Moon-Wish Doll Chapter 05

Moon-Wish Doll Chapter 05

“Claire! Claire!”

Dad rushed to me, trying to pick me up.

He thought he’d imagined seeing me transform.

But when he touched me, he knew it was real.

I had truly become a Moonbound Doll.

“What is this?” Derek stumbled backward and crashed heavily onto the floor, unable to process

what he’d seen.

“How did Claire turn into a doll? Dad, am I seeing things? It has to be my imagination. Claire

couldn’t possibly—”

His words died in his throat.

He saw the uneven dents in the doll’s arm. Like it had been crammed full of something.

He dragged himself over on unsteady legs and ripped the tape free!

Clods of discolored cotton-splotched sickly pink and yellow, as if stained by something-tumbled

out in messy handfuls.

Exactly like what his friends had ripped out earlier. He’d only glimpsed it then, but he knew.

There was no heirloom inside. Nothing.

“Was Claire telling the truth all along? That Moon-Wish Doll thing-”

“Find the doll. Find that Moon-Wish Doll.”

They rushed out.

On the sofa, they found the doll I’d been holding earlier.

But something was wrong. Its features were gone, leaving nothing but a faceless blank cloth shell.

“How is this possible? Was Mom turned into a Moonbound Doll too?”

They carried Mom’s doll and mine back to my room and set them on the bed.

The large doll and tiny one huddled side by side, permanent soft smiles stitched on their faces.

The scene ought to have felt calm, yet it only twisted our hearts tight with sorrow.

“Claire said it was a Moon-Wish Doll. She turned into a doll so Nora wouldn’t get sick anymore. But Nora was just in the Pack hospital with a fever. Which one is wrong? Even if Claire’s wish worked, what did Mom wish for?”

Derek stared at Dad.

Confusion and cold dread twisted his features.

For years, he’d believed their mother abandoned them to run away with another man, with no clue of the horrifying truth.

Nora hadn’t come down at all.

Dad crept out of the room, moving silently toward the second floor.

Nora’s door wasn’t fully closed.

Through the gap, he heard two female voices.

“Nora, are you sure that useless Claire Caldwell has turned into a Moonbound Doll? My divinations

were proven correct.”

“That foolish Claire, crushed under constant pressure from her father and Derek, was guaranteed

to reach for the Moon-Wish Doll.”

“My Nora, you’ll be healthy for the rest of your life now. Every painstaking plan I laid out for you

hasn’t gone to waste.”

Dad recognized the other voice.

Mrs. Robinson.

The woman he’d thought was dead. The one who’d saved his life.

Years ago, when rogues nearly killed him, she’d used an old healing craft to bring him back.

Nora spoke in a bright, carefree tone. The chronic sickness she’d carried since birth had doomed

her to die before twenty-five, per every Pack healer’s verdict.

“Mom, how did you even know Claire owned that doll?”

Mrs. Robinson laughed. “How do you think Theodore Caldwell survived? When the rogues attacked

him, he was really dying. Claire’s mother, Fiona used a Moon-Wish Doll.”

“Theodore recovered-and his wife paid the price.”

“All these years, he thought she left him for another man. He had no idea that doll in the basement

was his wife.”

“He’s been treating me like his savior. And after I ‘died,’ he took you in and raised you like his own daughter. Pathetic.”

Every trace of color drained from Dad’s face, hardening into ice. He didn’t utter a single word-this

eerie silence was the calm right before a violent storm.

The call ended.

He reared back and slammed his boot hard into the door, splintering it open.