Rise Of The Warrior Luna

Chapter 4

FREYA

Max insists on driving me home, saying I'm in no state to be behind the wheel and honestly, I don't have the energy to argue.

The drive is quiet, heavy with unspoken words. When we pull up to the house, I notice the guards at their posts, the lights on inside. The house is never truly empty, there are always omegas moving about, maintaining the Alpha's residence.

I step out of the car, each step heavy as I approach the house, feeling drained.

“Luna,” the guards bow as I approach, one of them holding the door open and I wave and force a smile at them but the interaction leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

I don’t feel like a Luna. The title feels more like a costume I’m about to take off.

I step into the house and I freeze at the sight that welcomes me.

Martin is sitting on my couch. My couch. The one Eli and I picked out together in the early days of our marriage when I still believed we'd build a life here.

The boy has a coloring book spread across the coffee table, his little legs swinging back and forth as he hums to himself, completely at ease.

Like he belongs here. Maybe he does…..Eli did ask me to prepare him a room.

My heart stutters painfully in my chest, each beat feeling like shards of glass grinding against bone.

“Come over here baby, food’s ready.”

I hear Victoria’s voice before I see her and my breath catches, my heart pounding in a frenzy.

She emerges from the kitchen, wearing an apron— my apron. Her face flushed and glistened with sweat. She's carrying a plate of food, steam still rising from it.

She freezes when she sees me, her eyes going wide.

The sight of her in my kitchen, wearing my apron, cooking in my home sends ice and needles through my veins. It feels like I've swallowed liquid silver, burning, poisonous, spreading through every part of me until I can barely breathe.

There are omegas in this house. At least four of them who could have prepared a meal for her child at a moment's notice. But she chose to do it herself.

She's marking her territory. Showing everyone…the omegas, the guards and especially me that she's not a guest. That she belongs here in a way I never truly have.

"L-Luna Freya," she stammers, setting the plate down quickly, her hands trembling as she reaches up to remove the apron. "I—I'm so sorry for intruding. I didn't—I didn't know what else to do. Martin was hungry."

Her voice wavers, small and frightened, like a cornered animal, a prey dragged to its predator’s lair but she is no prey….if she was truly scared of me, she wouldn’t even dare come to my house, not to talk about cooking in my kitchen.

I stand frozen in the doorway, my chest aching with a pain so deep it feels like someone has reached inside and hollowed me out. This is my home. The one place that was supposed to be mine and Eli's. And now she's here, moving through my kitchen, feeding her child on my couch, wearing my things.

"What are you doing here?" My voice comes out quiet, barely more than a whisper, but it carries the weight of every ounce of pain I'm holding inside.

Victoria flinches, her whole body going rigid. "I— Martin needed his medication and I couldn't— I couldn't find Eli and I didn't know where else to go and I'm so sorry, I know I shouldn't be here but—"

Her words tumble over each other, tears pooling in her eyes, her hands clutching the apron she's pulled off. She's shaking now, trembling like she's truly terrified of me, like my mere presence is a threat.

But I don't feel powerful. I feel like I'm disappearing.

I watch her shrink and cower and all I feel is a really deep exhaustion. This is how it happens. She's squeezing her way in, making herself indispensable, making herself at home.

And Eli is letting her.

First it was residence papers. Then it was introducing their son. Now she's in our home, cooking in our kitchen, settling into the spaces I've tried so hard to fill for five years.

And where is Eli? Not here. Never here when I need him.

"Why didn't you tell him?" The question leaves my lips, quiet but clear.

Victoria blinks, confusion crossing her tear-streaked face. "Tell who—?"

"Eli," I say, my eyes fixed on her even as my heart throbs with a dull, relentless ache. "When you first found out you were pregnant. Why didn't you tell him about his child then?"

Her face drains of color and she opens her mouth, then closes it, struggling for words. "I— I told you, I didn't want to complicate—"

Didn’t want to complicate things for us…. I complete her statement in my head and zone off, wishing she complicated things back then instead of now.

That would have been right after he claimed me, when the mate bond had just snapped into place and I was still mourning the life I'd planned. When I didn't love Eli yet, when loving him was something I was still learning, still forcing myself into because fate demanded it.

It would have been easier for me to just walk away because I still had choices, I could have had a different life. One that I actually wanted, instead of one I was fated to live. One chosen by my heart rather than by duty and bond.

One with...

My eyes drift to where Max stands just behind me, quiet and steady like he's always been.

One with my secret crush.

The thought surfaces like something from a dream, hazy and distant but still capable of causing pain. That feels like a lifetime ago now. Before I became Luna. Before I learned to love a man who would never love me back. Before I traded everything I wanted for everything I was supposed to want.

"Luna, please," Victoria's voice cracks, pulling me back to the present.

When I turn to look at her, she's sobbing, but there's a deep trembling to it, a fear that seems to radiate from her very core. Her eyes are wide, her breathing shallow and quick, like she's genuinely afraid of what I might do.

"I didn't mean to— I never wanted to hurt you. I just— my son needs help and I didn't know what to do and—"

She's crying in earnest now, her sobs filling the room, and I know how this looks. How it must appear to anyone watching.

Me, standing here cold and unmoved while she falls apart.

I feel so tired. Too tired to explain myself. Too tired to defend my own pain. Too tired for any of this.

I turn away from her, needing to escape, to find somewhere in this house that doesn't feel invaded, when I hear Eli's cold voice behind me.

"What's going on here?"