My Rejected Sister Stole My Crown

Chapter Four

Wren woke to pain and gold light.

Not the dull glow of kitchen candles. Real gold, gleaming off tall windows and marble floors, the kind of light that only touched rooms servants weren't allowed to enter.

"She's awake." The guard's voice, tight with unease.

Wren tried to sit up and failed. Her whole body ached like she'd been beaten, every muscle screaming in places she didn't know muscles existed. Her hands were human again, thank the moon, human again she said as she trembled against a cold marble floor.

"Get her up," Alpha Thoren said coldly.

Hands hauled her to her feet before she could steady herself. Wren's knees buckled, and only a guard's grip on her arm kept her from collapsing again. She blinked hard, forcing the room into focus.

The Alpha's private hall. She'd only ever seen it from a servant's angle, mopping the floors after council meetings ended, never once looking up long enough to take it in. Now she stood in the center of it, wrapped in a spare cloak someone had thrown over her, in front of two thrones and everyone in them.

Alpha Thoren stood with his arms crossed, expression unreadable. Beside him, Luna Yseult sat rigid, hands twisted so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had gone white.

And near the door, held between two guards, stood Maren.

"Maren?" Wren's voice cracked. "What's going on? Why is she…"

"Silence," Alpha Thoren said, not unkindly, but firm enough that Wren's mouth snapped shut on instinct.

He studied her for a long moment. Wren felt like an insect pinned under glass, every part of her exposed to a stare that missed nothing.

"Do you know what you did tonight?" he asked finally.

"I don't…" Wren's throat tightened. "I don't know what happened. One second I was serving wine, and the next…"

"You shifted." His voice was flat. "Fully. In front of the entire pack. A girl with no recorded pack rank, no parents of note, raised in my kitchens since infancy." He took a step closer. "Do you understand how impossible that is?"

"I don't have a wolf," Wren said, and heard how foolish it sounded even as she said it, standing there in a cloak that still smelled faintly of fur and blood. "I was told I don't have one."

"Told by whom?"

Wren's eyes went, helplessly, to Maren.

Maren flinched like she'd been struck.

"Maren." Luna Yseult's voice, quiet, cut through the room for the first time. She hadn't spoken until now, hadn't moved except to grip her own hands tighter, but something in her tone made every guard in the room straighten. "Look at me."

Maren didn't.

"Maren." The Luna rose from her throne, slow, unsteady, like her legs weren't sure they wanted to hold her. "Eighteen years ago, I gave birth to a daughter on the night of the Ember Moon. You were the only person in that room besides me. Do you remember that night?"

"Please," Maren whispered. "Please don't…"

"Do you remember it?"

"Yes." The word came out broken.

Wren's stomach dropped. Something cold crawled up her spine that had nothing to do with the shift.

"Maren, what is she talking about?" Wren's voice shook. "What does that have to do with me?"

Maren's whole body was trembling now, tears already streaking silently down her face, and for the first time in eighteen years, Wren watched the woman who had raised her look completely, utterly broken.

"Say it," Alpha Thoren said, low and dangerous. "Whatever it is you've been hiding, say it now, in front of your Luna, or I will find another way to drag it out of you."

Maren's knees gave out. The guard caught her before she hit the floor, but she didn't seem to notice, staring instead at Wren with an expression so full of guilt it didn't look like it belonged on a human face at all.

"I switched them," Maren said.

The room went silent.

"Switched what?" Wren's voice came out small.

"The babies." Maren's words tumbled out now, fast, like something dam

med up for eighteen years had finally broken loose. "Eighteen years ago. Luna Yseult gave birth the same night I did. Two girls, born hours apart, both under the Ember Moon." Her eyes squeezed shut. "I switched them. While the Luna slept. I gave her my daughter, and I took hers, and I have lied about it every single day since."

"That's not…"

Wren shook her head hard, like she could shake the words loose before they made sense. "That's not possible. You're my mother. You raised me, you…"

"I'm not your mother." Maren's voice broke completely. "I never was. I'm so sorry, Wren, I'm so sorry, I thought I was protecting you…"

"Protecting me from what?" Wren's voice cracked into something close to a scream. "By making me a servant? By letting Cyrene…"

She stopped.

The name hung in the air, and Wren watched the pieces slide into place in real time, horror rising in her chest faster than she could process it.

"Cyrene," Wren whispered.

"Is my daughter." Maren's whole body shook with the confession. "By blood. She was never yours to serve, Wren. She's the one I gave away. And you…" her voice broke apart entirely, "you were always the true heir. Draukmoor's true daughter. I stole your whole life so mine could have a crown."

Wren's ears rang. The gold light in the room seemed to tilt sideways, too bright, too loud, the way it had felt right before her bones started breaking hours ago.

"You're lying," Wren said, though even she didn't believe it as she said it.

"I wish I were." Maren was crying openly now, guards on either side of her looking anywhere but at her face. "Your wolf answered tonight because it was always yours to call. Royal blood, Wren. Draukmoor blood. Cyrene's Rite failed because she was never truly born to this pack at all."

Alpha Thoren hadn't moved this entire time, face carved from the same stone as always, but Wren caught the muscle working hard in his jaw, the way his hands had curled into fists at his sides.

"Eighteen years," he said quietly, to no one in particular. "Eighteen years, I raised another woman's child as my own, and my true daughter scrubbed my floors."

"Thoren"

Luna Yseult's voice cracked, and for the first time, tears spilled freely down her face too. She crossed the room in quick, unsteady steps, stopping just short of Wren, close enough that Wren could see every line of grief carved into her face. "Eighteen years, I felt like something was missing. I never understood why. I thought it was just grief, just exhaustion, just—" Her breath caught. "It was you. It was always you."

Wren stared at her. At the woman standing in front of her with tear-streaked cheeks and trembling hands, clearly desperate to reach out and just as clearly terrified to.

"I don't understand any of this," Wren whispered.

"You're my daughter," Luna Yseult said softly. "You are Draukmoor's true-born heir.”

The words landed like another shift tearing through her body, cracking something open that Wren didn't have a name for.

Eighteen years of burnt fingers and swallowed insults. Eighteen years of being told she wasn't wanted, wasn't worth noticing, wasn't anyone at all. Eighteen years of watching Cyrene stand in gowns and jewels that should have been hers from the very first night she was born.

"Cyrene," Wren said slowly, "is your daughter by blood?”

"By blood." Maren's voice was barely audible. "But not by right. You are, Wren. You always were."

Somewhere down the hall, a door slammed open, and Wren heard Cyrene's voice before she saw her face sharp, furious, cutting through the gold lit room like a blade.

"It's a lie!" Cyrene shoved past a guard trying to stop her, her hair still wild from the Rite, eyes blazing. "It has to be a lie, Father, tell them it's a lie"

Alpha Thoren didn't answer her. He didn't even look at her. His eyes stayed locked on Wren, studying her the way he might study a stranger who had just walked into his home wearing his own daughter's face.

Wren looked between all of them the mother who had lied to her for eighteen years, the mother who had grieved her for just as long, the father whose expression she couldn't read at all, and the girl who had made her life a misery, now screaming that none of it was real.

Everything she had ever believed about herself had just been ripped away, the same way her own skin had torn away hours earlier to reveal something underneath she hadn't known was there.