The One True Luna

Chapter 3

Ashely POV

I drove past the border, the moonstone resting in a silk-wrapped box beside me, glowing faintly like it understood the ache in my chest.

The place I was heading to wasn’t a crypt or anything grand, just a small sacred lodge nestled into the woods where fallen warriors’ stones were temporarily kept until the families decided their final resting place.

As I drove, the silence in the car passed against my ears. I turned off the radio, the music felt wrong. Laughter, wrong. Even the hum of tires on the road felt too alive for what I was carrying.

I parked at the edge of the reserve and walked the rest of the way. My boots crunched over dry leaves and gravel, and the box in my arms pulsed faintly with warmth.

When I reached the sanctuary, I knelt down, set the moonstone in the carved hollow, and whispered softly.

“You are safe now.”

My voice cracked, “I’m sorry I brought you here like this. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough to protect the name you built.”

Tears fell down my face. Not for the first time, not likely the last. They slid freely now, mourning my parents, my pride, my everything Damian had torn from me.

I stood up on my feet and walked back to the car, but the silence made everything worse. Everything unbearably hurts with it.

I drove out of the woods, hitting the road when I heard rumbling of engines I ahead of me. There were more than five cars moving in line.

The kind of sound you’d hear when an Alpha King moves.

People around began to pause. I blended into the movement, walking alongside other travelers and locals heading back toward the border towns.

Then it happened.

I wasn’t paying attention. My hand brushed someone else’s firm, warm, and electric. Something strange jolted through me. Not just sparks, not the cliché kind.

This was heat and gravity, pulling my chest towards something strange.

He turned immediately. A towering figure in black, broad-shouldered and cloaked in power and an intimidating aura. His head snapped to the side, scanning the crowd as if the touch had just summoned something primal in him.

I didn’t wait to be noticed. I had already slipped away, following the crowd while I let my heavy heart relax.

Until three minutes later, a call from Damian flashed across my phone.

I ignored it once. Then again. But on the third ring, I answered, only because my mind was spinning from the strange touch.

“What do you want?” I snapped, standing by the car.

“Where are you?” His voice was strained.

“Why? So you can throw more betrayal in my face?” I asked, opening the door.

“You need to come back. Now. You don’t understand what you have done.”

“ What I’ve done?”

“The Alpha King,” Damian hissed. “He’s looking for someone. There’s a sudden kingdom-wide notice out for a girl described exactly like you, long blonde hair, average height, wearing a silver bracelet. That’s you, Ashley!” He yelled through the phone, and I looked down at the silver bracelet on my wrist.

“He is calling off patrols, Ashley. You must have…what did you do? Did you embarrass someone? Did you…”

“I didn’t do anything!” I shouted into the phone. “I don’t even know who he is!”

The line was silent for a moment before he added darkly, “You’ve gotten everyone in trouble because you have no idea how powerful the Alpha King is. You have to come back and fix this.”

I hung up. My hands were trembling again. What was happening?

Before I even settled in the driver’s seat, another call came. Damian again. I declined it.

Then another, this time from one of the elders. I didn’t answer.

Eventually, I returned. Not to the estate, but to the edge of the town. That was a mistake.

The moment I stepped near the gate, Helen was already waiting like a vulture in Violet. She had summoned Damian, and this time her tone was cold and deliberate.

“You’ve become a danger,” she said. “To our image, to our home, to my son. It’s time Damian rejects you. Riley will be his chosen mate and will become the Luna of our pack.”

I laughed bitterly, but there was no humor. “Oh, now you are dictating who he mates with? And who becomes the Luna?”

"He already knows what’s best for him, and it’s not you. Everyone knows Riley’s always been good for him, and now that she’s back, their bond is even stronger. She’s stronger and more educated than you."

I smiled quietly. They had no idea what school I went to, how far my education reached, or the rank I once held. But they weren’t worth the explanation.

Then Damian appeared behind her, his hand wrapped around Riley’s waist, and she was wearing another piece of my jewelry, something he must have given her.

Damian walked to me with disgust, as if he had already made his decision along with his mother’s suggestion.

“I want everything back,” I said before he could utter any words. “Everything I gave you. My parents wealth, this estate, my pack, my land. You don’t deserve a drop of Duskthorn blood after this.”

He scoffed. “You think I need any of that? You were just a stepping stone, Ashley. A means to an end.”

My heart stopped.

Did Damian just say that? A man who looked wretched two years ago and begged me to believe in him?

“Take your pathetic things and get out,” he snapped. “You’ll get nothing from me. You were never strong enough to lead. You were just conveniently placed. No one in this pack would ever follow you, and the Elders will never let a weak-ass female like you rule them.”

I could barely breathe. “I gave up everything for you. Everything.”

He leaned in, voice low and cruel, “And now you have nothing.”

Then it came… the rejection. His voice tore through the bond like a blade, cutting through my soul, the mating link unraveling like threads snapping apart.

“I, Damian Blackridge, reject you as my mate.”

The pain struck instantly. Like fire through my chest. I collapsed, clutching my side as if my heart had been ripped out of my ribs.

Helen stepped aside with barely concealed satisfaction.

“Make sure she’s gone,” Riley told the guards. “The Alpha King will be here any moment. If she’s seen here, it will rub off on the rest of us.”

And so, they dragged me out like dirt under their boots.

I sat in the cold, my throat raw from the pain that seared inside.

I barely registered what just happened because my eyes blurred with the tears streaming down my face.

Why? Why was the Alpha King looking for me? What had I done?

I hadn’t even seen the Alpha King before. Was he the one my hand touched in the crowd?

How could that have meant anything?