My Luna Mother Ruined Me For Her Favorite—So I Chose The Rogue King Chapter 08
From that day on, I stayed behind closed doors to heal, avoiding every place where I might cross paths with my mother.
She didn’t try to force her way into my room again.
She left for the border encampment.
My father said she wanted to give me space. But I knew the truth. She simply no longer knew how to face me.
The Blackwood pack house had been scoured clean. So many people had been removed that the corridors stayed hauntingly empty for days. The new attendants lowered their heads when they saw me. No one dared look at me like I was a joke anymore.
Rowan’s people brought medicine every day.
Not expensive tokens meant for show—real medicine, the kind that could actually treat silver wounds, that could suppress the aftermath of wolfsbane, that could ease the pain enough for me to sleep through the night.
He himself rarely came in.
But I knew he was there.
Because every night, warriors of the Northern Wastes stood watch beyond the courtyard. They didn’t come inside. They didn’t speak. They only stood in the dark, keeping every prying eye, every disturbance, out.
That day, my father rode to the border encampment.
Inside the tent, my mother was sorting through military dispatches. She heard his footsteps but didn’t turn. Her voice came out stiff.
“Her wounds. Are they any better?”
My father set the medicine chest down on the table.
“If you care that much, why not ask her yourself?”
Her pen paused mid-stroke.
He looked at her back. His voice was flat.
“All you have to do is go home. Stand outside her door. And say you’re sorry.”
She whipped around.
“Since when does a mother owe her daughter an apology?”
His eyes went completely cold.
She seemed to find her footing in that, and her words came faster.
“I’ve punished the ones who deserved it. I let you investigate whoever you wanted. Whatever was taken from her, I’ve had returned to her room. I’ve gone this far already—what more do you want from me?”
He slammed the medicine chest down on the table.
“You still have the nerve to bring those things up?”
She froze.
He walked toward her, step by step, his voice pressed low.
“Every year, everything I sent back from the border for Evelyn—the wolf-fang dagger, the protection pendant, the fire-fox pelt for winter, the little wooden wolves I carved for her with my own hands. You handed every single one of them to Celeste.”
“I thought my daughter had received her father’s gifts. I thought she knew her father was thinking of her, all those miles away.”
Rage rolled behind his eyes.
“Helena. All these years, you didn’t just lie to her. You lied to me.”
Her lips were bloodless, but she pushed the words out anyway.
“I did it to keep suspicion off myself. Everyone was watching me. I couldn’t let them say I favored my own blood daughter.”
“Celeste’s mother was my dearest packsister. On her deathbed, she placed her daughter in my arms. She had suffered enough for one lifetime. How could I let her daughter fall short of mine at every turn?”
He laughed—cold, furious.
“So to make it up to your dead friend, you sacrificed my daughter?”
She went still.
“If you wanted to be a Luna above suspicion, you had a hundred ways to do it. You could have sheltered Celeste. Educated her. Given her resources. Instead you chose the cruelest one.”
His eyes bored into her.
“You made Evelyn the offering for your own reputation.”
She opened her mouth. No sound came out.
His voice grew colder still.
“You are the Luna of Blackwood. You are the Commander of the Alpha Council. Nobody knows better than you what happens to a wolf who cannot find protection in her own pack.”
“And you drove her, with your own hands, into the only wolf she could trust—a Rogue King.”
The words landed like a slap.
Her face went ashen. It took her a long moment to force out a single sentence.
“That is different.”
He looked at her. Whatever warmth remained in his eyes sank away.
“If you keep telling yourself it’s different, then you won’t just lose Evelyn in this life. You’ll lose me too.”
He turned and walked out.
The tent flap tore open. Cold wind slammed inside.
She stood there. And didn’t sleep the whole night.
The next morning, a subordinate came in to report.
“Alpha. Luna. Seraphina Frost has taken Miss Evelyn away.”
My mother’s head snapped up.
The subordinate lowered his voice.
“She said Miss Evelyn will set out from Frost House—to complete the bonding ceremony with Rowan.”