All Chapters of The Unwanted Plus-Size Luna: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

Wren didn't sleep. She lay on top of her covers still wearing the claiming dress, because taking it off felt like admitting the night had actually happened, and some stubborn part of her wanted to pretend it hadn't. By the time grey light crept through her window, she'd stopped pretending. The dress was ruined anyway. She'd torn the hem walking home, catching it on a root in the dark, too numb to notice until she was already inside. She peeled it off and left it on the floor. Downstairs, her mother was already at the stove, back turned, shoulders drawn up around her ears like she was bracing for something. She didn't say good morning. She didn't say anything at all. "You could have said something," Wren said. "Last night." Her mother's spoon stopped moving in the pot. "What was I supposed to say, Wren?" "I don't know. Something." "Kade is the Alpha's son." Her mother said it like it explained everything, like it was a wall Wren was supposed to understand not to push against. "Y

Wren waited until the house was dark and her mother's door had been closed for an hour before she let herself go to the box under her bed.It was small, plain wood, the kind of thing nobody would look twice at if they found it. She hadn't opened it in weeks. She told herself that was because she'd been busy, not because she already knew what was inside and hadn't been ready to look at it.She was wrong about being ready now too. Her hands trembled as she lifted the lid anyway.The carved wooden wolf sat on top, small enough to fit in her palm, its edges worn smooth from being turned over and over between her fingers years ago. Beneath it, a pressed flower had gone brittle and colorless, and a folded scrap of paper had softened at the creases from being opened and closed too many times to count. Kade had made the wolf for her the summer they were both sixteen, before either of them understood what a mate bond was, back when he used to sit beside her at the lake and complain about his f

The thing that tore free of the trees was massive, matted with blood, and moving wrong.Wren didn't have time to process what she was looking at. One second the underbrush was exploding outward in a spray of bark and broken branches, and the next something huge and snarling was already closing the distance between the tree line and where she and Darius stood, faster than anything that size should have been able to move."Down." Darius's hand caught her shoulder and shoved, hard, and the world tilted sideways as she hit the dirt.The creature passed over the space where she'd been standing a half second later, jaws snapping at empty air.Wren rolled, scrambling backward on her hands, and got her first real look at it. Not a monster. A wolf, huge, easily twice the size of anything born to Ashmoor, its fur matted dark with blood that wasn't all its own. One of its front legs dragged wrong, bent at an angle that should have crippled it, and still it moved like something with nothing left

By morning, the story had already changed shape.Wren heard it twice before she reached the well. A girl fetching water told her friend that trouble had followed Wren home from her own rejection ceremony. A boy stacking firewood said it louder, so she'd hear: that the border had never once been breached in his lifetime, not until she started sneaking around with the outsider."Funny how that works," Wren said, loud enough to carry. "A scout bleeds out on our land and somehow it's my fault."Nobody answered her. Nobody ever did, to her face."I heard he tore through three of the watch before anyone touched him," someone else said, not quite quiet enough. "I heard the outsider only stepped in because she couldn't handle it herself."Wren turned toward the voice. A younger wolf, barely past her first shift, went pale and busied herself with a water jug instead of finishing the thought. Behind her, two more wolves suddenly found the ground very interesting."Say the rest of it," Wren said