After My Mate Chose A Rogue, I Took Back My Crown

The Moonveil Pack territory smelled like home.

I hadn't realized how much I had missed it until I crossed the border and felt the familiar scent of pine and mountain air and something else—something that had always been mine—wrap around me like a blanket I had forgotten I owned.

My mother was waiting at the pack house entrance.

Luna Diane Howell stood on the stone steps in her full regalia, her posture perfect, her face composed in that particular way that told me she had been holding herself together by sheer force of will. When she saw me, something in her expression cracked.

'Emory.'

She didn't run. Howells don't run. But she moved faster than I had seen her move in years, and when she reached me, she pulled me into her arms with a fierceness that made my chest ache.

'I'm home,' I said quietly.

'You're home,' she repeated, and her voice was steady, but her hands on my back were trembling.

Sienna appeared a moment later, barreling down the steps with none of my mother's restraint. She grabbed me the second my mother let go, her arms wrapping around me so tightly I couldn't breathe.

'If you ever—ever—do that again,' she said into my shoulder, her voice shaking with fury and relief, 'I will personally drag you back by your hair.'

I laughed. It came out broken, but it was real.

'Noted.'

Sienna pulled back and looked at me, her eyes scanning my face like she was cataloging damage. 'You look like hell.'

'I feel like hell.'

'Good. You're supposed to.' She grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard. 'Now let's fix it.'

My mother led me inside, through the familiar halls of the pack house, past wolves who stopped and stared and whispered. I could feel their eyes on me—curious, cautious, some of them pitying. They had heard. Of course they had heard. Pack gossip traveled faster than mind links.

But I didn't care.

I walked through the pack house with my head up, my shoulders back, and my wolf finally, blessedly quiet inside me. Not suppressed. Not buried. Just waiting.

We reached the private wing, and my mother closed the door behind us. Sienna sat me down on the couch, handed me a glass of water I didn't drink, and then stood there with her arms crossed, waiting.

'Tell us,' my mother said gently.

I told them.

Not everything. Not the worst parts. But enough.

When I finished, Sienna looked like she wanted to murder someone, and my mother's face had gone very still.

'He used his Beta tone on you,' my mother said quietly. It wasn't a question.

'Yes.'

'On his mate.'

'Yes.'

Sienna made a sound that was half-snarl, half-laugh. 'I'm going to kill him.'

'You're not,' I said.

'I'm absolutely going to kill him.'

'Sienna.'

She looked at me, her eyes blazing. 'He doesn't get to do that to you. He doesn't get to treat the Crown Luna like—like—'

'Like nothing,' I finished quietly. 'I know.'

My mother reached over and took my hand. 'You're home now.'

'I'm home.'

'And you're done suppressing your wolf.'

I looked at her. She was watching me with that particular expression she got when she was about to issue a command that wasn't actually a command—just a truth I needed to hear.

'You've been burying her for two years,' she said. 'It stops now.'

I took a breath. Then another.

Then I let go.

The Luna aura that rolled out of me was so powerful it made the windows rattle.

It wasn't intentional. I hadn't meant to unleash it all at once. But I had been holding it down for so long—two years of suppressing every instinct, every ounce of dominance, every reminder of what I actually was—that when I finally stopped fighting it, it came out like a flood.

Sienna staggered back, her eyes wide. My mother stayed perfectly still, but I saw her wolf bare its neck in automatic submission before she caught herself.

Outside, I heard wolves howling.

The sound spread through the pack house, through the territory, a wave of recognition and awe and something that felt like relief. The Crown Luna was home. The Crown Luna was awake.

And she was done being small.

I stood up slowly, feeling my wolf settle into place inside me—not quiet, not patient, but calm. Certain. Whole.

Sienna was grinning now, her earlier fury replaced by something that looked like pride.

'There she is,' she said softly.

My mother smiled. 'Welcome back, Emory.'

I looked at them both, and for the first time in two years, I felt like myself again.

'It's good to be back,' I said.

And I meant it.