His Rejected Luna Returned as the Lycan Queen

Three days.

Three days since Damon's rejection had torn through me like wildfire, leaving nothing but ash and agony in its wake. Three days of wandering through the wilderness beyond pack territory, my body growing weaker with each stumbling step.

The abandoned hunter's cabin appeared through the snow like a mirage—weathered wood and broken windows, but shelter nonetheless. My legs gave out as I reached the door, and I crawled the final few feet across the threshold, my mother's silver necklace dragging against the rough floorboards.

Inside, dust motes danced in the pale afternoon light filtering through cracked glass. The air smelled of decay and forgotten years, but it was warm compared to the biting wind outside. I pressed my back against the door, one hand instinctively covering my belly where the twins grew, hidden from a world that had already shown me how little I mattered.

"Just a little longer," I whispered to them, to myself, to anyone who might be listening. "We just need to survive a little longer."

My wolf had gone silent two days ago, the rejection trauma nearly killing the part of me that made me whole. Without her healing abilities, every breath felt like swallowing glass, every heartbeat an effort that left me dizzy and weak.

But the babies... the babies were still fighting.

Night fell with cruel swiftness, and with it came the pain.

It started as a dull ache in my lower back, the kind that made me shift restlessly against the cabin's wooden floor. But within minutes, it transformed into something else entirely—a vicious, tearing sensation that stole my breath and left me gasping.

"No," I breathed, pressing both hands against my stomach. "Not yet. It's too early."

But my body had other plans. Another contraction ripped through me, so intense that I cried out, the sound echoing off the cabin's empty walls. Panic flooded my system as I realized what was happening.

I was going into labor. Alone. At barely six months pregnant.

The contractions came faster now, each one more brutal than the last. I managed to drag myself to a corner where old hunting blankets lay forgotten, my fingers shaking as I tried to arrange them into something resembling a birthing bed.

"Please," I sobbed, though I didn't know who I was begging. The Moon Goddess who had allowed my mate to reject me? My mother, whose spirit I hoped still watched over me? "Please don't let them die."

Hours passed in a haze of agony. The cabin filled with my screams, with pleas that went unanswered, with the primal sounds of a woman fighting to bring life into a world that had shown her nothing but cruelty.

When the first baby finally came, slipping into my trembling hands in a rush of blood and fluid, I thought my heart might stop. She was so small, so impossibly fragile, her skin translucent and blue-tinged in the moonlight.

But then she cried.

The sound was thin and reedy, barely more than a whisper, but it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard. I pressed her against my chest, tears streaming down my face as I felt her tiny heart beating against mine.

"Luna," I whispered, the name coming to me as naturally as breathing. "My little Luna."

The second baby followed twenty minutes later, and if anything, she was even smaller than her sister. But her cry was stronger, more defiant, as if she was already angry at the world that had tried to kill her before she'd even drawn breath.

"Stella," I breathed, gathering both daughters against my chest. "My stars. My lights in the darkness."

For a brief, shining moment, nothing else mattered. Not Damon's rejection, not Serena's cruelty, not the fact that I was bleeding onto the cabin floor with no way to stop it. I had my daughters, and they were alive, and that was everything.

"You're mommy's only light," I told them, my voice hoarse from screaming. "No matter what happens, remember that. You are my everything."

Exhaustion pulled me under like a riptide, dragging me into unconsciousness despite my desperate attempts to stay awake. The last thing I remembered was the feeling of two tiny bodies breathing against my chest, their hearts beating in rhythm with mine.

When I woke, the cabin was filled with pale morning light, and something was wrong.

Terrible, horribly wrong.

I could only feel one heartbeat against my chest.

Panic shot through me like lightning as I looked down. Stella lay sleeping in the crook of my arm, her tiny chest rising and falling steadily. But Luna...

Luna was gone.

"No," I gasped, struggling to sit up despite the waves of dizziness that threatened to pull me back under. "No, no, no."

I searched frantically through the blankets, thinking maybe she'd somehow rolled away, but there was nothing. Just empty fabric and the lingering scent of birth and blood.

That's when I saw it.

A scrap of emerald green fabric caught on a splinter near the cabin door. The exact shade that Serena had worn to my humiliation three nights ago.

The world tilted sideways as understanding crashed over me. Someone had been here. Someone had taken my daughter while I lay unconscious and bleeding.

Serena.

Rage and desperation gave me strength I shouldn't have had. I wrapped Stella in the cleanest blanket I could find and pressed her against my chest, then forced myself to stand. Blood ran down my legs, and my vision swam with each step, but I didn't care.

I had to find Luna.

The trail was easy to follow at first—footprints in the snow leading away from the cabin, too large and heavy to be mine. But as I stumbled through the forest, my strength began to fail. Each step was agony, each breath a struggle that left me gasping.

Stella whimpered against my chest, and I realized with growing horror that I was failing her too. My body temperature was dropping, my milk hadn't come in yet, and she needed warmth and food that I couldn't provide.

"I'm sorry," I whispered to her, my tears freezing on my cheeks. "I'm so sorry, baby girl."

The trail led to a frozen river, its surface gleaming like black glass under the afternoon sun. But there, at the water's edge, the footprints simply... stopped.

They were gone. Luna was gone.

I collapsed to my knees in the snow, clutching Stella to my chest as sobs tore through my throat. Blood pooled beneath me, dark against the pristine white, and I knew with terrible certainty that I was dying.

"Moon Goddess," I gasped, looking up at the pale orb visible even in daylight. "I know I'm nothing to you. I know I've been abandoned by everyone who should have protected me. But please... please let me live long enough to find her. Let me save my daughter."

The wind howled through the trees, carrying my words away into the wilderness. My vision began to darken at the edges, and I felt myself falling forward, my body finally giving up its fight.

But just as consciousness slipped away, I felt strong hands catch me, lifting me from the snow with impossible gentleness.

"Original Luna's bloodline," a deep voice murmured, filled with something that sounded almost like reverence. "Finally, I've found you."

Through the haze of approaching unconsciousness, I caught a glimpse of my rescuer—a man whose presence seemed to command the very air around him, moonlight glinting off what looked like a crown upon his dark hair.

Then darkness claimed me, and I knew nothing more.