Reborn Luna_ I Chose the Alpha King Over the Man Who Destroyed Me

The scream tore from my throat as I bolted upright, my heart hammering against my ribs like a caged animal desperate to escape. Cold sweat clung to my skin, and for a moment, the boundaries between dream and reality blurred into a nauseating haze.

Colton's voice still echoed in my ears—those words that had shattered my world twenty years too late: "I've always loved Violet. I married you because I had to, Harper. But my heart... my heart was never yours."

I pressed my palms against my temples, trying to stop the memories from flooding back. The way he'd looked at her during our anniversary dinner. The gentle touch he'd given her shoulder when she'd cried about her latest heartbreak. The lie I'd lived for two decades, believing I was loved when I was nothing more than a convenient arrangement.

But something was wrong. Terribly, impossibly wrong.

The room around me wasn't the master bedroom of the Ashford estate where I'd spent the last twenty years of my life. The walls were painted the soft lavender I'd loved as a teenager, not the stark white Colton had insisted upon. My vanity held the collection of vintage perfume bottles my mother had given me for my eighteenth birthday—bottles that had been packed away years ago when Colton deemed them "childish clutter."

My hands trembled as I reached for my phone, and the date on the screen made my blood run cold: March 15th. Six months before the Luna Selection ceremony. Six months before I'd walked down the aisle in that suffocating white dress, believing I was marrying for love.

I was twenty-two again.

The realization hit me like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs. Somehow, impossibly, I'd been given a second chance. The Moon Goddess had heard my dying prayer—because I remembered dying, remembered the crushing weight of betrayal stopping my heart as surely as any blade.

"Think, Harper," I whispered to myself, forcing my breathing to steady. "Think."

I couldn't waste this gift on hysteria. I had to be smart this time. Strategic. The Harper who had chased after Colton Ashford like a lovesick puppy, who had embarrassed herself at pack gatherings trying to win his attention, who had let Violet manipulate her into looking like a fool—that Harper was dead.

I remembered it all now with painful clarity. How I'd thrown myself at Colton during his friends' poker nights, desperate to be the perfect hostess, only to spill wine on his business partner's suit. How Violet had "accidentally" revealed my crush to the entire pack during the Harvest Moon celebration, making me the subject of pitying whispers for months. How his mother had looked at me during family dinners—not with malice, but with the resigned disappointment of someone forced to accept damaged goods.

Never again.

A soft knock on my bedroom door interrupted my thoughts. "Harper, sweetheart? Are you awake?" My mother's voice carried that particular note of excitement that meant she had news.

"Come in,