Rejected And Reborn As The Alpha King's Luna

Chapter 12: The Ritual Preparation

POV: Thelma

I didn't sleep at all that night. How could I? Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Yvonne's satisfied smile and that horrible silver dagger. By the time dawn broke through my barred windows, I felt like a ghost of myself.

The silver lining in the room had weakened me more than I'd expected. My limbs felt heavy, my thoughts sluggish. Even worse, I could barely sense Thalia, my wolf. It was like she was trapped behind a thick wall that I couldn't break through.

Around midmorning, Elena came to visit me. She brought a breakfast tray and that same fake motherly smile she'd been wearing for twenty-three years.

"Good morning, darling," she said, setting the tray on my bedside table. "I brought your favorite - blueberry pancakes."

I stared at the food without touching it. "How long have you been planning this?"

"Planning what, sweetheart?"

"Don't." My voice came out sharper than I intended. "Don't pretend anymore, Elena. I know about the ritual. I know what you're going to do to me tonight."

Her mask slipped for just a moment, and I saw something cold and calculating flash in her eyes before the concerned mother expression returned.

"Yvonne shouldn't have told you," she said softly. "We wanted you to go into the ceremony peacefully."

"Peacefully?" I laughed bitterly. "You want me to peacefully let you steal my blood and give my power to your real daughter?"

Elena sighed and sat down on the chair across from my bed. "You have to understand, Thelma. We never meant for it to go this far. When we first took you from your parents, the plan was much simpler."

"Took me?" The word hit me like a physical blow. "You mean when you murdered them."

"Your father was a stubborn man," Elena said matter-of-factly. "We offered him a partnership. We could have ruled the territory together, combined our packs peacefully. But he refused to share the secret of the Alpha bloodline power."

I felt sick. "So you killed him for it."

"We killed him because he was going to expose us," she corrected. "We'd been planning the takeover for months. James somehow found out and threatened to warn the other packs. We had no choice."

"You always have a choice!"

Elena shook her head. "Not when survival is at stake. Your father's pack was the strongest in the region because of that bloodline power. If we couldn't have it through an alliance, we had to take it by force."

"And my mother? What was her crime?"

"Catherine tried to protect you," Elena said simply. "She fought like a wild animal when we came for you. We had to put her down."

The casual way she said it, like my mother was some rabid dog that had to be destroyed, made my blood boil. But the silver in the room sapped my strength, turning my rage into a dull, helpless ache.

"Why didn't you just kill me too? Why keep me alive?"

"Because you were just a baby. We thought we could raise you as our own, earn your loyalty. And we needed time to research the ritual. Blood magic like this is incredibly complicated and dangerous. One mistake and we could have killed you and gained nothing."

"Twenty-three years," I whispered. "You've been planning this for twenty-three years."

"Every day of your life," Elena confirmed. "Teaching you to be obedient, keeping you isolated from other packs, making sure you never learned your true heritage. It would have worked perfectly if Xavier hadn't shown up and filled your head with ideas."

I looked at her, this woman who had tucked me in at night and kissed my scraped knees and called me her daughter for over two decades. All of it had been an elaborate lie designed to keep me compliant until they were ready to destroy me.

"The engagement to Neon was part of it too, wasn't it?"

"Of course. We needed you bound to this pack, with no desire to leave or explore the world. A marriage to our strongest warrior would have accomplished that."

"And if I had gone through with it? If I'd married him and become Luna normally?"

Elena smiled, and it was the most terrifying expression I'd ever seen. "We would have let you live a few more years, maybe let you have a child or two to carry on the bloodline. Then we would have performed the ritual anyway. But you made things much more complicated with your little rebellion."

She stood up and smoothed down her skirt. "Eat your breakfast, darling. You'll need your strength for tonight. The ritual is quite... draining."

After she left, I stared at the pancakes until they went cold. My stomach was churning too much to eat anyway. Everything I'd believed about my life, every happy memory I'd thought I had, it was all poisoned now.

The hours crawled by with agonizing slowness. Various pack members came to check on me throughout the day - guards bringing meals I couldn't stomach, Elena returning with a dress for the ceremony, even Marcus stopping by to give me what I suppose was meant to be a fatherly pep talk about duty and sacrifice.

But it was the conversation I overheard in the late afternoon that nearly broke me completely. I was sitting by the window, trying to reach Thalia through the silver interference, when I heard voices in the hallway outside my door. The guards were talking to someone, and one of the voices made my blood run cold.

"How's our guest doing?" Neon asked, and I could hear the cruel amusement in his tone.

"Still breathing," one of the guards replied. "Barely. You really did a number on him."

"Good. I want him conscious for the ceremony tonight. I want him to watch what happens to his precious mate."

"Think she'll really go through with it?"

"She will if she wants him to keep all his fingers," Neon said with a laugh. "Though I might take a few toes just for fun."

They moved away, but I'd heard enough. Xavier was being tortured, and it was my fault. Because I'd tried to save him, because I'd gotten him involved in this mess, he was suffering.