THE REJECTED FOURFOLD LUNA: FATED TO TWO ALPHA TWINS

Chapter 28—Unwelcome Coldness

Celeste's POV

Morning came in through the curtains slow and golden.

The rain from the night before was completely gone, like it never happened at all. The grounds outside were washed clean and the sky was the kind of clear that only came after something heavy moved through.

I lay there for a moment before either of them stirred.

The house was quiet in the best way. I listened to it and felt the particular kind of settled that only came after a night like that one, when everything slowed down to exactly what it was supposed to be.

Eventually Mason moved. Then Jason.

The morning assembled itself the way it always did with the three of us, easy and without any particular need to be anywhere before we were ready.

After breakfast Mason looked at me over his coffee.

"We want to take you somewhere this morning," he said.

"The warrior training grounds," Jason said from across the table. "And the first shift site. You should know every corner of the territory that belongs to you."

I liked the way he said it. Without ceremony. Like it was simply true and did not need any decoration.

We walked out into the morning together.

The air was clean after the rain, cool against my face, and the grounds looked freshly washed and green. I pulled my jacket a little tighter and fell into step between them, matching their pace without having to think about it.

The training grounds were further into the estate than I ventured before.

A wide open stretch of land with marked sections and training equipment built for wolves at every level and stage of development. Some of it I recognized. Some of it I could only guess at the purpose of.

Beyond the main grounds sat a quieter area, ringed by trees that looked older than the estate itself.

The ground there was softer underfoot. The air smelled different, earthier, like something ancient lived in it. Jason told me this was where new wolves came for their first shift.

"The whole pack comes to witness it," he said. "The wolf stepping into itself for the first time is not something you do without your people around you."

I stood at the edge of it and felt something move in my chest that I did not have a clean name for.

Something between reverence and the earliest, quietest stirring of belonging.

This place was serious and old and I was standing inside it for a reason. I was starting to feel that reason in a way that went beyond words.

We walked back through the main grounds and that was when I saw them.

Calista. Khalan. Nyra.

They were grouped near the edge of the sparring area with a handful of other girls.

I noticed the moment they noticed me. The small shift in posture. The deliberate and coordinated way they looked away.

I kept walking.

In Ulfsang Pack, when a Luna passed through the training grounds, a greeting was expected. A nod. Some form of acknowledgment, every pack member knew that.

Not one of them offered it.

The girls grouped around them followed their lead without hesitation. Eyes forward, chins lifted, the kind of studied indifference that required coordination to pull off. I walked past the whole cluster without breaking my stride or changing a single thing on my face.

Mason and Jason flanked me on either side and said nothing at all. Neither of them needed to say a word.

I rolled my eyes once I was clear of them, quiet enough that only Jason caught it.

He pressed his lips together, actively trying not to smile. He was failing at it slightly and we both knew it.

We finished the tour and headed back toward the house.

***

The feeling arrived somewhere between the estate gates and the front door and I did not see it coming.

Hollow.

That was the only word that fit.

I walked into the house and something in the space pressed differently against me. I stood in the entrance and looked around at all of it.

The high ceilings. The warm light and the familiar scent of the house that I was slowly learning the way you learn a language, piece by piece.

And I felt like a visitor in a place still deciding whether to fully let me in.

I knew those girls chose that deliberately.

I knew the coldness was theirs to carry and not mine. I knew all the reasonable things I was supposed to know and believe.

Knowing did not make the hollow feeling go anywhere. It just gave it something to sit beside.

I thought about Ashen Hollow.

I did not want to think about it at all. The thought arrived the way they always did when you were tired and your defenses came down a little further than intended. It arrived anyway and I let it.

In Ashen Hollow I was Liam Reed's daughter. Known in the way that went beyond any title or ceremony, known in the way that simply came from time and presence and being seen in ordinary moments over and over.

The pack members who watched me grow up greeted me by name. Even after the rejection, even in the worst of it, no one looked through me like I was not standing there.

Here I carried the title and the ceremony behind it and was still a stranger on the actual ground, still learning whose name was whose, still walking into rooms and feeling the slight and particular tension of a person who was not yet known.

I pressed one hand flat against the wall and stood very still.

I let the feeling move through me without trying to argue it into something smaller. It did not respond well to being reasoned with.

I did not miss Aiden and Jayden. That was not what this was. What I missed was the ease of being somewhere that already knew me.

There was a grief in that so quiet and well-behaved that I kept pretending it did not exist, and it kept waiting for me to stop pretending.

"Celeste."

Mason's voice from behind me.

"Are you okay?" His voice came from close behind me. Low and careful.