The Discarded Luna’s Second Chance

Chapter 15

A week after Ava's birth, Weston delivered us to my parents' estate like precious cargo, his hands lingering on my waist as he helped me from the car. The sky was rinsed pale, the sort of light that pretends at peace. Ava slept in her carrier, mouth a soft seal.

Only my mother and sister were home and I mentioned how the house sounded different without my father’s steady throat-clearing.

“Elena,” Weston said smoothly, setting the carrier in her arms like he was delivering a reliquary. “I’m collecting Celeste for work. We’ll circle back before lunch.”

“Of course,” my mother cooed, already melted for her granddaughter. “My angel. Come to Grandma.”

He kissed Ava’s brow and brushed my cheek, quick and proprietary.

“Rest,” he advised. The door shut behind him.

My mother folded herself onto the sofa, whispering praise to tiny fingers and a perfect nose, the kind of adoration that was never mine.

“Look at you,” she breathed to Ava. “Absolute perfection.”

“I’m exhausted,” I said—true enough. “Mind if I lie down upstairs?”

“Go, go,” she murmured, eyes fixed on the baby. “Don’t dawdle. You have a child.”

I climbed the stairs and passed my old bedroom without stopping. My destination was next door.

Celeste’s room looked innocently sweet—pastels and lace, a vanity upholstered in powder blue, tulips posed for a private audience. No dust, soft pastels, white lace curtains, stuffed animals from childhood arranged perfectly on shelves.

The sweet sanctuary of the family's golden daughter, concealing the monster within.

I closed the door, locked it, and started with the altar: her vanity.

I searched methodically, knowing my sister's narcissism demanded documentation of her victories. She'd always kept diaries, convinced her thoughts were too precious not to preserve.

The only question was where someone certain of their own cleverness would hide them, believing no one would dare invade their sanctuary.

Top drawers first. I ran a fingertip beneath each tray. Felt caught on felt over a hard edge. A hidden notch—classic.

The base popped up to reveal a shallow cavity lined in pink suede. Three small journals lay inside, pastel covers and gold edges, a ribbon cutting through to the current page.

Exactly where someone convinced of her inviolability would store the chronicle of her crimes.

I sat and opened the first. The handwriting shifted over the years but the voice never changed.

Twelve years old and already writing a mission statement. I photographed the page. Systematic destruction. Every triumph she thinks is hers will rot in her mouth.

Beneath, a bullet list:

- Make her look unstable. Isolate.

- Turn Mother.

- Turn Weston.

- Take everything.

I photographed that, too.

Pages unspooled with clinical satisfaction. The ginger plans came with doses and timers, handwritten charts of my routines, charming the housekeeper into “organic” suppliers who mislabeled roots. Notes in the margin: allergy equals plausible deniability—practice tears. I shot those pages.

Early-pregnancy entries turned graphic: dates, locations, which office rooms, how she kept the lipstick off his collar. Her script went hungry when she wrote Weston’s name. I took enough to prove the pattern.

The last journal crackled with fresh fury.

Harper different. Colder. Learned to look back. Something changed. Why is Weston not touching me. He looks at Harper like a man who found water after a week in the desert.

I photographed her confusion and rage.

And my own archive had grown just as carefully.

Since my return, Dr. Holland had drawn blood as often as handshakes, ordered panels the pack physicians would call excessive, logged every trace of toxins that made no sense together unless someone wanted plausible deniability. She kept records duplicated and encrypted.

Evidence was the foundation, but it wasn’t the house I planned to build. Exposure alone would never satisfy me.

I went to the bathroom cabinet. Celeste’s protein powder sat where it always sat—front and center, matte container promising “purity” in tasteful lowercase.

Behind the neatly stacked gym towels waited a small unmarked bottle. I measured the next capful of diluted aconite—the old wolf’s poison—and tapped it into the tub.

Not enough to kill. Not enough to send her to a hospital. Just enough to thin her wolf at the edges, fray control until truth leaked out in rages she couldn’t recall and confessions she couldn’t bury. The perfect daughter would become volatile. Volatile people are careless. Careless people self-immolate.

The wedding would be my stage.

I saw it cleanly: vows framed in flowers, elders seated in rigid ranks, air tight with expectation. I would lay out the documentation, and then I’d let spectacle do what paper cannot. With her wolf weakened and her pride needled, she’d lash out. When she lunged, I’d catch her through my mind.

I would open the locked door of my first ending and drag her inside.

She would feel Ava turn heavy in my arms. She would take the blade across the throat. She would kneel on the tribunal tile. She would choke on every time she taught my name to mean “burden.”

I would thread it all through her until she screamed the truth, every fantasy spoken as confession. Let the pack argue afterward about what she had “really” done; the performance would be sufficient to finish her. Justice by her own mouth.

And of course, I will publicly reject Weston.

I put the powder back exactly as it had been, label rotated to the familiar angle; smoothed the towels; returned the journals; reseated the vanity tray so not even the dustless air could complain. When I unlocked the door, nothing out of place, everything was ready.

Downstairs, my mother was nose-to-nose with Ava, drunk on grandmotherhood. I kept my voice casual. “Where’s Dad?”

“In his office at the administration building,” she said, not looking up. “Kieran came personally. They’re discussing the alliance—your father is handling it, since Weston can’t seem to negotiate like an adult.” She finally glanced at me, suspicion narrowing her eyes. “Why?”

“Weston asked me to consult,” I said, letting the lie wear the truth’s shoes. “On the alliance. He thinks my approach may help.”

“Hm.” She bent back over Ava, attention snapping back like elastic. “Don’t keep them waiting. Richard’s short on patience this morning.”

The need rose so fast it stole my balance. My wolf stretched inside me, the ache sharp enough to feel holy. Logic didn’t dent it. Memory didn’t soothe it. I needed his voice in the same air as mine.

I was out the door with my bag before I realized I’d moved, crossing the short distance to the administration building on legs that felt both heavy and weightless.

The pack’s offices loomed practical and stone-faced, the lobby warm with old wood and the tang of coffee, the receptionist giving me the shortest nod in the world.

My steps softened on the runner as I took the main corridor toward the corner suite.

I stopped outside the office door and let everything in me go quiet.

Kieran’s voice carried through the heavy wood, deep and unhurried, a calm that made other men sound loud. “He will cost you money. He will cost you routes. He will cost you the next decade because he cannot imagine a world where his pride isn’t the point. He isn’t fit to lead.” A measured breath. “He especially isn’t fit to be Harper’s husband.”

“Why,” my father asked, each word measured, “do you believe he is unsuitable for her specifically?”

The pause stretched taut as wire. Need took balance, then sense, then the thin discipline I had left.

I reached for the door handle.