Abandoned substitute Luna: The Designer Queen's Mysterious Return

Elara POV:

Three years into my marriage to Caspian, tonight is the first time I've set foot in his study. It's the only room in this vast pack mansion that I'm not allowed to enter - his territory, steeped in the musk of alpha command and old timber, a place where even the servants lower their eyes.

If it weren't for the need to find the marriage certificate required to renew the agreement that allows my mother to receive treatment in the nursing home, I likely would never have seen the document that breaks my heart.

It was a sleek black leather folder, placed right on top of the envelope that contained our marriage certificate documents. The leather was stamped with the faint howling wolf crest of his bloodline. It had no label, nothing to identify it, but it radiated a sense of dread that made the hairs on my arms stand up - a low, primal warning, the way prey scents a predator before it sees the fangs.

I should have taken my document and left. I should have closed the door and pretended I'd never been here.

But my hand moved on its own, bypassing the envelope marked " Vance-Montgomery Marriage Contract" and closing around the cold leather of the binder. My pulse roared in my ears like a panicked wolf clawing at my ribs.

I opened it.

The first page held a single word, typed in a stark, bold font.

REVENGE.

The air left my lungs in a painful rush. My vision narrowed, the word burning itself into my brain with an alpha's authority, an unbreakable command.

The page was split by a vertical line. On the left, the initials "S. S." On the right, "E. V."

My mind went blank. S. S. Seraphina Sterling. His first love, the she-wolf who rejected the mate bond and left him to pursue a career in Europe.

E. V. Elara Vance.

Me.

My hand shook so violently the page rattled. I forced my eyes to read the text below, even as a phantom ache bloomed deep in my chest - the place where a true mate bond should have been.

Left column: Three years ago today, S. S. rejected my proposal, choosing her career over our bond.

Right column: Three years ago today, proposed a mating alliance to the Vance family for E. V.

The dates matched. Perfectly.

A cramp seized my stomach, sharp and vicious. My wolf - the one I was never born with, the one I'd never feel - howled in silence inside me. I flipped the page.

Left column: S. S. always said her favorite gem was the moonstone - the stone of our kind, sacred under the full moon.

Right column: Proposal Gift: the 'Tears of the Moon' moonstone necklace for E. V.

The necklace was in my jewelry box upstairs. I had cherished it, believing it was a mating gift, a sign that his wolf had chosen me, that he truly wanted me as his Luna.

Page after page, it was the same. A meticulous, cruel ledger of his vengeance. A pack record, written not in blood but in bitterness.

Reading this, my tears finally got the better of me.

I've always known that, in terms of our circumstances, I'm simply not good enough for him. After all, I come from a poor single-parent human family, and my mother is hospitalized due to illness. His family's influence - the pureblood Montgomery pack - is beyond my reach.

If it weren't for the car accident back then, and if I hadn't dragged his massive black wolf, broken and bleeding, to the nearest healer and saved his life, we would never have met at all.

What's more, I never expected that, not long after, on Valentine's Day, he suddenly appeared at the entrance of my university, bule wolf eyes locked onto mine with feral intensity, and proposed to me. The gift he gave was a gemstone - a "Tears of the Moon" moonstone necklace, gleaming under the winter sun like captured moonlight.

Our meeting was like a fated mate legend, making me think the Moon Goddess herself had finally sent my prince charming to save me.

The truth turned out to be this cruel.

Every gift he'd ever given me. Every public compliment. Every small mercy I had clung to as a sign of hope. It was all there, a carbon copy of something he had once intended for her - his scent marking trinkets meant for another she-wolf.

The cufflinks I'd given him for his birthday, a design he'd once shown me, saying he admired it. The left column revealed he'd planned to buy the exact same pair for Seraphina - brushed silver howling wolves, a token of their shared bloodline.

This very manor, our home, the alpha's den. He had promised it to her. He had built it with her in mind, the Luna suite left empty in spirit even as I slept there.

I was not his mate. I was a placeholder. A living, breathing effigy of his bitterness. A human stand-in, a tool to show another woman precisely what she had thrown away.

I reached the last page. It was a printed photo of Seraphina, her smile brilliant, her amber wolf eyes full of life.

Beneath it, a single line of Caspian's sharp, aggressive handwriting - the scrawl of an alpha signing a death warrant.

"Everything you abandoned, I will give to the one least deserving, just to watch you realize what you lost."

The binder slipped from my numb fingers, hitting the plush carpet with a soft thud. The world tilted, the towering bookshelves seeming to lean in, ready to crush me. A low, broken whine clawed up from my chest - a sound no human should make, but grief has its own fangs.

I gripped the cold, open door of the safe to keep from falling.

The question that had always puzzled me finally got answered at this moment. Why was he so kind to me before marriage, courting me with all the intensity of a wolf claiming his mate, but became completely indifferent to me after we bonded?

When we were still dating, he said he was too busy with pack business and needed a mate who would devote herself entirely to taking care of the household - a quiet, obedient Luna to tend the den.

So, before I even graduated from college, I resolutely gave up a great internship and a promising human future to marry him and become a housewife. I let go of my world for his.

His mother, the reigning Luna, always told me that he had a stomach problem and that eating home-cooked food would settle his wolf better. After all, a nanny can never replace a mate's care. So I fired the nanny and started cooking and doing the laundry for him myself, hoping my scent on his clothes might stir his wolf's bond to me.

But gradually, the communication between us became less and less. He became increasingly indifferent - his wolf retreating until I couldn't feel even a whisper of warmth through our frayed bond. He never once called me his Luna in front of the pack.

I always thought I must have done something wrong, angered him, failed some test I didn't understand. But it turns out, I've never really entered his heart, never touched his wolf. I was never even a real mate in his eyes.

Three years.

Three years of trying. Of hoping. Of swallowing my pride and accepting his coldness, believing that one day, I could earn his affection and hear his wolf howl my name.

It all collapsed into a single, ugly joke.

And I was the punchline - the moon-cursed human who believed a predator could love her.

A choked, animalistic sound tore from my throat, something between a sob and a howl. The tears I had held back for so long finally broke free, hot and scalding against my cold skin.

Through the blur of my tears, I heard it.

The distant crunch of tires on the gravel driveway.

The low, predatory growl of his sports car engine - a sound that always made my pulse stumble between fear and longing.

The alpha was home.