pulled away from Lucy slowly, unhurried, and came toward me. Naked. Unbothered. Every step deliberate, every step designed to make me feel smaller.

Each step he took forward, I took back, until the drawer's edge dug into my spine and there was nowhere left to go.

He didn't stop there. His claws slid halfway out — a slow, controlled transformation — and he tipped my chin up with one clawed finger, forcing me to look at the six-foot-tall stranger I'd married seven years ago.

I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. I could only stand there, powerless in my own home, in my own body, in front of the two people I'd trusted most in this world.

He leaned in until his mouth brushed my ear, his claw resting against my throat — firm, almost gentle, like he still cared whether it hurt.

Then he said the words I never thought Jacob, my love could say to me

"Did you really think a fat, dying human could ever truly be my Luna?”