Alpha's Regret The Luna He Left Behind novel Chapter 2

he second we got home to the Silvercrest estate, Serena dropped the act.

She shoved my bedroom door open so hard it bounced off the wall. Then she kicked my wheelchair straight out

from under me.

I hit the floor hard. Pain shot up through both knees like fire.

My wolf should have surged.

Even wounded, even weak, she should have snarled inside me.

But there was only silence.

I pressed my back against the wall and pushed myself upright, one slow inch at a time.

Serena looke

at me. “What are you plotting now?”

ice came out steady. “I’m dying. What wo

the point?”

died me for a long moment, head tilted, like she was trying to find the trap.

don’t buy it,” she said finally. “Prove it. Give me the paintings.”

That was always what this came back to.

Growing up, I painted. It was the one thing that was mine.

Serena watched, copied, traced over my work with her own name. But talent isn’t something you can steal stroke by stroke, and hers never came.

So she stopped pretending to be inspired and started just taking.

She took so many that I put the brushes down for years.

I let my family assume I was done and they did.

“Well?” Serena crossed her arms. “Can’t let go?”

“Take them,” I said. “All of them.”

The disbelief on her face was almost worth the floor.

She didn’t move until I laid them out in front of her.

Then she laughed. Not a pretty laugh. The kind that twists a face wrong.

She grabbed a fistful of my hair and leaned down close. “You idiot. Without these, even if you somehow survived, you’d have nothing. You know that, right?”

Her grip tightened. “Did you think things were just going to go back to normal?” A smile curled across her mouth. “I am going to be Sebastian’s Luna. I worked for that. I am not giving it up.”

She paused I’ll make sure I’m pregnant before the wedding night is over. Every last bit of hope you’re holding

onto Gone.”

From downstairs, My mother’s voice floated up. “Girls, dinner!”

Chapter 2

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Serena let go of my hair like it was nothing and smoothed her expression back into something soft and lovely.

The fragile adopted daughter.

The sickly Omega everyone in Silvercrest Pack protected.

She walked out like none of it had happened.

At the table, she pulled one of my canvases from behind her chair and set it against the wall.

My parents‘ forks stopped moving.

My father’s mouth fell open. “Serena, you painted this?”

Mother pressed both hands over her heart. “When did you get so talented?”

Brother Derek leaned in, eyes already calculating. “That piece would go for serious money.”

He looked at Serena’s stolen painting like he was seeing a treasure. He didn’t look at me once.

That night, Derek posted it on an online auction platform

By morning, a collector had paid a number that made Derek bounce on his heels.

By the next day, Serena’s name was everywhere. Major online forums. Art blogs. Trending feeds.

from the edge of the room but I felt nothing.

eft before my heart stopped for good.

meir smiles would still look like that when I was gone.

erena’s rise hit fast and loud.

Reporters camped outside the Silvercrest estate for days, all of them desperate to interview the prodigy artist who’d appeared out of nowhere.

Diane cried on camera.

Actually cried.

“Thank the Moon Goddess it wasn’t Serena who got hurt in that accident,” she told a reporter, one hand pressed to her chest. “We would’ve lost a true genius.”

Then, right there in front of everyone, she unclasped Grandma’s necklace from around her own neck and fastened it around Serena’s.

That necklace was supposed to be mine.

The heirloom of Silvercrest’s Alpha line.

I looked away.

A reporter called out, asking about the inspiration behind the painting.

Serena tilted her head like she was thinking.

A small, pretty blush.

“My fiancé,” she said softly

いた

Chapter 2

The crowd lit up.

“Who’s your fiancé? Is he in the art world too?”

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My father didn’t even let her answer. He stepped forward and grabbed the microphone.

“Her fiancé,” he announced, his voice full of pride I had never once heard him use for me, “is the Alpha heir of Blackthorne Pack. Sebastian Hartwell.”

The interview exploded online within the hour.

High–society Luna–to–be.

Prodigy artist.

The kind of headline that writes itself.

Grant Hartwell, Sebastian’s father and Alpha of Blackthorne, showed up in person to confirm Serena as Blackthorne Pack’s future Luna, right there on the record.

Serena found me afterward. She looked at me the way you loo

ething you’ve already won. “Genevieve. You really went too far this time, didn’t you? There’s no road back for you now. You know that.”

I smiled. “I’m not looking for one. I hope you’re happy. I mean that.‘

“You-” Her hand came up. Then she saw Sebastian in the doorway.

Her whole body shifted. “Sebastian, you’re here.”

She moved to

Te stepped back, gentle but deliberate, and reached up to ruffle her hair.

quietly. “I need to talk to Genevieve.”

She glanced back at me once from the door. I smiled at her.

th crossed the room and took my hand. His grip was tight. “Don’t read into any of this wrong. My father pushed for it. He thinks Serena’s visibility is good for the pack’s image. The Blackthorne council likes her public support. That’s all this is.”

I pulled my hand back.

“You don’t owe me an explanation,” I said. “The engagement is real. You didn’t do anything wrong.” I paused. “And I’ve known for a while anyway.”

His brow pulled together. “Known what?”

“The jasmine perfume. It never fully washes out of your shirts.” I kept my voice even. “The lipstick I found in your car twice. The way your eyes track her whenever she walks into a room.”

I looked at him. “I’ve known all of it.”

“Stop”

The word came out sharp. His face went tight with something between anger and shame.

For a moment, his Alpha aura pressed against the room.

Sebastian seemed to realize it too. His expression changed. Then he left without another word, footsteps hard on

the floor.

07%

< Chapter 2

I turned back to the canvas.

Serena had been threatening me since her first painting sold.

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New work every three days, or she’d cut off my medication and make sure I never got better.

What she didn’t know was that I’d stopped needing the medication.

There was no “better” left for me.

I agreed anyway. I only had two paintings left to finish before I died.

Two more pieces.

That was all.

They wouldn’t carry her forever.

I was genuinely curious what would happen to her name once I wasn’t around to fill it anymore.

Derek walked in on me painting one afternoon. He stood in

oorway and laughed.

“Seriously?” He shook his head. “You paint for ten years, drop it the second Serena gets famous, and now you’re back at it? What, trying to copy her now?”

I didn’t answer.

“Give it up,” he said. “You will never catch up to her. Not in this lifetime.”

He left.

I set the brush down and stared at the wall.

I thought about the day our family brought Serena home from the group home.

Derek had stood in front of me, all twelve years old and serious, and told her:

“If

you ever bully my sister, I’ll send you right back.”

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