I Was Only His Backup Mate, His Second Choice Luna Chapter 09

I Was Only His Backup Mate, His Second Choice Luna Chapter 09

Something in Aelia’s face came apart.

“Thever wanted to be your sister. I wanted to be your wife. I wanted to be Luna.”

He stood up. His expression was perfectly level.

“I have a wife and I’m not in the market for a replacement. Aelia, stay away from Estella. If you cross that line again, I won’t be gentle about it.”

He didn’t look back at her. He walked out.

Seeing his back going through the door, she panicked.

“Magnus, don’t. Don’t leave me here-”

She threw off the blanket, tore the wound, and went down on the floor,

She looked up at him with her face wet, and he never once turned around.

She hit the tile with the side of her fist, teeth set, and something in her eyes tipped over.

She had gone as far as putting a blade into her own body. And he still wouldn’t break the bond.

What was it. What was it about Estella.

A defective wolf the Blaze family manufactured, a thing that was supposed to spend its entire life feeding off her existence. How did that get loved?

She wasn’t going to lose. Not after all of it.

She dragged the phone off the nightstand and called Sunna.

The line connected and she started crying immediately. “Aunt Sunna. Magnus left me alone in the

hospital and went to find Estella. You have to help me.”

Magnus never heard that call.

He was already dialing Estella from the corridor.

It rang for a long time. Nobody picked up.

He listened to the tone and laughed a little, ruefully. Every message he’d sent that week had gone

unanswered. Every call.

Still angry, then. She’d come around.

He didn’t call again. He sent one text.

[Sweetheart, you’re not recovered yet. Don’t let this eat you alive. I had supplements delivered to

the house. Eat them.]

Then he went back to Thorn Group headquarters.

He knew what the missing ceremony meant to her. Years as Luña and not one public moment of it.

It was the one thing she’d never stopped wanting.

He cleared the urgent pack business, sat through two days of back–to–back meetings, and then carved out an afternoon to sit down with an events team for several hours.

At the end of it the lead planner smiled at him.

“Alpha, if I may, you and Miss Blaze suit each other. Childhood friends, matched families. We’ll make sure the mating ceremony is everything you and Miss Blaze want.”

His face changed.

“Who told you I’m marrying Aelia?”

The room went still.

“… Who else would it be, Alpha?”

He frowned.

And then, finally, he did the arithmetic. Years of hiding a marriage. Aelia at his side at every public event, every dinner, every council session. Of course this is what it looked like. Of course this is

what all of them thought.

Of course Estella was angry.

In every room he wasn’t in, she had been standing in that assumption, and he had no idea for how long, or how many people had made her feel it.

He said, without any inflection, “My Luna is Estella. We registered our bond years ago. It simply

hasn’t been public. Aelia is a friend I grew up with. Don’t repeat anything that leaves that unclear.”

The planners apologized their way out.

He rubbed his forehead.

The Beta set a folder in front of him.

“Alpha. This came from the Elder Council yesterday. They required you to sign for it personally.”