The Discarded Luna’s Second Chance

Chapter 3

They wouldn't even let me speak at my daughter's funeral.

"You’re too unstable now," Gamma James had decreed, his hand firm on my shoulder as he guided me to the back row. "We can't risk another scene, Harper. Think of what's best for the pack."

From twenty feet away, I watched Celeste approach Ava's white casket, her movements graceful even in grief.

"I keep thinking..." Celeste's voice cracked. "If only I'd walked Ava back to her grandmother myself instead… I thought Harper was right there, I thought she was watching, but I should have known better. I should have protected her."

"It's not your fault, dear," Mrs. Hayes called out, her voice thick with sympathy. "You couldn't have known Harper would abandon her post again."

Celeste shook her head, tears streaming down her perfect face.

"But I was the last one to see her alive. I held her little hand as we left the bathroom, and she was asking for her mama. If I'd just stayed with her for five more minutes—"

"Stop blaming yourself," Weston interrupted, striding to the podium to wrap his arm around my sister. "You did everything right. Some people just aren't capable of being mothers. No matter how much they pretend."

The pack murmured agreement while I stood frozen. Watching my husband comfort my sister over my daughter's casket.

When the ceremony ended, I moved forward, desperate for one last moment with Ava.

She looked wrong in white lace, too formal for a girl who lived in rainbow tutus and mud-stained sneakers. They'd styled her hair in perfect ringlets she would have destroyed within minutes.

I reached to touch her face, to fix a curl that had fallen across her forehead. Weston's hand clamped around my wrist, his grip grinding bones together.

"You don't deserve to touch her. You lost that right when you let her die."

The pack parted as he shoved me backward, their eyes tracking my stumble with the cold calculation of predators scenting weakness. No one offered a steadying hand. No one met my gaze.

By evening, they'd assembled their tribunal in the Silvercrest pack house. I sat in the center like a criminal while they circled. My parents, Celeste, Weston, his parents—all wearing identical expressions of disgust.

"Three years old," my mother spat, pacing behind me. "My granddaughter was almost four and you couldn't keep her alive for one pack gathering!"

"I was watching her, Mom. I swear I was always watching her. I only stepped away for a while because—"

"Because you were drinking," Mrs. Hayes supplied from her seat. "We all saw you stumbling around, slurring your words. Poor little Ava probably went looking for her drunk mother and fell in the lake."

"That's not what happened! Celeste took her to the bathroom, and when I came back—"

"When you came back from wherever you'd disappeared to, Ava was already dead," Weston's father interrupted. "My son deserved better than being trapped with an incompetent drunk who killed his heir!"

Celeste reached for my hand then, her touch gentle, her voice soft with that particular type of pity reserved for the irredeemably broken.

"Harper, dear, I know you loved her. But sometimes love isn't enough if someone isn't... capable. You've always struggled with responsibility, with focus. Remember when you left her in the car during that heat wave? This was just the inevitable conclusion of a pattern we all should have recognized sooner."

I jerked away from her perfect fingers, from her perfect sympathy, from her perfect lies. "I never left her in the car during a heat wave. That never happened!"

"Denial won't bring Ava back," Celeste whispered, tears glistening. "I know you want someone else to blame, but…"

Something shattered in my chest, sharp and final.

Why does nobody ever believe me? Why is it always my fault?

I dropped to my knees in front of my mother, my hands clutching at her skirt like I was five years old again, begging her to see the truth about Celeste breaking my toys and blaming me.

"Mom, please. Please believe me. Just this once, choose me… I'm your daughter too. I'm your eldest daughter, and I'm telling you I didn't leave Ava alone. I would have died trying to save her. She was everything to me. Everything!"

She looked down at me with such revulsion that I felt it in my bones. Then just pulled her skirt away from my grasping fingers, stepping back as if I might infect her with my failure.

"You destroy everything you touch, Harper. Everything. And now my granddaughter has paid the price for my mistake in giving birth to you first."

The rage came like a flash flood, drowning grief in its wake. I shot to my feet, my voice exploding across the room.

"You want to know where I was? I was upstairs finding my husband balls-deep in another woman while our daughter drowned! That's where I was! Was it my fault as well? Was it—"

Weston moved faster than lightning, his hand clamping over my mouth, fingers digging into my jaw.

"Grief has made my wife hysterical. She's become delusional, creating fantasies to cope with her guilt. I'll handle her."

"Please, don't be too harsh with her, Weston!" Celeste called after us as he dragged me toward the door. "She's clearly unwell. Losing a child, especially when you're responsible... it breaks something in a person's mind."

The moment our house door slammed behind us, Weston threw me against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.

"How dare you try to drag others into your failures? How fucking dare you?"

I laughed, the sound hollow and sharp. "I saw you. In our bed. Her legs wrapped around you while you growled about how much better she was than your pathetic mate."

His expression didn't change, didn't show surprise or guilt.

"So what? You saw me fucking someone else. Why does that matter? You were a heat accident I never wanted. You killed the only good thing that came from our union, and you want to make this about me seeking comfort elsewhere?"

"Ava was our daughter! You were supposed to protect her when I couldn't watch her every second while you—!"

The slap sent me to the floor, my vision exploding in stars. He stood over me, his presence filling the room with Alpha dominance that made my wolf whimper.

"There's no place in my bed for child killers. Find somewhere else to sleep."

The words hung between us like a blade. His voice, once soft with desire, now dripped with revulsion. So I fled, barefoot and trembling, into the suffocating darkness.

With nowhere to go, I wandered the grounds like a ghost cursed to haunt its own tragedy for more than an hour. My feet carried me unconsciously to the garden where Ava used to chase butterflies.

The roses bloomed obscenely bright in the moonlight. Their perfume hung too sweet, too thick, as if trying to mask something underneath. Then it hit me—that wrongness in the air.

Metallic. Sharp. The unmistakable cocktail of copper and iron that only means one thing. Death.

When I rounded another corner, I saw my mother lay among the white roses, her throat a ragged canyon of tissue and blood. Her eyes stared at nothing, reflecting the moon like broken mirrors.

I collapsed beside her, my knees hitting the ground hard. My hands moved without thought, checking for a pulse that couldn't exist, not with that much damage.

Blood soaked through my dress instantly, seeping warm and sticky against my skin, pooling under my fingernails, painting my palms crimson.

Then the floodlights exploded to life, blindingly bright, exposing everything.

"Mother!" Celeste's scream shattered the night.