Fake Heiress True Luna (Irina) novel Chapter 2

Irina’s POV

“You are not my daughter!” He repeated as he tried to hit me once more. I lifted my arms to cover my face.

Lancer moved faster, his body a solid, unyielding shield between me and my father’s rage. He caught my father’s wrist, his own grip firm, his muscles coiled.

“Alpha,” Lancer’s voice was low, a forced calm over a foundation of shock and rising anger. “Stop. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

My father’s wild, grief-stricken eyes focused on Lancer, and for a terrifying second, I thought he would attack him. The future Beta. But then, instead of using brute force he let his aura out, a suffocating pressure that made several pack members whimper and drop to their knees.

“Get away from her, Lancer,” my father growled, the sound barely human. “She has deceived us all. She is a fake, a leech!”

The word was a dagger to my heart. I could only stare, my hand still pressed to my stinging cheek, my mind a whirlwind of denial. Leech. Fake. Lie. The words bounced around my skull, meaningless and yet utterly destructive.

“Richard!” My mother’s voice cut through the tension, sharp with her own fear and disbelief. She rushed forward, placing a hand on his heaving chest, trying to reach the man beneath the rage. “What are you doing? This is Irina! Our daughter!”

He shook her off, his gaze never leaving me, filled with a pain so deep it looked like it was tearing him apart from the inside. “She is not, Rosette. I… I can’t even look at our real daughter.”

My mother paled. “Real daughter?”

At that moment, the Elder came into view, and the black figure had finally taken their hood down.

Everyone gasped, including me. It was a woman around the same age as me. She had the same ashy-blond hair as my mother and hazel eyes as my father…

The resemblance was uncanny, a mirror of my parents’ features twisted into a face I’d never seen. She stood slightly behind Elder Harden, her posture stiff, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and a terrifying, hungry curiosity as she scanned the pack, but then she looked at me, and I swear, I saw how her eyes hardened.

The world didn't just tilt; it shattered. The air was stolen from my lungs. Every doubt, every horrible accusation, crystallized into a devastating, undeniable truth in that single, horrifying glance.

This stranger wore my mother’s hair and my father’s eyes.

“This is Julie,” Elder Harden announced, his voice booming in the dead silence. He placed a possessive hand on the girl’s shoulder. “The true-born daughter of Alpha Richard and Luna Rosette. Stolen from her crib moments after her birth and hidden away, while that—” he pointed his finger at me, “—that impostor was placed in her stead.”

A collective gasp rippled through the pack. All eyes flickered between me and the girl—Julie—searching for the truth. And they found it. I might pass as her sister; we are pretty similar, but there is no doubt that she is their daughter.

My mother’s hand flew to her mouth, a strangled sob escaping her. She stared at the other girl, her expression a war of maternal instinct and devastating shock. “My… my baby?” she whispered, the words barely audible, but they struck me harder than my father’s slap.

Julie took a hesitant step forward, her eyes glistening with tears. “Mother?”

It was the final blow. I saw the exact moment the last vestige of doubt left my mother’s eyes. They filled with a grief so profound it made my own heart throb.

“What happened to you?” My mother asked.

It should have been a harmless question, but Julie started shaking, almost as if talking about that terrified her.

“We can leave the details for later, Rosette. I just want you to know that she didn’t have an easy life. I rescued her from some rogues,” The Elder informed.

Everyone in the pack heard him. I had lived comfortably, while the true Alpha’s daughter had lived in pain.

I was a fraud. She was the true heir.

Leech. The word echoed in my head, now making a terrible, vicious sense. I had sucked the love and resources meant for another. I had lived her life.

“This is not your fault, Iriana!” Theia screamed, but how could it not be?

My father found his voice again, thick with tears and loathing that was all for me. “You deceived us, took everything that was meant for my daughter. I should kill you, but considering you are mated to our Beta, I’ll just banish you.”

Time stopped. No. No, no, no.

This couldn’t be happening. This was my home. These were my parents. Lancer was my mate. This was my pack, I… had everything. This was all I had ever known.

And it was all a lie.

My eyes, burning with unshed tears, darted to my mother—no, to Luna Rosette. Her face was a mask of torn anguish, but her arms were already reaching, not for me, but for her. For Julie. The true daughter. The one with the right story, the right face, the right pain.

Then I looked at Lancer. His back was still to me, a wall of muscle and loyalty, but I felt the tremor that ran through him at the Alpha’s decree. His grip on my father’s wrist was still firm, but he would soon let go.

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