Chapter 3
When I returned to the ward, Alpha Charles was standing at the door.
He frowned at me, then sneered. "What? Not playing the helpless act anymore? You look fine. Just gave birth to an Alpha pup and already strolling around? Don’t you need to observe post-lunar recovery?"
He stepped closer, voice cold and cruel. "I’ve decided Thalia will move into the estate. She’s young, delicate, and doesn’t know how to keep house. Since you’re out of the infirmary, you can be her personal maid."
Then he leaned in, breath hot against my ear. "Watching you in pain... is the best aphrodisiac I’ve ever had."
He shoved me against the cold wall. The reek of disinfectant and his amber cologne twisted in my stomach.
"Don’t forget," he hissed, "your grandmother’s ashes are still in the stasis vault. You’ll clean up the master bedroom for Thalia. She wants the moonstone bed. You can sleep in the storage room."
He stared at me, hunting for shame or collapse in my face.
"You don’t feel humiliated?" Chloe growled from deep inside me.
"He mocks you, violates you, and waits for you to break. Why haven’t you torn him apart yet?"
"Because he isn’t worth it," I answered silently.
"And how much longer will you endure? Until he breaks your body or your mind? Or until I’m lost in your soulfire completely?"
I stayed quiet.
He turned to a passing young nurse.
"Is it a boy or girl? Bring the brat here. I want a look."
The nurse flinched, panicked.
"Timothy took the pup," I said flatly.
Charles was about to speak again when his communicator buzzed. He answered, face turning pale.
In the next second, he slapped me hard across the face.
"Rachel! What did you do to Thalia?! If anything happens to her, I swear I—"
"Alpha Charles!" the nurse shouted, rushing in with bloodied gauze in hand. "Luna’s sutures aren’t even done! That strike just—"
"None of your damn business!" he snarled, backhanding her. Blood welled from her cheek where his diamond cufflink tore her skin. "Speak again, and I’ll send you to the silver mines for life!"
He stormed off without even a backward glance, every thought consumed by Thalia.
The nurse looked at me with sympathy, but I felt nothing. My face was pale, expression blank.
Eight years of torment had drained me dry. I had no emotions left.
The Pack doctor gave me a brief check and ordered complete rest.
It was only then that I understood why Charles was so furious.
The child was gone. Timothy, in anguish, had issued a Silver Edict—the highest level of internal execution order—against Thalia. Only traitors to the Alpha law receive such fate.
But Thalia assumed I orchestrated it and fed lies to Charles.
So he struck me.
"She lies, he believes. You bleed, he accuses. Chloe scoffed.
"You hurt, and he protects her. He is no Alpha. He never was."
"He never was," I echoed softly.
But that wasn’t the end.
Soon after, Charles stripped me of my Lunar Contract and transferred my inheritance rights in the Moonlit Gold Mine directly to Thalia.
To please her, he even renamed the entire mine in her honor and engraved her name into the Moonstone Pillar as the “new Luna.”
During a media interview, Thalia flaunted the glowing Alpha signet ring on her finger.
"I never felt like a mistress," she said, winking at the camera. The moonstone earrings she wore had been my birthday gift—the one Charles had "forgotten" to give.
"They say she had to read 'How to Please an Alpha' on her wedding night. Pathetic, isn’t it?"
"But me? I love Alpha Charles with all my heart."
I watched her live interview while holding the golden locket Charles gave me on my eighteenth birthday—now locked in tweezers, pried open, revealing his mother’s final message: "Never trust a golden-eyed Alpha."
His tricks hadn’t changed in all these years.
When I was eighteen, newly awakened, Chloe had sung in perfect harmony with my soul for the first time. That night, I saw Charles in a crowd.
And I knew—he was my fated mate.
He felt the pull too, came straight to me and took my hand.
He knew I came from nothing, had never had a real birthday. That year, he gave me eighteen gifts: one for every year I’d been alive, from a baby’s locket to a cottage in my name.
He said it was to make up for the life I never had.
I still remember him under the starlit sky, lifting my hand and whispering:
"Rachel, I lost my parents young. Timothy raised me. I know what it’s like to have no one. From now on, your grandmother is my grandmother. We’ll build a Pack together—a new legacy of our own."
I had believed him.
"He sold you a dream." Chloe’s voice was calm now, not angry, just bitter.
"You forgot the one rule of the Moon: a true Alpha never pledges beneath the stars only to kiss another she-wolf at dawn."
"I thought I was different," I whispered.
But as time passed and the novelty wore off...
