My Twin Sister Became His Second Luna Chapter 10

My Twin Sister Became His Second Luna Chapter 10

The mate ceremony was set for the following spring at Moonridge Estate, on the edge of Frosthollow territory.

There would be fewer than fifty guests, all friends, colleagues, and Pack members we truly trusted and had fought alongside.

I invited neither the Ravenn family nor Kaelen.

One week before the ceremony, Mother sent me an old velvet box.

Inside were the arm cuffs my grandmother had left behind, along with a long letter. She said Father had formally stepped down as Alpha, and Nerys and Kaelen had painfully dissolved their mate bond. She also said they had finally opened the five file boxes and read every declaration I’d signed since I was seven.

The letter ended with a single sentence:

[Nerissa, can we attend your ceremony? Even if we only sit in the last row.]

I donated the arm cuffs to a Frosthaven fund for wolf pups.

I never replied to the letter.

On the day of the ceremony, morning light spilled through Moonridge’s birch grove. White chairs lined both sides of the lawn, and the arch was wrapped in ivy and silverleaf.

I had designed my own gown, a simple silver-white satin dress fitted neatly at the waist.

Camille finished putting in my earrings and glanced through the window toward the mountain road leading to the estate.

“There are a few people at the entrance without invitations.”

I didn’t ask who.

The pack bond had been severed long ago, but my golden wolf was still more sensitive than human senses. The wind carried three familiar scents from the edge of the territory, along with a trace of Kaelen’s cold cedar scent.

They had come after all.

Father no longer wore his Alpha insignia. Dust from the long journey clung to the shoulders of his old coat. Mother wore a faded gray dress, clutching the rejected entry request in both hands. Nerys stood beside her, pale, without the moon crown or Luna guards she’d once had.

Kaelen stood farther away by himself. After losing part of his Alpha authority, he’d spent an entire year under qualification review, and the council still hadn’t fully trusted him again.

Frosthollow’s guards stopped them at the gate.

“No outside Pack member may enter Moonridge without authorization from the bride and groom.”

Mother looked toward the estate through the iron gate, her voice trembling.

“I only want to watch my daughter have her mate ceremony.”

The guards didn’t move.

This wasn’t Stoneveil. She could no longer decide anything for me, either as my mother or as a Luna.

When the music began, I took Camille’s arm and walked onto the lawn.

Without Father to escort me, my steps were still steady.

At the far end of the birch grove, I saw the four of them beyond the iron gate.

Mother stepped forward with red-rimmed eyes, and Father looked as though he wanted to call my name. Nerys lowered her head, while Kaelen kept his eyes on me, filled with regret that had come far too many years late.

I didn’t stop.

They could only stand outside the territory, dusty and separated from me by an iron gate, watching me walk step by step toward the happiness that truly belonged to me.

Eamon stood beneath the moon-patterned arch in a dark gray suit. His gaze stayed on me, focused and quiet, as if the guests, the music, and the people from my past beyond the gate didn’t exist.

For the first time, I knew no one would take my place before the ceremony began, and no declaration would be waiting for me to sign.

When it was Eamon’s turn to speak his vows, he didn’t promise to make my decisions for me forever, nor did he promise to keep me sheltered behind him.

“Nerissa, I will respect your strength, and I will respect your right to put your weapons down. I will never ask you to make yourself smaller to prove you love me. Whether you stand beside me or walk somewhere farther than I ever could, I will be proud of your freedom.”

My eyes grew warm.

When it was my turn, I only said:

“Eamon, thank you for showing me that being loved doesn’t have to cost me who I am.”

Before the Moon Goddess’s priest, we exchanged no binding blood oaths. We exchanged only vows we’d written ourselves, vows either of us could take back.

When Eamon lowered his head to kiss me, my golden wolf let out a long, bright howl deep inside my mind.

At last, the free wolf had found someone willing to run beside it.

At the reception on the lawn, I stood at the edge of the garden and watched a guard bring over a file box.

Father and the others had already left. Inside were all the voluntary declarations I’d ever signed, with the wolf-crest insignia Father had surrendered when he stepped down as Alpha resting on top.

I didn’t open it.

Eamon came to my side and handed me a glass of juice.

“Want to keep it?”

“Send it to be destroyed.”

“Okay.”

The setting sun spilled over the birch grove, bathing the lawn in warm gold. I leaned against his shoulder and heard the warriors laughing in celebration somewhere in the distance.

For twenty years, I’d proved that I could give up everything for my family.

Only later did I understand that the love worth protecting would never ask someone to whittle themselves away just to fill another person’s life.

“This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.”