The Substitute Queen 👑

The hall had been busy since before sunrise, but Celeste had been up longer than that. She'd spent the whole morning on her knees in the ballroom, steaming the wrinkles out of the carpet by hand because the machine had jammed twice and nobody bothered sending for another one. Nobody sent for her for much of anything, if she was honest. She wasn't really a daughter in that house and wasn't really staff either, just whoever showed up when something needed doing. She was still up on a chair fixing a garland when Sallyn, her best friend and confidant came tearing down the hallway, and one look at her face told Celeste this wasn't about a broken steamer. "Celeste. You need to come. Now." "What happened?" "I don't know exactly, but it's bad. The Luna's screaming. I've never heard her scream like that." They ran. By the time they reached the private wing, Celeste could hear the Luna’s voice and it was not the composed, controlled voice Celeste had known her whole life, but something raw and frustrated. The bedroom door was wide open. The Luna was on the floor, back against the bed, one hand pressed so hard against her chest it looked like she was trying to calm her rapidly beating heart . Varrick stood a few feet away, not touching her, not kneeling down, just staring at the empty closet like it had personally betrayed him. A letter laid flat in front of the Luna, like it had fallen down from her hands out of shock. The closet behind them stood empty. Hangers are still swaying. Drawers pulled open and left that way, like whoever packed them had been in too much of a hurry to care. "Luna…" Celeste dropped down near her. "What happened, where's Seraphine?…" The Luna just shook her head, over and over, mouth working without sound. It was Varrick who finally spoke, and his voice wasn't like anything Celeste had ever heard from him either , low, flat, the voice of a man forcing himself to stay upright. "She's gone. Ran off. Left a letter." Celeste reached for it before she'd decided to. Her hands weren't steady when she picked it up. Dear Mom and Dad I'm so sorry. I couldn't marry a man I don't love, not when I've found my mate and I'm carrying his child. Please don't come looking for us. Please forgive me, someday, if you can. She read it once and didn't believe it. Read it again and felt something drop straight through her stomach. "She's …pregnant?" Celeste's voice came out smaller than she meant it to. "Today? She left today?" "The king's convoy is already on the road." Varrick's jaw worked. "Hours out. You understand what this does to us if it gets out ,the treaty, the alliance, every pack watching to see if our word means anything at all." "No one else knows?" Celeste looked between them. "No one." The Luna's voice cracked on the word, but her eyes had already started to clear, already started doing something colder than grief. "And no one will. Not the guards. Not the staff. This does not leave this room." Sallyn, hovering by the door, nodded fast, arms wrapped tight around herself. Varrick crossed the room slowly, and for the first time all morning he looked directly at Celeste ,really looked, the way he almost never did. "Celeste." "Yes, Alpha." "Sit down." She didn't sit. Something in his tone made her stay exactly where she was. "There is a way through this," he said carefully, like a man choosing each word before he let it out. "But it requires something of you. Something I would not ask if there were any other way." "Ask what?" He glanced at the Luna, who gave him the smallest nod, and then back at Celeste. "The wedding happens today. It has to. Four packs are already on their way to witness it, and if it doesn't happen, this family's word is worthless from this day forward , every treaty we've built, every alliance, gone in a single afternoon." "I don't understand what that has to do with me." "You'll stand in for her," Varrick said. "Just through the ceremony. The veil stays down , it's tradition, no one will question it. The king has never met her in person. Only photographs, and those from a distance." Celeste actually laughed, short and disbelieving. "You want me to marry the king. Pretending to be Seraphine. Do you think he's stupid?" Neither of them answered right away. Varrick and the Luna traded a look ,quick, wordless, the kind of look people share when they've already discussed the thing they're about to say and are only waiting to see who says it first. "Only until the vows are done," the Luna said finally. "After that, we explain everything, quietly, once there's no ceremony left to fall apart in front of every alpha in the room." "I look nothing like her. She's taller than me, her hair is blonde, my whole face is different…" "None of that matters under a veil, and you know it." Varrick's voice hardened, the persuasion in it starting to thin. "Celeste. I am asking you as your Alpha. This family raised you when it owed you nothing. Fed you. Housed you. This is one afternoon of your life, and it could save everything the rest of us have spent decades building." "I won't lie to a king in front of his own court." "You will." It was the Luna who said it this time, quiet now instead of sharp, which was somehow worse. "Or has twenty-one years under this roof meant nothing to you at all." Celeste felt that land exactly where it was meant to. She looked at Sallyn, who looked back at her like she didn't know whether to apologize or cry. Then at Varrick, who wasn't looking away this time, waiting. Then at the dress laid across the ruined bed , White, the same shade as the Curtains she'd spent all morning fixing and decorating. Her chest was too tight to argue anymore. "Sallyn comes with me," she said finally. "To the palace. I'm not doing this alone." Varrick's jaw tightened, but he nodded. The Luna didn't argue either. Three hours later, Celeste stood at the end of a gold aisle in a dress that wasn't hers, veil down, hands shaking, about to marry a king she'd only ever seen in photographs, under a name that wasn't hers either.