The Alpha King’s Hidden Luna

Chapter 3: Six Months

Lyra’s POV

They both turned.

“Lyra–”

I took a step backward.

“No.”

“Lyra wait–”

“No.”

My voice cracked. The woman quickly grabbed the blanket.

“Oh my God.”

“Oh my God?” A laugh tore out of me, jagged and wrong, my throat aching around the sound. Almost broken. “You’re mentioning God?”

Caleb stood.

“Please let me explain.”

“Explain what?” My voice echoed. You want to explain…

“It isn’t what—”

“Stop.” My voice echoed against the walls of the room we’d chosen together, the paint we’d argued over, the curtains I’d hemmed myself because we couldn’t afford the tailored ones.

The woman pulled the blanket tighter around herself, unbothered, almost bored by my presence. “Can we do this later? Kind of in the middle of something.”

I stared at her. A stranger. Someone I’d never met, sitting in my bed like she belonged there, like she’d earned some kind of claim to a life I’d spent three years building.

“Who are you?”

“Does it matter?”

It didn’t, and somehow that made it worse. If she’d been someone I knew, a coworker, a friend of a friend, at least there would have been a story to untangle, a reason, however small. Instead there was only this. A stranger, proof that none of it had ever been about her specifically. It had only ever been about how little I’d mattered.

Caleb flinched. “Lyra, please, just let me talk.”

“Talk about what? About how long you’ve been lying to my face? About how many times you looked me in the eye and let me believe we were fine?” My voice climbed higher than I meant it to. “I don’t want to hear you talk. I want to understand how I missed it. Three years, Caleb. Three years of me trusting you completely.”

I looked at him. Really looked. And suddenly, I didn’t recognize him anymore. Not the curve of his mouth I used to love, not the eyes that had looked at me like I was enough for three straight years.

My stomach twisted. “How long?”

Caleb swallowed. “Six months.”

Six. Months. Something inside me shattered. I moved backward till my back hit the wall.

“Six months. Six. f*****g. Months!” I screamed.

I tried to count backward, to place six months ago on some kind of timeline. Six months ago we’d gone apple picking upstate, and he’d carried the heaviest bag the whole walk back because I complained my arms were tired. Six months ago felt like the same life as today. Apparently it hadn’t been.

Half a year of goodnight texts. Half a year of him kissing my forehead before falling asleep. Half a year of me planning a wedding around a man who had already, chosen someone else and in this trio relationship I'm the last to know.

Arrrghhh! In my mind, I was crashing glass on the wall but I stood still instead.

The woman shifted on the bed, wrapping the blanket tighter, and for a brief, disorienting second I almost laughed at how unbothered she seemed by any of this, like she was simply waiting for an inconvenient interruption to end so her afternoon could continue.

“Say something,” Caleb whispered.

“I wasted my life.”

“Lyra—”

“You don’t get to say my name like that anymore,” I said, my voice quieter now, though it shook less than I expected. “Like it still means something to you.”

He had no answer for that. Of course he didn’t.

“Get out of my apartment.” My voice now steadier than I felt.

“Lyra, can we just talk about this like adults?” Caleb reached for his shirt from the floor, pulling it on like modesty mattered now, after everything.

“We’re not doing this.” I shook my head slowly. “There’s no version of this conversation where you get to explain your way back into anything.”

The woman raised an eyebrow, unbothered. “Technically it’s his apartment too.”

“Fine.” I laughed, and it came out sharper than I meant it to. “Keep it. Keep all of it. I hope the two of you are very happy picking out throw pillows together.”

“Lyra, that’s not fair,” Caleb said quietly.

“Fair?” I turned on him, something hot and furious finally breaking through the numbness. “You want to talk to me about fair? I spent this morning debating over a watch strap because I wanted today to be perfect for you. I have spent three years being fair to you, Caleb. I am done being fair.”

I threw my head back and let out an hysterical laugh.

“Okay.”

Caleb frowned. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” I glanced around the room one last time, at the life we’d built inside it, furniture chosen together, arguments settled together, all of it suddenly belonging to strangers. “I don’t want any of it. The apartment or the f*****g ring you haven’t got the decency to buy yet. None of it.”

I walked toward the bedroom door, then stopped. Turned. I wanted him to see my face when I said it, wanted him to carry the image the same way I would carry this room for the rest of my life.

“You know what’s funny?”

Neither answered.

“My aunt used to say monsters wear familiar faces.” “I guess she was right.”

I walked out, my legs carrying me through the living room, past his jacket on the couch, past the gift bag still lying where it had fallen.

The watch strap I'd spent an hour choosing. The one I'd imagined his face lighting up over. It was still inside, untouched, unwanted. Just like everything else I'd given him.

I didn’t stop to pick it up.

The hallway outside felt colder than it had any right to be. I braced one hand against the wall, waiting for my legs to remember how to hold me up properly, waiting for the strange, ringing in my ears to fade.

The engagement I’d spent all week dreaming about was gone before the day had even properly begun.