向日葵の踊り子は喋れない

Lysera

It was my twenty-first birthday.

A day I had been anticipating for the past three years. The day I was supposed to finally get my wolf. Instead of my family celebrating me, they were throwing a party for my twin sister because she was finally pregnant for our Alpha.

“The Moon Goddess has been so good to us.”

“Thank the Moon Goddess for blessing our pack with Isyra.”

“She will finally become Luna. It was only a matter of time.”

“An heir is exactly what the pack needs. With all the rogue trouble, we need something to celebrate. Something to lift our spirits.”

Yes. Tonight, on our twenty-first birthday, my twin sister would be crowned the Luna of our pack.

I walked past pack members as they rushed around my father’s compound, bustling with excitement as they prepared the hall for the celebration. A few bumped into me in their hurry, but none of them stopped to apologize.

I didn’t mind.

I was used to being invisible. It was better than having their attention on me.

“Lysera!”

I flinched, snapping out of my thoughts as my mother’s sharp voice cut through the noise. She stood at the entrance of the house, her expression tight with impatience.

“Hurry up. Isyra needs you to fetch her shoes from the top of her dresser. She’s pregnant, after all, so no strenuous activity for her.”

She disappeared back inside before I could respond.

I bit down on my bottom lip at the jab in her words and followed anyway.

When I entered Isyra’s room, the difference between our lives was impossible to ignore.

My room was the smallest in the house, barely half the size of Isyra’s closet. Hers, however, was the largest room in the compound. Even bigger than our parents’.

It looked like something out of a fairy tale. Soft pink walls and silk curtains. A bed fit for a princess.

The brightness of it all made my stomach turn and it was not because I hated pink, but because it wasn’t my sister’s color.

Isyra liked purple. I liked pink.

But my father said pink was for girls, so Isyra liked pink now.

She had always been like that. The perfect people pleaser. And there was no one she wanted to please more than our father.

Isyra and I may have shared the same face, but we were opposites in every way that mattered.

From the moment we were born, my parents noticed the difference. Isyra was loud, smiling, and demanding of attention. She laughed easily, cried beautifully, and reached for everyone who looked her way. I was quiet. I observed before I spoke. I preferred corners to crowds and silence to noise.

To them, that made Isyra perfect.

They praised her confidence, admired her charm, and called her special. They said she was born to lead, born to be seen. I was called difficult, strange, and too withdrawn.

So they chose her.

They gave her their time, their affection, their pride. They dressed her in fine clothes and paraded her before the pack. They taught her how to smile, how to speak, how to be loved.

And I was slowly pushed into the background and forgotten because I did not shine the way she did.

Isyra learned early that love was something she could earn and wield.

I learned that love was something I would never be given.

I dragged a stool closer to the dresser, climbed onto it, and reached for the beautiful pink heels I knew my father had bought specifically for this occasion. I placed them neatly on Isyra’s bed before leaving her room.

“What are we going to do about this?” my mother’s panic-filled voice reached me as I approached the living room.

“Stop panicking, Lovett,” my father snapped impatiently.

I froze.

Something in his tone warned me not to move any closer. It felt like I was about to step into a conversation I was never meant to hear. As much as I wanted to escape this house—this place that suddenly felt too small, its walls pressing in on me—I knew better than to cross my father when he was in this mood.

My presence would not be welcomed.

My back throbbed with phantom pain from a few days ago, when he had whipped me for not bringing his beloved princess Isyra’s water fast enough. He had been in a snappy mood then too.

I turned, ready to retreat to my room and hide until I was summoned again, when a familiar voice stopped me.

Isyra’s.

I hadn’t even known she was home. I thought she was with the Alpha.

“If you keep panicking like this, Mom,” Isyra growled, irritation thick in her voice, “everyone will find out that I’m not pregnant.”

I gasped loudly, then slapped my hand over my mouth and pressed myself against the wall, out of their sight.

“Who is there?” my father called.

I held my breath and willed my heart to stop. One wrong move and I’d be found out.

My father was a powerful wolf. He could smell me. Hear my heartbeat. And what I had just overheard was not something I was meant to hear.

“Nobody is in the house with us. Lysera is outside helping the servants arrange everything for her celebration,” Isyra said.

In that moment, I could have kissed her.

“If only your sister could be more like you,” my father scoffed. “But she turned out useless. Does she even have her wolf yet?”

Pain sliced through me.

Nobody ever gets used to being hated by their parents.

A big party was thrown when Isyra and I turned eighteen, but the celebration was more for her. Everyone was certain she would be Alpha Henry’s mate. Everyone acted like it was her Luna’s party.

They forgot she had a twin.

Three things happened that night.

Isyra got her wolf.

I didn’t.

Nobody knew I was a late bloomer. Nobody noticed. The disappointment belonged only to me.

Isyra and Henry found out they were not fated mates.

The pack was disappointed. Alpha Henry’s parents were disappointed too. I thought he would break things off with Isyra.

He didn’t.

It was taboo for an Alpha to choose a woman who wasn’t his mate as Luna, but the rule bent for him. The pack allowed it. His parents encouraged it.

I told myself it didn’t matter.

I told myself it had nothing to do with me.

And that was true.

I never wanted what my sister had. But seeing her beside him still hurt. Not because I wished to take her place, but because it made it painfully clear that there was never a place meant for me.

So I stayed away.

From the pack house, from pack gatherings. And from anywhere I might be reminded that I didn’t belong.

But three months ago, something inside me finally broke.

After my parents chose Isyra again without even hearing me out, I did something reckless. Something I never thought I was capable of.

I left pack territory.

I went downtown to a bar where nobody knew my name, where nobody measured my worth against my sister.

I drank until the noise in my head quieted. Until the ache dulled. Until everything blurred.

And in the middle of all that haze, I saw him.

A stranger.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and devastatingly handsome. He looked a little like Henry, and my pulse spiked so violently it hurt, but I knew he wasn’t him.This man looked at me like I was important. He made me feel seen and looked at me like I mattered.

I can’t remember much of what happened that night but I remember warm hands, a deep voice against my ear, the scent of cedar and smoke. And then… nothing.

When I woke up the next morning, he was gone.

No name and no goodbye.

Since then, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking about that stranger. And that only made being near Henry hurt even more so I stayed away.

“Lysera had her wolf at eighteen. But that doesn’t matter,” Mother said lightly. “As long as Isyra remains Luna, Lysera is irrelevant.”

My chest tightened until it hurt to breathe.

Even the woman who brought me into the world didn’t know I had never gotten my wolf.