The Substitute Luna Chapter 03

The Substitute Luna Chapter 03

But the goddess had other plans for me.

I was too weak. The healer told me there was no other choice.

“Your body can’t sustain it,” he said. “The heartbeat has already stopped.”

I was silent for a moment, then nodded.

Before Ronan and Taryn’s mating ceremony, I moved out of the pack house.

No one cared.

Jenna sent me a video. Ronan had given Taryn a platinum diamond ring. She laughed, nestling against him.

Perfect match. Everyone said so.

I was the one everyone forgot.

The night before their ceremony, I remembered my mother’s amulet was still in the old study’s safe. I went back to get it, but the door had a new lock.

Furious, I called Ronan.

Taryn answered. Smug. “Luna, it’s my birthday today. Ronan took me to see the meteor shower. We won’t be back.”

“I told him once that lovers who make wishes on shooting stars stay together forever. He remembered.”

“Sorry, I can’t send someone with a key. You’re there, and we’re not… it doesn’t feel right.”

I hung up and had someone break the door down.

The moment I stepped inside, another she-wolf’s scent hit me. My wolf grew agitated. And I saw that every trace of me was gone.

The portrait above the fireplace, once mine and Ronan’s, had been replaced by a photo of him and Taryn laughing in their youth.

My plants were thrown out. My study was now her music room.

The bedroom closet overflowed with lace and silk.

I crouched before the safe and worked the lock. The coins and documents inside were untouched. But the amulet was gone.

I knew instantly. Taryn had taken it.

Taryn had hated my mother long before I even understood what hatred was.

When we were children, my mother worked as a servant in Ronan’s household.

Taryn would smile sweetly and call herself my friend, while mocking my mother and me behind our backs.

“So what if she’s pretty? She still works for people like me.”

“Her mother’s the worst. Always smiling, like there’s something to smile about. What a filthy woman.”

Once, when my mother was walking me home, Taryn greeted her in a foreign language and cursed her with ugly words.

My mother didn’t understand. She just smiled brighter and offered her some dried fruit.

Taryn threw the fruit on the ground. “Even a stray would turn its nose up at that.”

I lunged at her, grabbing for her hair, ready to slap her, but her bodyguards got to me first. Fists rained down. My mother shielded me, taking the blow for me.

Blood pooled beneath her on the stone.

The healer said she’d been ill for a long time. She had less than three months left.

That amulet was her final gift. She’d climbed the Sacred Ridge step by step, praying to the Moon Goddess at every step, begging for my life.

I’d been sick. She swore she’d give half her lifespan if the goddess let me live.

I lived. So the goddess took her.

Taryn sneered at it all. “Superstition. She should have sold her kidney instead.”