The Luna They Never Made Room For Chapter 06

The Luna They Never Made Room For Chapter 06

My mom instinctively reaches out and touches the pile of stuffed animals scattered across the upper bunk. Her fingertips go stiff.

For the first time, a terrifying possibility clearly occurs to her.

Could she have been the one who drove her own daughter away?

Days pass one after another. Before they know it, the new school year begins, yet there is still no sign of me.

Even Dad, who has been reassuring himself all this time, can no longer sit still. He spends several nights unable to sleep, then paces back and forth across the living room the next day, gripping his phone.

Finally, he grits his teeth.

“No. We can’t wait anymore. I’m reporting this to the Alpha. I want him to send the entire pack out to find her.”

Mom has always been certain that I have no money and cannot survive for long. Sooner or later, she believes, I will come crawling back home.

But now, even the first day of school has already passed, and there is still no word from me.

She finally panics, “Let’s go. We need to find the Alpha now!”

The two of them hurry to the Alpha’s office.

After reviewing the timeline they provide, the Alpha and the pack elder both look grim.

“Annie has been missing for this long. Why did you wait until now to report her disappearance?”

Mom nervously twists the hem of her clothes, avoiding their eyes as she forces out an explanation.

“We… we thought she was just upset. We thought she needed some time to cool off and would come home after a few days. We never expected it to take this long…”

The pack elder shakes his head helplessly before seriously recording my personal information, physical description, and last known location.

But after searching for a long time, they still find no clues.

In the end, my parents can only leave the Alpha’s office with their heads hanging.

As soon as they reach the roadside, Dad’s phone suddenly rings.

The caller ID shows my high school math teacher, Mrs. Patty.

He quickly answers, “Hello, is this Mr. Brooks, Annie Brooks’s father?”

“Yes, this is him.”

“I’m Annie’s teacher. I wanted to ask which university she was accepted into. She was this year’s Valedictorian, and I was hoping to invite her back to speak to the younger students about her study experience.”

Dad’s throat tightens. After a long sigh, he finally tells her everything about my disappearance.

There is a few seconds of silence on the other end.

When Mrs. Patty speaks again, there is unmistakable anger in her voice.

“How could a child as responsible and hardworking as Annie end up with parents like you?”

Dad freezes, unable to say a word with the phone still pressed to his ear.

Mom instinctively steps closer.

Mrs. Patty continues.

“You have no idea how much Annie has suffered behind your backs. During her senior year, she once had a fever of 102.2°F in the middle of the night at the dorm. Her roommate urged her to call her parents and have you take her to the pack hospital, but Annie was afraid of troubling you. She stayed up alone through the entire night and still came to class the next morning.”

“For lunch, she often ate nothing but a bag of baby carrots. After evening study sessions, she would still go to the training arena.”

“She worked so hard, got a perfect score on the SAT, and even earned an SSS rating in her aptitude test. She awakened as a legendary White Wolf, and you still wanted her to repeat her senior year?”

Mrs. Patty’s voice grows heavier with every word.

“Any child would have been pushed to their limit. Do you have any idea how heartbroken she must have been?”

Every word comes through the phone as clearly as a silver needle, piercing both of them.

Dad’s arm trembles slightly as his fingers tighten around the phone.

Before this, all he ever saw was how quiet and distant I had become. He even thought I simply did not care about the family anymore.

He had never imagined that I had been carrying so much all by myself.

Mom stands frozen.

She has always taken my independence, resilience, and maturity for granted, as if they were simply

part of who I was.

Only now does she finally understand.

What she called being “sensible” was often nothing more than having no one to rely on.

One forgotten moment after another flashes through her mind.

That winter, I held my first-place trophy and carefully asked if she could buy me a warmer coat. She had only accused me of being ungrateful.

Whenever I came home for break, I could only curl up on a sofa less than three feet wide, unable to stretch out my legs.

The $40,000 I had worked so hard to save had been taken by her to buy Tammy a luxury handbag.

And when that thief raised his silver blade, she had instinctively protected Tammy first, while I was pushed forward to take the blow.

A chill slowly creeps down Mom’s back.

Only now does she finally realize, far too late, that what she owes her eldest daughter is far more

than she ever imagined.