The Alpha's Shadow Luna

Chapter 1

I told myself I was ready. I'd rehearsed my approach in the mirror that morning, practiced a smile that didn't look like it had been ironed flat, whispered reassurances to my reflection that tonight would be different. I stared into my blue eyes as I carefully put a clip in my caramel-colored hair. I had to look perfect. This time I wouldn’t become invisible. By the time I made it to the threshold, my palms were slick and my mouth dry. My wolf paced restlessly beneath my skin, sensing my unease, feeding it back to me in waves of nervous energy I couldn't shake.

Half the pack was already inside, sharing benches or staking territory near the hearths. In human form, we all looked more vulnerable, bare arms, lean and muscular, with wolfish glints in the eye you only saw if you knew where to look. I paused, scanning the crowd for Shane.

He was exactly where I expected: sitting alone at the long bench beneath the antler chandelier, elbows braced against the scarred tabletop, eyes trained on something in the embers. He looked like he belonged in a mural—imposing, backlit, even the way his jaw set as he sipped at his mug seemed perfectly arranged. His brown hair fluttered from the fan, and I watched as his hazel eyes looked around the room. He didn’t notice me, and my heart sank, already feeling defeated. His eyes used to find me easily. Now I felt like I had to make a scene to get him to look my way.

Go, I told myself. Just go. This was ridiculous. He was my fiance after all, so why was it like this with him? Why did approaching him feel like walking toward my own execution? Why did every step make my chest constrict tighter, until breathing felt like dragging glass through my lungs?

I walked with more certainty than I felt, weaving between knots of packmates. A few nodded my way, a couple younger wolves eyeing me with knowing smiles that made my stomach twist. Did they see it, too? The way I was unraveling? The way I'd started shrinking around him, making myself smaller and smaller, hoping that somehow less of me would be easier to love?

Shane's gaze lifted when my shadow fell across the bench. I saw a flicker of something … annoyance, maybe, or was it dread?—before he schooled it into the easy, confident smile he reserved for pack functions and political dinners. The smile that never reached the green depths of his eyes anymore. At least, not for me.

“Hey,” I said, and cursed the catch in my voice.

“Hey yourself.” He slid over, making space for me on the bench. “You’re late. I was about to send a search party.”

"I had to help Anton with the inventory," I lied, using my brother to hide the truth. The real reason I was late was because I'd stood outside for fifteen minutes, trying to convince myself that tonight mattered, that I still mattered to him. "You know how he gets."

He laughed, but it was automatic, a sound he manufactured for effect. “Always the good sister.”

That stung more than it should have, the words landing like a blade between my ribs. Good sister. Never good girlfriend or fiance. Never the one I want. Just... good sister. Dutiful. Reliable. Forgettable. I buried the hurt by reaching for the drinks lined up at the bar, my hands shaking slightly as I shoved the heavy glass toward him. It sloshed, spilling a little foam onto his thumb.

Shane's eyes flicked to it, then to my hand, and something like irritation crossed his features before he wiped the spill with the edge of his sleeve. "Trying to get me drunk before the big hunt?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," I shot back, the old rhythm of our banter trying to resurface, desperate and clinging. It died as soon as it landed, suffocated by the weight of everything unsaid between us. There was a pause, just long enough for my nerves to creep in and start colonizing the silence, filling it with all my fears and doubts.

He doesn't want you here. He wishes you'd leave. He's counting the seconds until Mary arrives.

I tried again, hating myself for trying, for always trying when he'd stopped months ago. "Did you see the signups? They want us splitting into teams." I hated how eager I sounded, like a kid at her first council meeting, like someone pathetically grateful for scraps of attention.

"Yeah, I saw." Shane's eyes drifted over my shoulder, toward the far wall where the senior warriors clustered, already deep in some heated debate. Anywhere but me. Always anywhere but me. He was engaged to me so it had to mean that he loved me. He could have chosen anyone. I don’t know why he has seemed colder to me lately. Maybe I am being too demanding?

"They're keeping the formation tight this year. No solo runs." I was laying on the hint that I wanted to be on his team, practically begging for the invitation that should have been automatic. I was his girlfriend. We should have been a unit. But instead, I found myself fishing for reassurance like someone drowning in shallow water, gasping for air that was right there but somehow always out of reach. "Maybe they don't want a repeat of last year's... incident."

He shrugged, but didn't disagree. Didn't invite me. Didn't even acknowledge the unspoken question hanging between us. Instead, he pivoted, smooth as always, to a safer subject. "Mary's running logistics, so you know it'll be efficient. Probably overkill, but nobody does overkill like your sister."

Of course. Of course he'd bring up Mary. He always did eventually. My sister, the golden wolf, the strategist, the one everyone wanted. The one he wanted, even if he wouldn't admit it. Even if he kept pretending I was enough. But then why get engaged to me? I was losing my mind here.

I forced a laugh as I tried to act normal. "Don't let her hear you say that."

His mouth twitched in what might have been a real smile, but his eyes kept flickering away, back to the elders, the warriors, the door, the windows—the whole world, except me. It was starting to feel deliberate. No, it was deliberate. I'd stopped being someone he wanted to look at, and the realization carved through me like claws through flesh.

I shifted on the bench, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and searched for something, anything, that could anchor us together for more than two sentences. That could make him remember why he'd chosen me in the first place, before the regret set in.

"Are you nervous?" I asked finally, lowering my voice so only he could hear, trying for intimacy in a relationship that had become all surface. "About tomorrow?" He was the pack’s Beta and I knew he had a lot of pressure on himself to win. Especially since my brother wouldn’t be participating in the hunt this year. My brother was the Alpha of the pack but ever since he lost his mate he has kept to himself. He buries himself in his work and why he suffocates in his pain.

Shane tilted his head as if considering it, then shook it off. "No. Just another hunt. We've done this a hundred times." He said it with confidence, but I noticed how his hands had started up with the drumming again, faster now, more agitated.

I studied the curve of his knuckles, the way the old scar near his thumb paled and pinked with every tap. I knew that scar. I'd traced it a thousand times in the early days, back when he used to pull me close and tell me his secrets in the dark. Back when I was someone he confided in instead of someone he tolerated.

"You don't have to pretend with me," I said, and the words came out softer than I intended, almost pleading. Please. Please just let me in. Please remember that I'm here. That I love you. That I'd do anything—

He froze, the tapping halting mid-beat. For a second, I thought I'd finally broken through, that he'd drop the act and let me in, that we could salvage something from the wreckage of whatever this had become. But then he looked up, straight at me, and I realized he'd built walls behind those eyes so high I could barely see the sky. Walls specifically designed to keep me out.

"I'm not pretending," he said, tone flat and cold enough to freeze blood. "It's just a hunt, Leah."

Just a hunt. Just a conversation. Just a relationship. Just ... nothing.