The Luna They Tried To Erase

For twelve years, I was the shame of the Silver Moon Pack. A Luna who never shifted, a barren wife who couldn't give Alpha Ivan an heir.

I thought my body was broken. But on my thirtieth birthday, I learned I wasn't sick. I was being murdered.

Tracking Ivan to a downtown gallery, I expected to catch him in a lie about work. Instead, I saw him playing father to a child that wasn't mine, while his mistress looked on with a smirk.

Then, I heard my own father’s voice booming through the thin glass.

"If that White Wolf blood of hers ever woke up, she'd destroy us all. Better she dies a sickly Omega."

My husband, my Fated Mate, didn't defend me. He just checked his watch.

"She smells of death already. The Wolfsbane in her tea will finish her off during the fireworks tonight. Then we can finally replace the mule."

My knees hit the floor. For five years, the "medicine" they forced down my throat wasn't a cure. It was poison designed to suppress my Supreme rank.

They didn't hate me because I was weak; they were killing me because I was stronger than all of them combined.

I drove back to the mansion, my sadness hardening into cold rage.

I poured the lethal tea down the sink and picked up the microphone for the Pack Gathering.

They were expecting a funeral tonight.

I was about to give them a public execution.

Chapter 1

Aliana POV:

*Thirty. That was the number of cracks in the plaster above the bed. It was also the age I turned today.*

In our world, the first Shift *usually hits like a freight train* at eighteen. The pain of bones breaking and rearranging is supposed to be a rite of passage, a welcome into adulthood. But for me, that day came and went with nothing but a *low-grade* fever.

Twelve years later, I was still just Aliana. The Wolf-less Luna. The embarrassment of the Silver Moon Pack.

The heavy oak door creaked open. I sat up, pulling the silk sheets against my chest.

Alpha Ivan walked in. He was already dressed in his charcoal suit, *looking like a million dollars and smelling like trouble.*

He was my Fated Mate. The Moon Goddess had decreed it. But without my wolf, the bond felt one-sided. *Like shouting into a canyon and waiting for an echo that never comes.*

"Happy birthday, Aliana," he said. *Tone flat. Professional.*

He leaned down to kiss my cheek. I closed my eyes, desperate for the spark, the electric current that books said mates shared.

Instead, I felt nothing but *damp skin.*

And then, it hit me.

The Scent.

Usually, Ivan smelled of crisp pine and rain. But today, beneath the expensive cologne, there was something else.

*Peaches. Rotting in the heat.*

"You're leaving?" I asked, my voice small. "I thought... I thought we might go to the Moon Stone today. To pray for my wolf?"

Ivan straightened his tie