Chapter 102

Louisa POV

I sat in some anonymous antechamber in the palace and basically felt like shit.

I was young, but I’d had many experiences. I’d run with the pack under a full moon. I’d attended, and excelled at, Lunaris’s top schools. I’d challenged an alpha who wouldn’t respect my space, and I won, though I spared his life. I’d been victorious and elated, defeated and despairing.

But nothing had come close to the absolute shock I felt when I watched Olivia transform into a silver wolf.

I remembered everything about that moment. I felt myself grow faint. I had fought to keep from falling to my knees. I had almost screamed at the realization that everything I thought was true about my life was wrong.

As a child, I had an odd sort of relationship with Olivia, my stepsister. I had liked her, but I had resented her. I became aware that she was going to get everything I wanted, whereas I was fated to live an ordinary life at the keep. Even if I managed to marry someone of enough status to live in the heart of Lunaris, even if I lived in the palace itself, would never be what Olivia, daughter to Moonshadow’s first female Alpha, was fated to be.

When I was fifteen and Olivia a year younger, she and I had been walking in the keep’s gardens when I got the idea we should disobey our governess and leave the grounds. We’d had fun at first running through the streets and hiding from the guards.

But then we’d gotten tired. Olivia wanted to go home, but I refused and insisted she go without me. I had some idea of having a wild adventure staying out all night. She didn’t want to leave me, but I pushed her down and ran away from her.

Not long after that, three male betas set upon me, and though I tried to run away, they took me. I knew they were Rogue wolves and thought they would kill me, or perhaps, if I were lucky, they had taken me for ransom.

But after they had carried me into the woods and tied my hands and feet, I heard them gaming for who would win the chance to “go first” with me. I screamed and begged for them to let me go. I promised them money. I promised I would kill them.

Nothing worked, and one of them laughed in triumph and came at me with a knife to cut the bindings at my ankles when a silver wolf, magnificent in the moonlight, launched herself into their midst. There was no imagining a more impressive savior, and I just knew the Moon Goddess had transformed herself into the silver wolf to save me.

With my feet free, I leapt to them and ran as fast as I could back into the city streets. I ran until my lungs ached, but I made it back to the keep.

The next day, I found out Olivia was missing. She hadn’t made it back home.

I thought I had been chosen by the Goddess. I thought I had been saved and Olivia abandoned to her doom. I took it as a sign of my superiority. I thought it meant I would have the better destiny after all.

A few days later, Olivia was returned to the keep, though it was weeks before I saw her again. When I did, she seemed lessened by her experience, made small and weak, whereas I felt great and powerful.

I had betrayed my stepsister at every turn after that, going so far as to take Damian from her. I thought it was justice that I triumph over her.

And now, now I knew that silver wolf had been Olivia. My sister had saved me, and I had left her to be taken by those men.

I hadn’t been chosen by the Goddess. I hadn’t been special. In fact, I could see now what a selfish jackal I had been, what a brat, useless and self-important.

How could I explain myself to her now? How could I ever make up for my actions?

The door to the antechamber opened, and a young servant walked in. I had made a study of Olivia’s life in the palace since her wedding, and I knew the servant’s name was Jordan.

I stood, and Jordan looked at me with impassive but unimpressed eyes. I took it as my due.

“The Luna says she can see you now.”

“Thank you,” I said.

We walked down a corridor to a small parlor, and Jordan opened the door and walked in ahead of me.

“Louisa is here, Luna.”

Though I had been learning all I could from others about Olivia’s life as Luna of Lunaris, I hadn’t seen her in months. I hadn’t expected her to be so visibly pregnant. Her stomach was round under her blue dress as she sat on a small sofa, and her face seemed to glow with health. I was glad.

“Hello, Louisa,” she said, and her voice was glacial in its politeness. Jordan quietly took a seat against the wall.

“May I sit, Luna?”

“Of course, and you should call me Olivia. We are still stepsisters, after all.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling incredibly awkward as I settled into a somewhat uncomfortable armchair. I wasn’t offered coffee, but I had expected that to be the case.

“Have you come with some sort of message from Greg?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No. Actually, I haven’t seen him in some time.”

Her eyebrows went up.

“I’m here about your wolf, your silver wolf.”

“Oh?”

“It’s about when you saved me. I didn’t know, you see. I had no idea it was you. I thought the Goddess was you, was the silver wolf, I mean.”

Olivia just watched me with a small frown.

“I cannot apologize enough about how I treated you when we were children, and especially after you were taken saving my life. I don’t expect you to tell me about that time. I know you’ve kept it to yourself for your own reasons, and I respect that. I respect you, which I know sounds impossible.”

I leaned forward in my chair. “I realize you have no reason to believe me right now, but I wanted to let you know I’m aware that Greg is plotting to resume his place in Moonshadow Pack. I’ve kept in touch with everyone, and I’ve been keeping tabs on him.

“I’ve been asking people questions about his plans, without giving myself away, of course, and I think I have learned some things you would find helpful.”

I took a moment and breathed in. I was in danger of talking gibberish if I didn’t get myself under better control. Olivia just continued to sit there.

“I could tell you some of these things, but if I did so now, well, you wouldn’t believe me, would you? How could you? So, I have been looking for people I can get to talk to you instead, people you can trust.

“I realize how impossible this must all seem to you, my talking like this when I’ve been so cruel to you in the past, but there’s nothing like finding out you owe everything to someone else to put you in your place.

“They would have raped me that night and then doubtlessly slit my throat. If you hadn’t saved me, well, I can’t even think about it. So, I just wanted to come here and say I’m going to help you all I can.

“And more than that, I just needed to thank you. Thank you so much, Olivia. For everything.”

I fell silent, and still Olivia didn’t speak. I sat there taking my punishment.

But then her frown deepened.

“Louisa,” she said. “Whatever are you talking about?”