The Rejected Envoy of the Moon Chapter 01

The Rejected Envoy of the Moon Chapter 01

The day I left the Virethorn Pack with nothing but their curses at my back, I cut my hair short and traveled a thousand miles south to a coastal city deep in the Southern Territory.

I found a quiet little flower shop on a forgotten street corner and made it mine.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped remembering that I was a disgraced Moon Envoy, a princess born of Alpha blood. I stopped remembering I ever had a family at all.

Seven years later, a man in an expensive suit walked through my door.

He was cradling a pot of dead bluebells, and he asked me if I could save them.

Our eyes met. Thorne Virethorn, the Alpha brother who once sneered at my very existence, looked like he had been struck by lightning.

“Claire? You’ve been here this whole time? We all thought you were dead…”

I lowered my gaze and ignored his trembling hands.

I stared at the pot of bluebells, the same ones I had given him years ago, and kept my voice perfectly flat.

“Sir, healing magic is a scam. A dead flower is a dead flower.”

Thorne looked down at the bluebells, then back up at me.

“Claire, how can you say that?”

I picked up my shears and snipped the last withered stem at the base.

I swept the dead branch into the trash.

“Sir, the flower is dead. There’s no saving it.”

“And when someone’s heart is dead, there’s no saving that either.”

Thorne reached for my wrist.

I set the shears flat on the counter, blades pointing outward.

He froze. His hand hung in the air for a long, humiliating second before he pulled it back.

“Where have you been these seven years?”

“Why didn’t you send word? Not even once?”

“Do you have any idea how long Mom and Dad searched for you?”

That actually made me laugh.

“Searched for me?”

Thorne’s throat bobbed.

“Everyone at home thought something happened to you.”

I tipped the soil out of the pot. The roots had rotted through completely.

“Thorne Virethorn, wasn’t it the Virethorn Pack that issued an Alpha decree to the Northern Territory and formally cut ties with me?”

“Wasn’t it you who threw my things out of the pack house with your own hands?”

Whatever color was left in Thorne’s face drained away.

That rainy night seven years ago.

Grace, the girl my birth parents had adopted, tumbled down the stairs clutching her stomach, sobbing that she had lost her pup.

I was standing ten feet away. I hadn’t so much as brushed the hem of her sleeve.

But my Luna mother, Patricia, slapped me across the face.

“Claire, how could you be so vicious?”

The slap left my ears ringing.

My Alpha father, Edward, shoved me down in front of Grace’s hospital bed.

“On your knees. Apologize to your sister.”

I told them I didn’t do it.

Thorne stormed over, snatched up the wooden figurine I had spent three sleepless nights carving for him, and hurled it against the floor.

“Someone like you doesn’t deserve to be my sister.”

They threw me out of the pack house.

I knelt at the front door all night.

Rain poured down my throat. I couldn’t even cry.

I knocked and begged them to open the door.

Patricia glanced at me from the window, then turned around and peeled grapes for Grace.

That was the night I finally understood.

The only person they would ever love was Grace.

Thorne’s hands were shaking.

“Claire, we didn’t know the truth back then.”

“This pot of bluebells, you gave them to me.”

“I kept them alive all this time.”

I looked at the pot with its rotted roots.

They were mine, all right.

The year I returned to the Virethorn Pack as the long-lost princess, I thought I finally had a brother.

I had clumsily researched flower meanings and learned that bluebells stood for gratitude and gentle love.

When I handed them to Thorne, he set them on a corner of the balcony without a second glance.

Later, Grace said the pollen gave her allergies.

He had the servants move them to the storage room right in front of me.

Now he was standing in my shop, clutching that dead plant, trying to sell me on sibling love.

What a joke.

“Weren’t you the one who let them die?”

A flicker of something crossed Thorne’s eyes.

“They were already dead the day you threw them away.”

His lips trembled.

“Claire…”

“Don’t call me Claire.”

I lifted my gaze to meet his.

“I am the princess of the Silvermist Pack now. You will address me as Your Highness.”

The wind chime above the door rang once.

Ella, my apprentice, pushed through with lunch in hand. She spotted Thorne blocking the counter, then noticed the shears on my table, and her guard went up instantly.

“Claire, want me to call security?”

Thorne looked like he had been slapped in public.

He clutched the dead plant to his chest and backed up two steps.

“I’ll be back.”

I pushed the trash can to his feet.

“Next time, don’t bring garbage into my shop.”