My Dearly Beloved Luna

Chapter 8

The voice kept plaguing my thoughts and nothing outside my own head seemed to matter anymore.

Every muscle in my body remained locked so tightly that they ached. My jaw throbbed from grinding my teeth, yet I couldn’t force myself to relax.

Every thought led back to her.

Sylvia.

Her scent refused to leave me.

It lingered in my lungs, haunting every breath, while the image of her sat burned into my memory.

Those wide blue eyes. The colour rising into her cheeks. The way she’d gripped the edge of the table as though the ground beneath her had disappeared.

And the way she’d looked at me…Like she wanted answers neither of us possessed.

Shock had been there. Confusion, too.But beneath both…Something else.Something that made my pulse refuse to settle even beneath the icy water.

She’d felt it.

There was no mistaking that.

The bond had reached her.

Then why had she looked so lost?

When my wolf recognised her back then, I hadn’t understood everything, but instinct had spoken louder than reason.

Sylvia hadn’t seemed to recognise any of it.

It was as if something inside her couldn’t hear what fate was trying to tell her.

My wolf hurled himself against the walls I’d spent years building.

Find her. Go to her. Bring her home.

His growls echoed through my mind until I squeezed my eyes shut.

“No.”The word scraped from my throat“Enough.”

But he didn’t listen. He wanted to tear through the house, follow her scent to whichever room she’d been given, and stand outside the door until she opened it. Every instinct demanded I close the distance between us. I refused.

Then a sharp knock interrupted the battle raging inside my head.

But I ignored it then another knock followed, louder this time.

“Mr Elias?”

It was Edmund.Of course.

“Go away,” I snapped, my voice hoarse.

“The Alpha would like to see you, sir.”

“I’m busy,” I replied

For a moment he stayed silent.

Then he added, “He said it’s important.”

“I said no.” I shot back.

The hallway fell quiet again. I listened for retreating footsteps but I heard nothing and eventually I assumed he’d gone downstairs.

Running a hand through my dripping hair, I gripped the strands hard enough to sting.

The cold should have helped but it didn’t.

Because every time I closed my eyes, I saw her sitting across the dining table.

Her gaze locked on mine.

Her breathing uneven.

The way she’d looked at me as if she knew, somehow, her life was about to change, even if she couldn’t explain why.

I cursed beneath my breath and leaned my forehead against the tile.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to us.Not after all these years.Not when I’d finally convinced myself I could live with the silence she’d left behind. She was my sister even if we weren’t related by blood. The quiet girl who used to trail after me through the house whenever I came home from school.

The one who apologised for things that were never her fault.

I still remembered the afternoon she’d dropped an entire tray of dishes in the kitchen.

Fine china had shattered across the floor. She looked terrified. Not because of the broken plates but because she expected someone to be angry.

I’d knelt beside her without thinking.“Careful,” I’d told her. “You’ll cut yourself.”She’d stared at me as though I’d done something extraordinary while all I did was hand her a towel.

But she smiled anyway.

A small, grateful smile that stayed with me far longer than it should have.

The first time I’d met Sylvia, she’d barely spoken through dinner. She’d hidden behind her mother while Father introduced them to the family.

She couldn’t have been more than twelve.

Every time Helena looked her way, Sylvia seemed to shrink a little, measuring every word before letting it leave her mouth.

I hadn’t understood it then. I only knew something inside me reacted the moment I saw her. Not attraction.Not even affection.A need to make sure she was safe.

The pack dismissed her almost immediately after they heard about her being a wolf who couldn’t shift. A disappointment.A burden. I’d heard every whisper but I ignored every one of them.

Because back then whenever I looked at Sylvia, I didn’t see weakness. I saw someone who kept getting back up no matter how often life and people tried to knock her down.

There was quiet strength in her and a stubborn determination she tried so hard to hide.

Over the next few years, she slowly stopped keeping her distance from me.

Whenever I came home, she’d somehow appear a few minutes later with a question, or a book she read that she thought I’d enjoy but I knew it was just another excuse to spend a little more time with someone who didn’t shun her like the rest of the pack.

Over the years, Sylvia became a constant in my life without either of us realising it, she was always armed with another question or was prone to start a debate just so we could steal a few minutes of conversation. Sometimes she asked me about pack business and listened to me explain the little I knew about it as though it were the most interesting thing in the world, while laughing at my dry remarks no one else ever appreciated.

And somewhere along the way, looking out for her became second nature.

Sometimes I stepped in when my stepmother’s temper started turning in Sylvia’s direction. I made sure there was always a place for her at family dinners, even when she wasn’t particularly welcome. When school assignments frustrated her, I’d sit with her for hours until the answers finally clicked.

I liked being the person she relaxed around. The one person who made her feel safe. Then everything changed. The morning of her eighteenth birthday, I went to her room with a gift tucked beneath my arm.

A rare first edition she’d casually mentioned wanting weeks earlier.

Her window was open when I arrived. She was standing there, looking out across the estate, the breeze lifting strands of her hair.

Then the wind shifted. One breath. That was all it took. The bond crashed into me with devastating force.

Every wild instinct I’d fought so hard to cage suddenly snapped into place. My wolf hadn’t just been trying to protect her—He’d recognized her and was trying to claim her as our mate.

Then As if by some cruel design, my strength vanished, and the book slipped from my grip. The shock didn’t even let me watch it hit the floor. I just turned and ran like a coward.

A week later, after hiding in my room and convincing myself I’d imagined everything, I finally came home.

But she was gone.

Her mother said Sylvia had been sent abroad to continue her education because our environment was too stressful and chaotic for someone as weak as her.

Her exact words were “It was time she learned how to stop cowering and become independent,”. as if she was talking about the weather.

At the time, I told myself it was for the best that distance would make whatever I felt easier to ignore.

That I could bury my wolf. Bury my feelings. Move on.

And I tried. God, I tried.

I dated. I accepted introductions. I forced myself through relationships that looked perfect on paper but none of it mattered.

Because the moment another woman got too close, my wolf instantly rejected her because In his eyes, it was a betrayal because I kept trying to force a match with a prospective female in the pack, ignoring the fact that he constantly shuts down every single candidate I tried to take.

It didn’t matter how beautiful they were or how compatible we seemed.

Because to him, it all felt hollow. Forced. As if I were desperately trying to live someone else’s life while walking away from my own.

And because none of them was Sylvia but now she’s back.

A low groan escaped me as I let my head fall against the tile.

The sound disappeared beneath the roar of the shower.

Inside me, my wolf strained harder against the leash I’d wrapped around him years ago.

He didn’t care about family ties. He didn’t care about pack politics.

He didn't care that, in everyone else’s eyes, she was my stepsister.