Chapter 3

It isn't a big deal.

The words floated in the air, heavy with the stench of his absolute callousness.

Lucian sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose as if he were dealing with an unreasonable child. He stepped around the table and approached me, softening his voice into that fake, patronizing tone he used whenever he thought he was offering me a grand concession.

"Look at you," he murmured, looking down at my pale face. "You're stressed. You've been obsessing over protocol and letting your imagination run wild."

He reached out to touch my shoulder. I didn't flinch away; I just watched his hand with cold detachment.

"Jenna’s fifth birthday is in two weeks," Lucian continued, a small, magnanimous smile touching his lips. "I have decided. We will hold your Luna coronation on her birthday. We will make it a double celebration. You will finally get the ceremony you've been whining about for five years, and Jenna can watch her mother take the throne. That should prove to you where my loyalty lies."

He looked at me, expecting joy. Expecting me to break down, thank him, and fall to my knees in gratitude for the crown he had dangled over my head for years.

"My Luna ceremony," I repeated softly. "On her birthday."

"Yes," Lucian said proudly, misinterpreting my tone completely. "Consider it my gift to you. Now, take this paper, go back to your room, and prepare Jenna for the announcement tonight."

I looked at him—at the man who had let our daughter rot to spare a spoiled child’s fatigue, the man who thought a stolen crown could wash the blood from his hands.

"I won't be needing a dress, Lucian," I said quietly, turning toward the exit.

"What did you say?" he called out, his voice tinged with warning. "Lyla, don't walk away from me!"

I stopped at the threshold of the grand hall, looking back over my shoulder one last time.

"You can keep your crown," I whispered, the words echoing off the silver bars of the manor. "And you can give the birthday feast to the dead.”

***

That night I attended my daughter's funeral, alone.

It was Lucian's rule to inform him two days in advance if we required his random visit to an event. He would check his schedule and then decide if he could come or not.

Jenna’s body didn't have that much time left. She had spent her entire life waiting for her father.

On her third birthday, because Lucian had said he would visit her, Jenna didn't cut her cake, waiting the whole night only for him to show up in the morning saying, “Leo wanted me to read him a bedtime story. So, I stayed with him.”

On her first day at school, she got late waiting for her Dad to drop her off at school, only to find later that he couldn't pick her up because he was dropping Leo off in his car, and Leo likes to travel alone.

Six months ago, when Lucian was happy over something, he promised Jenna to take her to visit her favourite Archaeological park that she had been whining about for a year, but when the time came, he didn't show up, and when I asked him about it, he barked at me.

“You are her mother. You should teach her how to be a sensible kid instead of encouraging her demands. She is going to be someone’s Luna in the future. Ask her to be mature.”

Jenna stood in the doorway and heard everything. She didn't cry. She didn't whine. She simply walked away and never demanded anything later.

That was why I didn't demand that Lucian visit her one last time. She did not need it anymore.

Two weeks passed

He hadn't checked on Jenna or me once. In his mind, my absence over the last three weeks was just another one of my "childish tantrums." He assumed I was hiding in my quarters, sulking, waiting to make a dramatic entrance on the day of my coronation to accept the crown I had supposedly craved for five years.

He didn't know that every night while the pack slept, I was quietly gathering what little belonged to us.

On the morning of the ceremony—the day that was supposed to be Jenna’s fifth birthday—I stood in our cold room for the last time. In my hands, I held a small, dark velvet pouch containing Jenna’s ashes.

I remembered the quiet evening two months ago when she had sat on the floor, holding a battered picture book of ancient ruins. She had pointed her tiny, smudge-stained finger at a picture of the grand sunlit stone pillars of the Sunken Valley Archaeological Park.

"Mommy," she had whispered, her big brown eyes shining with rare excitement. "When I grow up, can we go here? I want to see where the ancient wolves built the sun towers."

"Of course, my sweet girl," I had promised her. "Someday, I’ll take you."

I stroked the soft velvet of the pouch, holding it close to my chest.

"We're going today, my baby," I whispered into the empty room. "Mommy is taking you."

Without looking back at the silver bars of the pack manor, I stepped out through the servant gate. No one stopped me; the guards were too busy preparing for the grand feast in the main courtyard.

I had been walking along the mountain pass for nearly two hours when a sudden, violently jagged force slammed into the back of my mind.

‘Lyla!’

Lucian’s voice exploded through the psychic ether, laced with anger.‘Where the hell are you? The elders are assembled in the main courtyard! The priests are holding the ceremonial moonstone, and the entire pack is waiting!’

‘Do you have any idea how much effort I put into organizing this day for you?’ Lucian barked, his voice laced with absolute fury. ‘You have five minutes to get to the main altar! Put on the ceremonial gown I sent to your room and bring Jenna down immediately! She is supposed to present the pack seal!’

A heavy silence stretched through the link as he waited for my usual desperate apology, my panicked excuse, or my hasty compliance.

When nothing came back, his tone shifted—dropping from blind anger to a harsh, demanding snap.

‘Lyla! Answer me right now! Why aren't you here?!’

I pulled the velvet pouch closer to my heart, feeling the faint, cool weight of my daughter's ashes resting against my palm.

I opened the mental link just enough to send back a single, crystal-clear thought, my voice flat, icy, and completely devoid of emotion.

‘Because Jenna and I have an appointment at the Sunken Valley.’