Home / The Alpha’s Forgotten Daughter / Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

All Chapters of The Alpha’s Forgotten Daughter: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

9 Chapters

Chapter 1

I had knocked over the glass beside my bed.Water was spreading across the floorboards, slipping beneath the rug. Mom would be upset if it left a mark.I crouched to wipe it up.My hand passed through the glass.Across the room, a girl lay beside the door, one arm outstretched. Her lips had gone blue. An inhaler rested just beyond her fingers.I knew that girl.I was still wearing the dress I had chosen for my birthday.For a while, I waited for my chest to hurt again.It didn’t.I had died.Grandma had died two winters ago. I remembered the stillness of her hands, the way everyone whispered around her bed. I had never thought being dead would feel so much like being left behind in a room.I wanted her.Instead, I looked toward the window and saw our car pulling back into the drive.Maybe Mom would remember something. Maybe she would come back.She used to come back for me.When I was seven, she and Dad took me to a home for orphaned pack children. Dad went every winter to deliver supp

Chapter 2

“Mom!”I hurried down the stairs and reached for her.She walked straight through me.I turned, confused, and followed her into the hall.“The spare car key,” she muttered, checking the console drawer. “Your father’s left mine at the office again.”Dad’s car was running outside. She hadn’t come back for me.Still, she was here.“Please go upstairs,” I said. “I’m beside the door.”Mom glanced toward the landing.I tried to explain before she could be angry.“I didn’t mean for this to happen. I knocked over some water, but I can’t clean it up. I tried.”She climbed the stairs.I followed so closely that, for a moment, I could pretend she was leading me by the hand.Our bedrooms had been soundproofed when Dad became Alpha. Pack business brought visitors at all hours. The seals kept noise and scent from carrying between the private rooms.I had liked having a quiet room once.Mom stopped outside mine.“Nora. I’m not having this continue all day.”“I’m not sulking,” I said. “I can’t open it

Chapter 3

The three of them ate together.Dad cut a piece of steak from his plate for Lily. Mom asked which ride she wanted to try next time.I stood behind Mom’s chair, close enough to see the small freckles at the back of her neck.I used to count them when she carried me.Then I noticed a white bakery box on the sideboard.A cake.I turned to the cat at the window.“They remembered.”He blinked slowly.Mom opened the box. Pink frosting. Strawberries. A little sugar rose.Not my favorite, but that didn’t matter.Then she handed it to Lily.“You said you wanted something sweet on the way home.”“Should we save Nora a piece?”Mom lowered her voice.“Take it upstairs. I don’t want another argument tonight.”I remembered my seventeenth birthday. Lemon cake, candles in the garden, Ethan’s hand under the table holding mine.That had only been a year ago.I hadn’t imagined it.Lily was carrying the cake toward the stairs when the cat jumped down. She caught him with the side of her shoe.“Get out.”H

Chapter 4

They were all short.Every single one.I counted twice.Then I looked inside the box, searching the corners, the lining, the space beneath the lid.There was no long stick.A whole year of trying again.A whole year of Mom saying, Perhaps next time.I thought of my fingers shaking around the two pieces I had glued together. How ashamed I’d felt when she caught me.She had broken my one long stick herself.Mom came down for the ointment she kept in the hall drawer. She saw the mess and bent to gather it.Dad joined her.“Put it away,” he murmured.For a moment, I hoped he would notice.He held three short sticks in his palm. Looked at them. Looked at Mom.“Before Nora comes down.”Mom closed the lid.Neither of them was surprised.I sat on the floor long after they left.In the morning, Lily stopped outside my bedroom.“I hope you keep this up,” she whispered.She rested her cheek against the door, listening.“It’s so much nicer without you. Mom and Dad finally have time for me.”She wa

Chapter 5

Ethan was the first to move.He dropped to his knees beside me, reaching for my wrist.Then his hand stopped.“Nora?”He said it again, quieter.Dad ordered someone to call the medical center. His Alpha voice shook the windows.No one in the room obeyed quickly enough for him.“I said get a healer!”Mrs. Ellis was already on the phone.Mom stood in the doorway.“That isn’t…”Her eyes moved from my face to my dress. Then to the little crescent birthmark above my ankle.She knew that mark. She used to press her thumb to it when she put on my shoes.“No.”The healer arrived with two pack wardens. One look at the floor was enough to take the urgency out of his movements.Dad caught his arm.“Help her.”“Alpha—”“Help my daughter.”Mrs. Ellis began to cry.She was the first.I looked at Mom, waiting. Her face was empty in a way that frightened me more than anger.Mrs. Ellis stepped into the room and saw the untouched glass beside the bed, the empty phone charger, the broken pieces of wood o

Chapter 6

I found the white cat in the garden.He sat beside the kitchen steps, looking at his own small body beneath the hedge.I knew before he spoke.“She caught me after they brought her back from the medical center,” he said.I sat down beside him.“Lily?”“She was still angry about her hand.”“I’m sorry.”He turned his head.“You didn’t do it.”I opened my mouth, then closed it.He stood and brushed against my legs. For the first time since I’d died, I felt something touch me.I buried my fingers in his fur.I had called him Snow when he was alive. He had never seemed interested in answering to it.Now he said, “Your grandmother used to feed me.”“Do you know where she is?”“Not yet.”I tried to follow him beyond the gate, but something pulled at me. I could reach the garden wall and no farther.So we waited.My parents returned that evening. They had been allowed home while the council’s investigators collected statements and the medical examiner completed her report. Their titles hadn’t

Chapter 7

The wardens came back the next morning.They took Lily’s statement separately. They checked the household supply records and found the silver chain among items ordered under her account.The clasp on the damaged training gear had been cut from the inside, where only the wearer would normally reach it. Her supposedly missing medication was in an old toiletry bag in her wardrobe.Each discovery was small.Together, they took apart the last year of my life.Ethan brought a notebook from his room. He had written down every incident he could remember, including the ones I had tried to explain to him.Beside one entry, he had added: I told her to apologize.Beside another: I didn’t ask her what happened.He sat in my doorway with the notebook on his knees.“You asked me to believe you.”I stood beside him.“I know.”“I kept thinking you were stronger. That you could take one more disappointment.”He covered his face.I used to want him to come to my room and say he’d made a mistake.Now I wa

Chapter 8

The wardens took Lily to supervised accommodation that night.Dad went with her to give another statement. This time he didn’t call it a misunderstanding.Mom stayed in the ruined sitting room.At dawn, she began picking up the gifts. She wiped soot from the bracelet box, then sat on the floor with it in her lap.“I taught you both that there could only be one winner.”No one was there to answer.Except me.She found my old drawing beneath a stack of papers in Dad’s study. Our family outside the house. Two girls holding hands. A cat I had added long before Snow appeared.On the back, in crooked handwriting, I had written: Now Lily has everyone too.Mom read it over and over.“You never asked me to choose you instead of her.”I sat beside her.I hadn’t.The funeral director brought a replacement casket. Mom chose a soft blue lining after asking Mrs. Ellis which shade I liked.There was room for me. No broken door. No inhaler I couldn’t reach.For a moment, the relief was so simple it em

Chapter 9

When they carried my casket through the gate, the pull that had kept me at home went with it. I could follow, though I still couldn’t leave on my own.At my funeral, Ethan stood beyond the first row.He had resigned as Beta. In his statement to the council, he had included the messages he ignored and the times he helped my parents call cruelty discipline.He placed a small bunch of daisies beside my grave.They were the flowers I used to pick along the path to training.“I should have stayed,” he said.I had no answer for him.Lily attended with a warden. At seventeen, she was still under the council’s youth supervision while the silver and fire incidents were investigated.Dad asked her if she had anything to say.She looked at Mom.“I’m sorry.”Mom closed her eyes.“For what?”Lily’s mouth trembled.“For everything.”Mom turned back to my grave.It was the first apology Lily had offered that didn’t make anyone gather her into their arms.Afterward, Mom stepped down as Luna. Dad lost

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