Six Years As His Luna. He Only Wanted My Sister novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Scroll
Bastian puts a dissolution scroll and his Beta's file in front of Mara, and she signs; Odette walks in with a wedding dress finished two months ago.
Six years ago, a drunk old King pointed across a charity gala and handed me to Bastian Holt.
He called me the Holt pack's Luna in front of the whole ballroom.
Everyone there knew Bastian already loved someone. My younger sister, Odette, had grown up beside him, and the two of them were never apart.
But nobody refuses a King.
Nobody asked me, and nobody asked Bastian.
On the night of the full moon, he bit my shoulder and finished the ceremony.
Then he stood at the window with his back to me.
"Neither of us picked this," he said. "You are my Luna now, so nobody in this pack will ever treat you as less."
For six years, I believed he kept that promise.
When his mother blamed me for everything, he stood in front of me.
When my fever would not break, he stayed up all night. I only remember a hoarse voice reading border patrol reports in the dark, and Bastian told me later that was him.
Every winter a jar of pine salve waited on the Luna's porch for my cracked hands. Bastian said the housekeeper left it.
He signed the pack's funds over to me and never asked what I spent.
I thought six years together would count for more than one short first love.
Then old King Alexander died.
The Northern King's seat sat empty, and Bastian backed the new King. Everyone thought he would ask for land or rank.
He made one private request.
He asked the new King to let him choose a new mate.
Tonight, I walked into his study and found the scroll waiting on the desk.
It was a mate dissolution scroll, already sealed in black wax.
Beside it lay the personal file of another man.
Elias Riordan. Thirty-two. His Beta. Head of the Black Forest patrols, the most dangerous border in the pack.
No mate. A plain family.
Bastian sat across the desk from me with his hands folded.
"Elias is steady," he said. "He works harder than any man I have, and he has never once let me down. I think the two of you would suit."
I looked down at the file.
I laughed once.
"The bond ends tonight. You go to my sister, and I go wherever I like," I said. "You gave up the right to choose my next step when you chose hers."
"Then why are you handing me a man?"
Bastian frowned slightly.
"I have already told your parents. They think Elias is a sound match."
My hands went cold.
"You spoke to my parents before you spoke to me."
"I am being considerate."
"I was with you for six years, Bastian."
"And I am grateful for every one of them. I will see that you are provided for after you leave."
He tapped the file.
"Elias is mine. If anyone ever hurts you, they answer to him, and he answers to me."
I thought of the long winter nights I had spent alone in the Luna's wing.
I thought of the dinners where his chair stayed empty, and the pack elders who looked at me with pity.
I did not cry.
I closed the file and slid it back across the desk, unopened.
"I will choose my own mate, or I will choose none," I said.
Bastian lifted his hand and rang the small brass bell on his desk.
The study door opened.
A tall man in a worn leather patrol coat stepped in and stopped at the threshold. His black hair was wet from the rain.
Elias Riordan. I had passed him in the halls for six years, and we had said perhaps fifty words to each other.
"The law needs a witness to the signing," Bastian said. "Elias will stand for the Holt pack."
Elias did not look at the file or at me.
He looked at the floor between us.
I picked up the pen.
"I have one condition," I said. "Nothing on this scroll says I was sent away. It says the Alpha asked and the Luna agreed."
Bastian paused for a moment, then nodded.
So I signed.
My hand did not shake.
Elias's did. When he leaned in to sign as witness, the pen scratched across the line twice, and the split knuckle on his right hand opened and bled onto the wax.
Bastian did not notice.
I did.
Before I could wonder why, the door opened again.
My sister came in with the soft rustle of a long white gown over her arm, and my mother and Bastian's mother walked in behind her.
"Mara," Odette said, and she hugged me before I could step back. "Nothing changes between us. You will always be my sister."
Her dress was finished, pressed and ready.
The tag pinned inside the collar was dated two months ago.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend