My Rejected Sister Stole My Crown

Chapter Five

"Say it isn't true!"

Cyrene's scream tore across the gold lit hall before the door had even finished swinging shut behind her. She lunged past the guard who tried to stop her and threw herself in front of Alpha Thoren, dark hair wild eyes rimmed red.

"Tell them it's a lie," she demanded. "Tell them right now, Father, tell them…"

"Cyrene." His voice was quiet. That was worse than if he'd shouted.

"You can't just stand there!"

Her hands balled into fists at her sides. "That's a servant. She scrubs floors. She burns her fingers on ovens. And you're looking at her like…" Her voice cracked. "Like she's the one who's supposed to be standing here instead of me."

Nobody answered her.

"Someone say something!" Cyrene spun toward her mother. "Mother, please, this isn't real, tell him this isn't real…"

Luna Yseult flinched at the word mother, and that single flinch said more than any answer could have. Cyrene saw it too. Wren watched her face crumble for just a second real fear, real grief before it hardened back into fury.

"You're all insane," Cyrene spat. "Eighteen years, and now some old nurse says a few words and suddenly I'm nobody?"

"Cyrene, that's enough." Alpha Thoren's voice finally sharpened, cutting through the room like a blade. "This is not how a Draukmoor heir behaves."

"I am the Draukmoor heir!"

"Not anymore," he said, and the words landed heavy and final, echoing off marble walls built for exactly this kind of silence.

Cyrene went white.

Wren, still standing in her ruined servant's dress with a stranger's cloak wrapped around her shoulders, felt sick watching it happen. She had spent eighteen years hating this girl, dreaming of a day Cyrene might finally understand what it felt like to be small. Now that day had come, and it didn't feel like victory. It felt like watching someone drown.

"Bring her clothes," Alpha Thoren said to a servant hovering near the door, not looking away from Wren. "Something fit for a Draukmoor daughter. She cannot stand before this pack looking like she still belongs in the kitchens."

"I don't want new clothes," Wren said before she could stop herself.

Every head in the room turned toward her.

"I want to understand what's happening to me," she said, voice shaking but steady enough to be heard. "I want someone to explain why I'm suddenly royalty when an hour ago I was pouring wine for people who didn't know my name."

"You will have time to understand," Alpha Thoren said. "Right now, you will dress as what you are."

"And what is that?" Wren's voice cracked. "Because I don't know anymore. Nobody's told me anything except “you're the true one” and none of that means anything to me. I grew up believing I had no wolf. I grew up believing Maren was my mother. I grew up believing…" Her throat closed. "I grew up believing I was nothing, and now you want me to just put on a gown and become someone else?"

Silence again. Even Cyrene had stopped shouting, staring at Wren now with something raw and unreadable behind her fury.

The servant returned with an armful of pale blue silk, the kind of fabric Wren had only ever touched while cleaning stains out of it. She stared at it like it might bite her.

"Put it on," Alpha Thoren said. Not cruel. Just certain, in a way that made refusal feel impossible.

Wren took the dress with hands that hadn't fully stopped shaking since the shift. A servant led her behind a folding screen at the edge of the hall, and Wren changed with numb fingers, the silk cool and strange against skin that had spent the last hour tearing itself apart and putting itself back together.

When she stepped out, the room went quiet in a different way.

She looked, for the first time in her life, like she belonged somewhere important. And she hated how much that terrified her.

"There," Alpha Thoren said. "Now you look like what you are."

"I don't feel like anything," Wren said quietly.

Cyrene laughed. It was a sharp, ugly sound, nothing like the confident laughter Wren had heard drift out of the princess's chambers a hundred times before.

"Look at her," Cyrene said, circling Wren slowly, eyes raking over the blue silk like she was searching for the seams where the lie would show through. "A kitchen girl playing dress up. You still smell like the ovens, you know. No gown is going to fix that."

"Cyrene." Luna Yseult's voice, warning.

"No, let her look." Cyrene stopped directly in front of Wren, close enough that Wren could see the exact moment cruelty replaced whatever fear had cracked through earlier. "You want to know who you are? You're nobody. You were nobody this morning, and putting a crown near your head doesn't erase eighteen years of nobody."

"Stop it," Wren said, low.

"Why?" Cyrene's smile was venom. "Does the truth hurt? Welcome to my whole life, having people decide what I am before I get a say in it."

"I never asked for this," Wren said, voice shaking harder now. "I didn't ask to be switched. I didn't ask for any of it."

"Neither did I!" Cyrene's composure finally shattered completely, voice climbing into something raw and furious. "I didn't ask to fail in front of the entire pack! I didn't ask to find out my whole life was a lie because some maid's wolf decided to show up eighteen years late! Do you have any idea what you've done to me?"

"I didn't do anything," Wren snapped back, temper finally breaking through the fear. "I didn't switch us. I didn't lie to you for eighteen years. I burned my fingers on your orders and smiled while you humiliated me and I never once asked for any of this to change."

"Then give it back," Cyrene hissed. "Give me back my title, my name, my crown!"

"I can't." Wren's voice cracked. "I don't even understand what I have yet."

"How convenient." Cyrene's eyes glittered, cold and furious. "Keep the crown, keep the name, and pretend you're innocent in all of it. That's very easy for you, isn't it?"

"None of this is easy for me!"

"Enough!" Alpha Thoren's voice cracked through the room like a whip, and both girls flinched. "This is not how Draukmoor's future will be decided. Not through screaming in my private hall."

Cyrene's chest heaved, fury and grief warring openly across her face. For one moment, Wren almost felt something close to pity for her.

Then Cyrene turned that fury directly on her one more time, voice dropping low and cold.

"This isn't over," she said. "You may wear my dress. You may stand in my hall. But you will never be Draukmoor's true daughter in my eyes. Not while I'm still breathing."

She turned and swept toward the door before anyone could stop her, guards parting quickly out of her path.

At the threshold, she paused. Didn't turn around.

"Enjoy the crown," Cyrene said quietly. "See how long you keep it."

Then she was gone, and the door slammed shut behind her hard enough to rattle the windows.

Wren stood frozen in the silence that followed, blue silk suddenly heavy on her shoulders, Alpha Thoren's unreadable stare fixed on her from across the room, Maren still sobbing quietly by the guards, and Luna Yseult watching her with an expression Wren couldn't name.

She had wanted, once, just once, for Cyrene to know what it felt like to lose everything.

She hadn't expected it to feel like this.

Somewhere down the corridor, faint but unmistakable, Wren heard the sound of something shattering against stone a vase, followed by Cyrene's voice, raw and breaking, screaming a single word into the empty hallway.

"Mine."

And Wren understood, with a cold certainty settling low in her stomach, that whatever war was starting tonight had only just begun.