Two Alphas, One Luna

Chapter 4 – Mother’s Silence

By the time I make it to my mother’s apartment, my head is a snarl of alpha voices and old ghosts.

The building is the same dull concrete shoebox it’s always been, wedged above a laundromat that never closes. The hallway smells like detergent, takeout, and too many human lives stacked too close. It should be comforting. Neutral.

It isn’t.

I unlock the door and step into warmth and the faint spice of wolf.

Lirenne is at the tiny kitchen table, two plates already set, steam curling from a pot on the stove. Her dark hair is braided back, streaks of silver catching the yellow light. She doesn’t look surprised to see me.

That’s my first warning.

“You’re late,” she says, but there’s no real bite to it. “Sit. Eat.”

My wolf wants to pace. I drop my bag by the door and do as I’m told, because arguing with my mother on an empty stomach has never ended well. She ladles stew into my bowl with quick, efficient movements, like feeding me is a battle she still knows how to win.

“How bad?” she asks, without looking up.

“Define ‘bad.’” I grip the spoon. My hands are still trembling.

Her jaw flexes. “You smell like both territories and three kinds of fear. I’m not an i***t, Seryn.”

Of course she isn’t.

“There was a border incident,” I say. “Forest patrol. City patrol. Fenrik nearly lost his throat. Corren showed up. So did their alpha.”

“And you.”

“And me,” I admit.

She finally meets my gaze. Her eyes are a pale, faded gold, like old honey. Tonight they look older than I’ve ever seen them.

“Did he touch you?” she asks.

My spoon clinks against the bowl. “Which he?”

Her silence answers for her. Not Corren.

I force the words out. “No. He didn’t have to.” I swallow. “I felt him. Like a… like a moonrise under my skin. And Corren—”

My voice breaks. I look away, staring at the crack in the wall above the sink.

“And Corren?” she presses, softer.

“And it was the same,” I whisper. “The same pull. To both of them.”

The room goes quiet, but not empty. It fills with memories I don’t actually have: whispered fights behind closed doors, names spoken like curses, the muffled thud of something breaking.

My mother’s chair scrapes back. She crosses to the counter, bracing her hands on the edge like she might float away if she lets go.

“I told them this would happen,” she says. Her voice has edges I don’t recognize. “I told them if they buried it instead of fixing it, it would come back worse.”

“Buried what?” I demand. “Fix what?”

She doesn’t answer.

Something in me snaps.

“No more riddles, Mom.” The word feels too small for the woman who once dragged me under a kitchen table during a power outage and told me stories about wolves that never made the storybooks. “You knew. Didn’t you? About me. About… this.”

Her shoulders tense.

“You were always… sensitive,” she says carefully. “Too much moon. Too much of everything. I thought if we stayed out of the packs, if I kept you between territories, it would stay quiet.”

“Quiet?” I laugh, sharp and ugly. “You mean suppressed. You drugged my nature and hoped it would die.”

Her head snaps around, eyes flashing. “I did what I had to do to keep you alive.”

“From what?” My fists curl on the table. “From them? From the elders? From him?”

The last word is a blade. We both hear it.

My father is a ghost made of conflicting stories: hero, fool, traitor, dead. I’ve never even had a photo. Just a name—Garric—and the ache of an absence no one would explain.

Lirenne’s throat works. For a heartbeat, I think she’ll deflect, like always. Tell me he died before I was born. Tell me he was “complicated.”

Instead she sags into the chair opposite me, steepling her fingers against her lips.

“Your father stood in a circle once,” she says. “Between city and forest. Between two alphas who thought they could own the same light.”

My skin goes cold.

“You mean—”

“I mean,” she cuts in, voice turning flat, “that you are not the first double pull the packs have seen. You are only the first who survived long enough for it to matter.”

The words land heavy, rearranging the universe.

“You knew,” I breathe. “You knew this could happen. To me.”

“I prayed it wouldn’t.” Her eyes shine, but no tears fall. “We bled enough for one lifetime. I left so you’d never stand in that circle.”

“Well,” I say, choking on a humorless smile, “good news. I didn’t stand in it. I crashed headfirst into it in an alley and at a border and in my own skull.”

“Seryn—”

“No.” I shove my chair back, the legs screeching on the tile. “If my nature is so dangerous, I deserve to know why. I deserve to know what he did. What you did. What the hell a ‘double moon’ cost you.”

Lirenne’s composure fractures like thin ice. For the first time in my life, my mother looks… afraid. Not for me. Of what I’m asking her to dig up.

“Some truths,” she says hoarsely, “once spoken, can’t be put back to sleep.”

“Then maybe,” I say, pulse pounding in my ears, “it’s time they stayed awake.”