All Chapters of Mated to the wrong Alpha, reborn as the strongest Luna: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

They moved toward the door, their voices dropping to murmurs too low for me to catch. I watched them through half-lidded eyes. Hessa was speaking first. Calm. Measured. But firm. Lucian’s shoulders stiffened. Then his gaze shifted slowly toward me. His expression changed—something serious crossing his features, pulling at the lines around his eyes. Heavy. Almost… sad. The kind of look a person wore when they received news they weren’t ready to hear. My stomach dropped. Has Hessa told him? Has she seen through me so quickly—seen that the woman lying in that bed wasn’t his Mila at all, but a stranger who had stolen her body and her life? The seconds stretched unbearably. I gripped the quilt in my fists under the covers, forcing my face to stay still. They stopped whispering and turned fully toward the bed. The intensity in their expressions made my pulse spike painfully against my ribs. Hessa approached first. “Luna,” she said, her voice returning to its calm, professional

The next morning arrived with soft golden light filtering through the curtains, painting the room in warm hues that felt almost too gentle for the storm churning inside me. I woke slowly, my body aching less than it had been the day before, though the strangeness of it lingered—like wearing clothes that didn’t quite fit. Mila’s body was strong. Toned. Responsive in ways my old body had never been. When I flexed my fingers, they moved with a fluid strength that surprised me. I sat up carefully, testing my limits. No dizziness this time. Just a quiet, simmering energy beneath my skin, as if something ancient and powerful had been waiting to awaken. My wolf stirred faintly—not the timid, fragile presence I’d known in Silvercrest, but something fiercer, more primal. She didn’t speak to me yet, not in words, but I felt her curiosity, her confusion at sharing this space with a stranger’s soul. A soft knock pulled me from my thoughts. “Come in,” I said, my voice steadier

The afternoon sun had begun its slow descent, bathing the garden in gold and stretching the shadows long across the grass. I noticed it first in the quality of the light — the way it thickened and warmed, turning the willows amber at their edges, making the clearing feel like something preserved in honey. Lucian noticed it too. He glanced at the sky, then back at me. “We should go back,” he said, his voice unhurried but certain. “You still need rest. And Hessa will want to check on you before evening.” I didn’t argue. My body had held up better than I expected. But the afternoon had been longer than it felt, and the weight of everything said and unsaid between us had its own particular exhaustion. I nodded and rose from the bench. We walked back through the garden in companionable quiet, retracing the stone path between the nightshade blooms. The flowers had deepened in colour as the light changed, their purple almost bruised-looking in the gold of late afternoon. Lucian walked

The morning air was cool and smelled of damp earth and pine. Amira led me around the side of the pack house with the confidence of someone who had done exactly this kind of thing many times before, steering us along the wall until the outer shed came into view. Lucian stood at the centre of a loose circle of elders and senior warriors, a map unrolled across the table before him. I stood at the edge of the path and looked at him. He hadn’t noticed us yet. His attention was entirely on the map and the men around him, one hand resting flat on the table, the other gesturing. The morning light caught the lines of his face — the jaw, the scar, the quiet authority that seemed to cost him nothing. “As Luna,” I said quietly, more to myself than to Amira, “I should be at his side for something like that.” Amira glanced at me. “You will be,” she said. “It’s just a matter of time. I know you — I know you hate sitting still. But you’re still healing. Handle yourself first. Everything else fol

The night settled gently over Nightshade, cool and steady, carrying the quiet hum of voices and the glow of lantern light across the pack house.Lucian and I had spent the entire day together—talking until the afternoon slipped past us without notice. He had taken me through parts of the territory I didn’t remember, showing me places that were supposed to feel like home, explaining things with that same calm patience he carried everywhere.As we neared the pack house, the sounds of life reached us—wolves gathered in small groups, laughter weaving through the night air, the crackle of a bonfire in the central courtyard.The pack was alive—breathing, moving, waiting.For me.Lanterns hung between the trees in long strings, catching the last of the fading daylight and holding it there—amber, gold, warm. The smell of woodsmoke reached us before anything else, and then it all came at once: voices layered over each other, the low rhythm of movement, someone laughing just beyond my line of s