No Longer Your Luna

Chapter Six— The Luna's Assessment

Lena's POV

The formal dining room was quiet except for the soft clink of silverware.

Just three of them tonight. Damien at the head of the table. Victoria beside him in a dress that probably cost more than everything I owned combined. Klein across from them, looking uncomfortable in the way Betas do when they're watching something they can't stop.

I had been serving them for the past twenty minutes. Water. Wine. Small plates that Cook had spent all morning preparing. The kind of work that required me to be present and invisible at the same time.

I was very good at being invisible.

Until Victoria decided I wasn't.

"More wine," she said, not looking at me. Just holding out her glass like I was furniture that could move.

I came around the table with the bottle. Poured carefully. Steady hand. No spills.

"Actually," Victoria said, turning to look at me for the first time. Her smile was sharp. "On second thought, send someone else. Someone who doesn't smell like the kitchen when they're in the dining room."

Klein shifted uncomfortably.

Damien didn't react at all. Just kept eating.

"I apologize," I said quietly. "I'll change before the next course."

"It's not about changing," Victoria said, her voice carrying that particular tone of someone enjoying themselves. "It's about basic standards. The future Luna shouldn't have to sit across from someone who looks like they crawled out of a drain." She tilted her head, studying me like I was something she had found on the bottom of her shoe. "Tell me, Lena, do you own anything that doesn't have a stain on it? Anything at all?"

The words hung in the air.

I looked down at my uniform. It was clean. Pressed. There were no visible stains.

But I understood what she was doing. She was establishing hierarchy. Making sure I understood my place. Making sure everyone at this table, especially Damien, saw me as less than.

"I have other uniforms," I said simply.

"I'm sure you do." She lifted her wine glass. "All equally tragic, I imagine." She turned to Damien like I wasn't standing three feet away. "We really should discuss dress code standards for the household staff. It's embarrassing having people like this at formal events."

Damien set down his fork slowly.

He turned to look at Victoria. Then after a pause so long it became its own answer, he looked at me.

For the first time all evening his eyes found mine directly.

And what I saw there was nothing.

Not anger. Not sympathy. Not even recognition.

Just a man deciding whether I was worth the effort of defending.

Then he turned back to Victoria.

"She's right," he said quietly. "You do look out of place here."

The words landed like a stone dropped in still water.

My chest tightened. Actually tightened, like someone had reached in and squeezed.

Klein's expression shifted. Not quite shock. More like watching someone you thought you knew do something you didn't think them capable of.

Victoria smiled. The smile of a woman who had just won something.

"You don't have the right to speak to me," she said sharply, suddenly noticing I was still standing there. "You're staff. You should have left already."

I should have left.

Every instinct told me to bow and retreat and hide in the kitchen where I belonged. That was the smart play. That was survival.

But I was tired.

Tired of being invisible. Tired of being described like something scraped off a boot. Tired of standing in rooms while people decided my worth without asking.

"You know what?" I said. My voice came out steady but there was an edge to it now. An edge I didn't know I had. "I actually do have the right. Because unlike you, I earned everything I have." I looked directly at her. "You were born into it. I work sixty-hour weeks scrubbing pots to keep my mother alive. So yeah, I smell like grease. Yeah, my hands are rough. But at least I'm real."

Victoria's face went red.

"You can't talk to me like that—"

"I just did," I said simply. I looked at Damien. At Klein. Then back at Victoria. "And I'm done pretending to be grateful for the privilege of serving people who think they're better than me because they were born lucky."

I removed my apron slowly. Set it on the chair.

"Cook can finish service," I said.

I walked toward the door.

"Lena." Damien's voice cut across the room. Sharp. Command in it.

I stopped. But I didn't turn around.

"Don't ever speak to the future Luna like that again," he said quietly.

His support of Victoria was ice cold.

But what hurt more was that it was automatic. No hesitation. No consideration. Just immediate, reflexive alignment with her over me.

And I understood in that moment what I had been refusing to understand all week.

He had known the bond was real. He had paid to erase it anyway. And now he was making sure I understood that I meant so little to him that he would side with his Luna-to-be without a second thought.

I wasn't even worth a pause.

I walked out of the dining room without looking back.

The door swung shut behind me and I made it exactly four steps down the corridor before I had to stop.

My hands were shaking.

Actually shaking. My whole body was shaking.

I pressed my back against the wall and closed my eyes and let myself feel it for just a moment, the full weight of what had just happened.

"Lena," Kira said softly.

"I know," I whispered.

And I did know. I knew exactly what I had just done. I had spoken back to someone ranked far above me. I had defied a Luna-to-be. I had broken about a hundred unspoken rules that kept people like me invisible and safe in this pack.

But worse than that, I had shown Damien Stone exactly who I was.

I opened my eyes and straightened my spine and walked toward the kitchen.

Cook was waiting. One look at my face and she knew.

"What happened," she said.

"I'm done," I said quietly. "I'm leaving this pack."

She started to argue but I held up my hand.

"Not yet," I said. "But soon. Very soon."

And as I said it, something cold and certain settled into my bones.

It was time to stop being invisible.

It was time to become someone he couldn't ignore.