The Discarded Luna’s Second Chance

Chapter 2

The french doors exploded outward under my hands, glass rattling in their frames. The screaming hit me like a physical force—raw and primal.

"Move! MOVE!" Gamma James's voice boomed across the lawn.

Pack members scattered from the lake's edge like startled birds. Through the gap in bodies, I saw him—James, knee-deep in water, hauling something small and limp against his chest.

My wolf went silent. Not quiet, mute.

The kind of nothingness that comes before the world ends.

"Get back!" Someone tried to grab my arm.

I ripped away, shoving through the wall of bodies that suddenly seemed determined to keep me from the shore. "Let me through!" My voice cracked, transformed into something feral. "That's my—"

The crowd parted, and I finally saw her. Ava. My dear baby.

In the yellow sundress I'd carefully buttoned an hour ago, the one with the little daisies she'd picked out herself this morning. Water streamed from her small mouth, her dark curls plastered to her head, and her eyes—those beautiful blue eyes she got from her father—open and fixed on nothing. Hollow.

"No…" The word came out of me wrong and broken. "No, no, no—"

I dropped to my knees beside her on the grass, my hands already moving, pressing against her tiny chest. One, two, three, four—the compressions I'd learned in pack emergency training but never thought I'd use on my own child.

"Breathe, baby. Please breathe…" My voice shattered on each word. "Mama's here. Mama's got you."

Tilt the head back. Pinch the nose. Breathe into those blue-tinged lips that had kissed me goodnight every day.

"Somebody help me!" I screamed between compressions. "Why is nobody helping?!"

They just stood there. A circle of faces—some shocked, some pitying, some already calculating what this meant for pack dynamics. Mrs. Hayes had her hand over her mouth in theatrical horror. Patricia whispered furiously to her husband.

More compressions. Her ribs felt like bird bones under my palms. "Come on, Ava. Come back to Mama."

"Harper." Weston's voice cut through my desperate counting.

I didn't look up. Couldn't stop. "Call the pack doctor! Someone call—"

"Harper, stop!"

His hand clamped down on my wrist, fingers digging into the same bruises from last night. I glimpsed him peripherally—hair messed, shirt buttoned wrong, belt buckle off-center.

"No!" I wrenched away, went back to compressions. "She needs me to—"

"Stop making a fucking scene!" His hands locked around both my wrists this time, yanking me backward so hard something popped in my shoulder.

"Let go! She needs CPR! She needs…"

The pack doctor finally pushed through the crowd, his medical bag hitting the ground as he knelt where I'd been. His hands moved over Ava with clinical efficiency—checking for pulse, examining her pupils, pressing his ear to her chest.

The silence stretched like a living thing.

"I'm sorry, Alpha Weston." Dr. Monroe's voice carried that practiced gentleness reserved for delivering devastation. "She's gone. Time of death…"

"NO!" I fought against Weston's grip, my wolf clawing to get to our pup. "Check again! You have to check again!"

The backhand came without warning. Weston's ring split my lip, blood filling my mouth as my head snapped sideways.

"WHERE WERE YOU?" His spit hit my face as he roared. "Where the fuck were you when OUR DAUGHTER WAS DROWNING?"

I spat blood onto the grass. "I was only gone for fifteen minutes…"

"You had ONE JOB!" His Alpha voice slammed into me, making my wolf cower, forcing submission into my bones. "Watch her! That's all you had to do, and you couldn't even manage that!"

"Celeste took her to the bathroom—"

His hand wrapped around my throat this time, cutting off the words. "Shut your lying mouth. You always blame others for your failures!"

"I... can't..." Black spots danced at the edges of my vision.

"Weston, please." Celeste's voice floated like silk through the violence. She stood three feet away, tears streaming down her perfect face. "This isn't helping…"

He released me then and I collapsed forward, gasping.

"Harper was..." Celeste paused, a masterpiece of reluctant accusation. "She was drinking a bit heavily tonight. Perhaps her perspective just got... confused."

"I had only two glasses of wine."

"I saw at least four," Patricia interjected quickly. "Maybe five."

"She could barely stand straight," someone else added.

"That's not true!" I crawled toward Ava's still form. "Please, just let me hold her—"

Nobody stopped me this time. I gathered her into my arms, her weight all wrong—too heavy and too light simultaneously. Water from her hair soaked through my dress. Her skin already felt cooler than it should.

"Look at her… How could you?" My mother's voice dripped with disgust. "Drunk while your daughter drowned."

"I’m not… I wasn't… Mom, please…"

"Don't." She turned away, swiping tears from her cheeks. "I can't even look at you…"

My father stood beside her, his Beta authority radiating disappointment. "This is what happens when you refuse to take responsibility, Harper. When you're too busy feeling sorry for yourself to watch your own child."

"But Celeste—"

"I tried to help," Celeste whispered, her voice breaking beautifully. "I brought her back from the bathroom and thought Harper was watching her. I was greeting the Morrison pack. If I'd known she'd abandoned Ava—" A sob cut off her words.

I pressed my face against Ava's wet hair, breathing in the fading scent of her baby shampoo mixed with lake water.

Her body grew colder against mine, her small fingers already stiffening in my grip. The yellow dress with the daisies was ruined—lake water and grass stains spreading across the fabric I'd smoothed down so carefully this morning.

The pack formed a circle around us. My mother's face twisted with revulsion. My father wouldn't even look at me.

Patricia whispered to Mrs. Hayes, their eyes bright with the thrill of witnessing tragedy. Gamma James shook his head slowly, deliberately. Even the younger pack members stared at me like I was something diseased.

Like I was a murderer.

Celeste stood beside Weston now, her hand resting on his arm in comfort I would never receive. Her tears still falling in perfect crystal drops while her green eyes watched me with sorrow and pity.

Weston towered over me, his shadow stretching across Ava's still form. His jaw clenched and unclenched, his hands fisted at his sides.

When he finally spoke, his voice carried across the silent lawn with the finality of an execution.

"You killed our daughter with your carelessness…" His words fell like an ax blade. "You killed her, Harper."