My Luna Mother Ruined Me For Her Favorite—So I Chose The Rogue King Chapter 10
Her head snapped up.
The guards dragged in a man in disheveled clothes, reeking of liquor. His hair was matted, his cheeks hollow, and the wolf beneath his skin looked half-starved.
Celeste’s father—exiled from the pack years ago.
He had sold border intelligence, embezzled supplies, and stirred up trouble more times than could be counted before Blackwood cast him out. My mother had told everyone, for years, that he was the one who had driven Celeste’s mother into an early grave. That because of him, Celeste had grown up with nothing to lean on.
Now he stood in the doorway, grinning wide.
“I heard my little girl is going to be the Crown Prince’s chosen Luna. Of course her father should come back and share the good fortune.”
The rage in my mother’s eyes lit at once.
She stepped forward and knocked him flat with a single strike.
“You still have the face to come back? If you hadn’t been so weak, so greedy, so rotten to the marrow—Celeste’s mother wouldn’t have wasted away like she did. You destroyed her, and you dare crawl back to leech off the Royal Pack?”
Blood spilled from his mouth. Then, suddenly, he laughed.
“Helena. After all these years, you still think she was some kind of saint?”
My mother’s body went rigid.
He pushed himself up on his hands, laughing—vicious and delighted.
“She was jealous of you. You were the most brilliant she-wolf in Blackwood. Marcus chose you. The Alpha Council valued you. She couldn’t stand it.”
“She wanted to make her move before you and Marcus were officially mated. She wanted to fake a scandal—make it look like Marcus had already taken her, that he had to claim her as his chosen mate.”
The color drained from my mother’s face, inch by inch.
He kept laughing.
“Pity she got the wrong room. The one she walked into was mine.”
“You thought her whole miserable life was because of me? She played her hand and lost. She hated you. She hated Marcus. She hated herself, for ending up chained to a useless piece of trash like me.”
“And you—you raised her daughter for her. You let her daughter take everything from your own blood daughter. Helena. You’re the biggest joke of all.”
She stood frozen. Every trace of color gone from her face.
Decades of guilt.
Decades of atonement.
Decades of moving herself to tears with her own nobility.
All of it, in a single moment, turned into a grotesque farce.
For the sake of a woman who had betrayed her from the start, she had mistreated her own blood daughter for over a decade.
She had shoved Evelyn toward the Royal Pack, then tried to hand her off to a patrol wolf. She had stolen her gifts. Missed her First Shift. Wounded her with a silver whip. And, in the end, driven her out of Blackwood with her own two hands.
Suddenly, she bolted.
She didn’t bring a single warrior. She didn’t wait for a convoy. She shifted into wolf form on the spot and tore off toward the Northern Wastes.
But by the time she reached the border, the entrance to the wastes had already been sealed.
A black stone stele stood in the wind, a silver wolf’s head carved into it. A handful of wasteland warriors held the line. The moment she came into view, every one of them laid a hand on his weapon.
“Luna of Blackwood. You may not enter.”
She stopped short at the border and shifted back into human form.
She was gasping for breath, her eyes red.
“I want to see Evelyn.”
The wasteland warrior at the front didn’t move a muscle.
“Order of the Rogue King. Without the permission of Luna Evelyn, no one from Blackwood may set foot in the wastes.”
Her step halted at the boundary line.
She knew—one step further, and this would no longer be a mother searching for her daughter. It would be Blackwood declaring war on the Northern Wastes.
The wind tangled her hair. It reddened her eyes.
She stared into the depths of the wastes. Her voice broke, piece by piece.
“Evelyn…”
No answer.
She finally collapsed, dropping to her knees just outside the border, calling my name over and over.
“Evelyn. Mama was wrong.”
“I know now. I know I was wrong.”
“Please. Come home…”
The wind blew in from the Northern Wastes and carried her voice away.
No one answered.
In the years that followed, Rowan and I stayed in the Northern Wastes.
There were no rules of the Royal Pack there. No favoritism of Blackwood. The wolves of the wastes were fierce, silent creatures, not good at tenderness—but once they had chosen me, they took me as their Luna, wholly and without question.
Rowan restructured the rogue forces, redrew the borders, took in the wolves who had been cast out of the Council packs but had done no true wrong—and put down, with his own hand, the ones who had truly slipped into bloodlust.
The Northern Wastes were no longer only the dangerous land whispered about in every pack.
They had become a last home for many wolves who had nowhere else to go.
Seraphina had gifts sent every year—winter blankets she’d stitched herself, salves, and chestnut honey cakes. My father wrote often with news from the Blackwood border, and always sent along another small wooden wolf he had carved by hand.
As for my mother—from that day on, she came to the border of the wastes once a year.
She never tried to cross. She never demanded anyone announce her.
She only stood outside the line, and stayed until nightfall before turning back.
Rowan asked me once.
“Do you want to see her?”
I shook my head gently.
“The moment that silver whip came down—the moment the blood-link broke—we stopped being mother and daughter.”
“There’s no meaning in seeing her.”
Rowan didn’t press.
He only wrapped his arms around me from behind and murmured against my hair.
“Then don’t.”
Later, we had a pair of very loud little pups.
One of them was like him—cold-faced, quiet, and yet always sneaking into my arms in the middle of the night. The other was like me—stubborn as sin, refusing to cry when she took a fall, only stomping over to bite Rowan’s sleeve in a rage.
Rowan swore every time he was going to discipline them.
He was always the first to scoop them both up.
That day, he stood at the door, his black coat rumpled from where the two of them had been dragging on it, no trace of impatience on his face.
“I’ll go pick them up from the training grounds.”
He glanced at me.
“I’ll make you chestnut honey cakes when we get back.”
I smiled and nodded.
Nora stood beside me, unable to hold back the words.
“Miss Evelyn. Rowan is so good to you. All these years, and it’s never changed.”
I looked out toward the far reaches of the wastes.
The wind was strong. The sky was wide.
Behind me were my mate, my pups, the home I had chosen with my own hands.
I nodded, softly.
Yes.
From here on—only good days.