My Luna Mother Ruined Me For Her Favorite—So I Chose The Rogue King Chapter 09
My mother raced back to the pack house.
My room was already empty.
The bed had been stripped and remade. The medicine bottles were gone. The ice-blue wolf-head brooch that had sat by the window was gone with them. Only a faint trace of medicine lingered in the air—proof that I had once endured all of it here.
She turned and grabbed my father.
“Why did you let her go? Her wounds haven’t even healed. How can she survive the Northern Wastes? That place is nothing but rogues. She can’t take it—”
He pulled her hand off him.
“She went of her own free will.”
She froze.
He looked at her. His voice was very level.
“She said Seraphina had treated her like a daughter. She wanted to leave Blackwood from there.”
The blood drained from her face, slowly.
He went on. “As her mother—you failed her. Completely.”
Frost House stood on the edge of what had once been Royal Pack territory.
It was the only place left to Seraphina after she’d been stripped of her crown. Scorch marks still darkened the white stone walls. Warriors of the Northern Wastes stood at the gate—silent, edged, like a pack of wolves who would never lower their heads to anyone again.
Seraphina prepared my room with her own hands.
A silver-gray blanket worked with wolf patterns had been laid across the bed. The stitching was fine and close—clearly done by hand.
I looked at the blanket, uneasy.
“Lady Seraphina, this is too precious.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed and took my hand.
“I had a daughter once.”
I froze.
Seraphina’s gaze rested on the blanket. Her voice was very soft.
“If she had lived, she’d be about your age this year. That blanket was meant for her. Then things went wrong at court. She didn’t survive. Rowan was cast out. I was stripped of my title. The Royal Pack took a great many things from me. But this blanket—I kept.”
She looked at me.
“The first time I saw you at the Gathering, I knew you weren’t the girl Helena described. You stood there with every eye in the hall on you—and you didn’t cry. You didn’t beg anyone to speak for you.”
She reached out and smoothed the hair away from my cheek.
“Evelyn. From this day on, Frost House is your home. If Rowan ever dares put a single shadow on you—come tell me. I’ll deal with him for you.”
Something warm rose in my chest.
I leaned forward and put my arms around her, my eyes burning.
“Thank you.”
Seraphina patted my back.
“Child. You don’t have to be so careful anymore.”
A few days later, when I could finally stand on my own, the bonding ceremony was held at Frost House.
Many came from the Northern Wastes.
No golden banners of the Royal Pack. No long-winded speeches from the Council. No measuring, weighing stares. The wolves of the wastes stood in black and silver-gray along both sides of the path, silent. No one mocked me. No one asked whether I was worthy.
Rowan waited for me at the end of the path.
He wore no crown. No royal cloak. His black formal coat cut hard against his shoulders. The old silver scar along his neck was still plain to see. And yet, standing there, he looked more like a king than any man who had ever worn a crown.
As I walked toward him, every wolf of the wastes lowered their head.
Not to the Blackwood bloodline behind me.
To me.
Rowan held out his hand.
This time, I placed mine in it.
His hand was steady.
The morning after the ceremony, Rowan and I set out for the Northern Wastes.
My father came from Blackwood to see me off himself.
He wore plain clothes. His eyes were bloodshot. But he never once said the words that would have asked me to stay.
“Take care of yourself in the wastes.”
I nodded.
He looked at me. His voice roughened.
“If there’s ever a day you’re unhappy—come home. There will always be a room for you in Blackwood.”
I didn’t tell him the truth.
I knew that place hadn’t been my home for a very long time.
My mother never appeared.
But I knew she was watching, from somewhere. She simply no longer dared come close.
The convoy rolled past the last of the border markers.
My mother, wandering back into the pack house half out of her mind, had barely crossed the threshold when a guard rushed in.
“Luna. Celeste’s father has returned.”