No Longer Your Luna, But the Alpha Queen Chapter 01

No Longer Your Luna, But the Alpha Queen Chapter 01

The night before our mating ceremony, my Alpha fiance threw me a lavish pool party.

When a dozen men dragged me into the water, laughing as they pulled me under, Bastian was sitting on the edge of the pool with his arm around a little beta, watching the whole thing with cold, indifferent eyes.

“I lost control and got Zyra pregnant,” he said, his tone almost casual. “I know you have that thing about emotional purity, so you’d never accept her or the baby. To make it up to you, I invited these guys to keep you company. Now we’re both dirty, so we’re even. Fair enough?”

I laughed.

My standards for emotional purity only applied to the person I truly loved. And he wasn’t that person.

I kicked the men off me and clawed my way to the edge of the pool.Zyra nestled deeper into Bastian’s arms, covering her mouth to stifle a giggle. “Bastian, who would’ve guessed? Tahlia looks so innocent, but her appetite is something else. All those men and not a single one could satisfy her.”

My soaking wet, disheveled appearance clearly thrilled her.

But I was even more thrilled than she was.

“You’re right,” I said, wringing water from my hair. “Ordinary men could never be worthy of me.”

Ever since my memories had returned, I’d regretted giving my heart to the wrong person. But the instinct to love your fated mate was powerful, and I’d set that regret aside, choosing to spend my life with Bastian. Maybe the heavens took pity on me after all, because he’d gone and confessed to cheating before the wedding all on his own.

Bastian frowned, covering Zyra’s ears with his hands, and sneered at me. “Tahlia, you’re supposed to be a lady of good breeding. How can you say something so shameless?”

The guests milling around the party started whispering and pointing too. “I always said, with a body like that, she’s definitely got a reputation,” one of them snickered. “I heard fallen socialites know how to party. That whole circle is wild,” another chimed in. A third leaned toward Bastian with a smirk. “Look how picky Tahlia is. She’s probably been eating well behind your back. Why else would she turn her nose up at the guys you handpicked for her?”

Most of these people were Bastian’s friends. Before he became the Alpha heir of Silverveil Pack, they would’ve crawled on their knees and licked the ground for access to Nightspire Pack’s resources. But after my parents moved the business overseas and rumors spread that my family had gone bankrupt and fled the country, these people stopped giving me the time of day.

I never bothered correcting them. Human nature was what it was. At least it showed me who they really were, and I no longer had to play nice just because they were Bastian’s friends.

What I hadn’t expected was that my silence only made them more convinced the rumors were true. They were certain I was a fallen heiress.

I still didn’t explain. I just quietly kept helping Bastian build Silverveil Pack into a powerhouse.

After he became Alpha, these same people had the nerve to say to my face that I wasn’t good enough for him and that he should dump me. But Bastian had smashed a bottle over the head of the guy who said it, his face like stone. “Say that again and we’re done as brothers. Tahlia is your Luna, and she always will be.”

The one who’d gotten his head cracked open was the same one who’d just joked about me eating well behind Bastian’s back.

But today, Bastian didn’t flip out on anyone. He sat there with cold eyes, silently endorsing every malicious assumption, even encouraging the filthy gazes crawling over my body.

Tomorrow at the mating ceremony, I was going to tell him everything. I was going to bring him into my parents’ empire.

In the end, I was the blind one. And he didn’t deserve my love, or anything that came with it.

My silence madeZyra’s eyes gleam with victory. She blinked those innocent doe eyes at Bastian, her voice soft as a breeze. “Bastian, do you think maybe Tahlia’s embarrassed to perform with us watching? That’s why she’s saying such shameless things?”

Bastian’s expression darkened instantly.

Zyra shot me a triumphant glance and draped herself around his neck, pouting. “Bastian, the baby and I are hungry. Why don’t we go eat first and give Tahlia some space to be queen?”

Bastian hurled a bathrobe at me instead. “Her? A queen?” he scoffed. “What an embarrassment. Hurry up and change, then go peel shrimp for Zyra.”