The Luna They Didn't Want

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2: THE MISTRESS

MAREN

The dining hall at Selene's residence smells like cedar and overpriced candles, a sign that she was indeed going all out to impress Caspian tonight. She had been chasing him for three years and no matter how badly he treated me, he never gave her the green light but she still kept digging her heels in, probably to wear him down, or manage to get him to do the one thing everyone has been waiting for him to do since the day we got mated. Maybe today would be her lucky day. Aside from that, I've been here exactly four times in three years, and every time I leave feeling like I've been picked apart by something with very good manners and lack of consideration to personal feelings, because to her, people she didn't like were her source of entertainment.

Caspian's already seated when I arrive — at the head of the table, where he should be sitting at our table, in our home, not here, eating beside me. Selene sits to his right, close enough that the space between their chairs has basically stopped existing, subtly positioning herself as the Luna of this pack, even though she doesn't have a mark or a title to support that claim.

She's wearing dark green, the color that makes her eyes look like something out of a painting, and her hair is doing that effortless thing where it is completely wavy and curly like she rolled out of bed looking like a fallen earth princess but I knew that style probably took two hours alone to make.

"Maren." She says my name like she's doing me a favor by remembering it. "You made it."

"Wouldn't miss it." I take the empty seat across from them — always across, from them and never beside my rightful husband, I did not make a comment on that or draw attention to it. I pretended I did not care about it, as I settled down. Tomi catches my eye from further down the table and gives me a look that says *I'm here, I see this too.* Small mercy.

Caspian doesn't look up from his glass, yet he spoke to me, addressing me. "Garrett told me the eastern patrol came back early."

"They did. I reassigned the route to Yusra." I say it directly to him, the way I always do — short, efficient, the version of myself that doesn't give this room anything extra to comment on. "She'll have a report by tomorrow night."

"Good." He still doesn't look at me when he says it.

Selene smiles into her wine glass. "You really do run things efficiently, Maren. It's almost like you don't need him there at all."

It's not a compliment. It's never a compliment, not from her. It's a way of pointing out something that I would not bother name.

"Someone has to," I say, pleasant as anything, and a few people down the table find something very interesting to look at on their plates.

The food arrives — too many courses yet very small portions, like the=he host did not bother to check if the guests would be satisfied. I eat what's in front of me without comment, because I learned years ago that anything I say about food in this house gets repeated back to me in some twisted version within a week.

It happens halfway through the second course.

"I just think," Selene says, to the table at large, "that it's so admirable, Maren, how you eat whatever you want. No restraint at all. Must be nice."

A beat of silence. Someone near the end of the table laughs abruptly and turned it into a cough, while everyone pretended that it was simply a cough and not a laugh to spite the Luna,

I keep eating. I don't put my fork down. I don't give her my face doing anything interesting.

"It is nice," I say. "You should try it sometime." It's not even a good comeback. It doesn't need to be. What I need is for my hand not to shake when I pick the fork back up, and it doesn't, because I've had three years of practice making sure it doesn't.

I look at Caspian. I don't know what I'm hoping for — that he'll say something, that he'll at least look uncomfortable, at the very least that I was being bullied, and I was still his mate and the bond between us rang true.

He's looking at his glass. He heard it. He's not going to say anything. He hasn't said anything in three years, and some stubborn, exhausted part of me keeps checking anyway, getting disappointed every time.

I leave before dessert. Nobody stops me. Tomi catches up to me in the hallway, jaw tight in a way that tells me he's been sitting on something through the whole meal.

"You don't have to keep going to those," he says.

"I know."

"Then why do you?"

I pull my coat tighter, even though it isn't cold yet, because some habits are about armor and not temperature. "Because the day I stop is the day she gets to say I couldn't handle it. And I am not giving her that."

Tomi doesn't argue with that. He's known me long enough to recognize when a decision isn't actually up for debate.

We're almost to the front door when one of the younger pack runners comes through it fast, breathless, scanning the hall until he finds me.

"Luna." He's young enough that his voice cracks on the word, nerves and adrenaline both. "Eastern border. Yusra found something. She says you need to come now."

"What kind of something?"

"She wouldn't say over the relay. Just that it's bad, and that it's not an accident."

I'm already moving before he finishes the sentence, Tomi falling into step beside me without needing to be asked. Behind us, somewhere in that overdecorated dining hall, my husband is still sitting at a table with a woman who just humiliated me in front of half our pack council, and he doesn't even know I've already left.