The Forsaken Luna's Unexpected True Mate

For three years, my marriage to Alpha Silas was a cold, dark routine. Every night, I drank a bitter tea that sent me into a dreamless sleep, waking up with implanted memories of a loving husband.

Then, I discovered the horrific truth. The man sleeping beside me wasn't my husband. He was a soulless clone Silas had bought from a subterranean lab.

The real Silas had abandoned our pack to live with his pregnant Rogue mistress.

"Ensure she drains the cup. She is too weak to smell the difference between us," I heard Silas tell the clone from outside my door.

He had ordered the clone to drug me with Wolfsbane every night. He gave his true love and his royal heir to a lawless Rogue, leaving me in a lightless chamber to be serviced by a counterfeit.

But Silas didn't know I possessed the ancient White Wolf blood, which instantly burned the poison from my veins. Lying awake in the dark, my heart shattered into ice. How could my fated mate defile the sacred laws of the Moon Goddess and turn my life into a sick experiment?

I didn't cry, and I refused to initiate the Rejection ritual to set him free.

Instead, when the trembling clone walked into my bedroom with Silas's exact face and DNA, I smiled.

I was going to awaken the clone's inner wolf, get pregnant with his child, and steal my husband's entire kingdom.

Chapter 1

Serena POV

I lay motionless, a statuette of flesh at the center of the vast, mahogany-pillared bed. Curtains of heavy, wine-dark velvet sealed the room in a funereal gloom. My eyelids were shut, but behind them, my hearing was a honed weapon.

Outside the heavy oak door, two voices murmured.

One was Silas, my husband and the Alpha of our pack.

“Did you put the Wolfsbane in her moon-tea?” His voice was a low, abrasive rasp. “I need her senses blunted to the point of oblivion.”

“Yes, Alpha,” another voice replied.

A knot of ice formed in my lungs.

The second voice was a perfect echo of Silas’s own — but it lacked the hard edge of ingrained arrogance.

“Good,” Silas muttered. “Ensure she drains the cup. She is too weak to smell the difference between us.”

For three years, I had held the title of Luna. Every night, Silas insisted upon a stygian blackness in our bedroom. He severed the telepathic thread between us. Whenever our physical congress neared its peak, he would withdraw, claiming the need for a shower. And I, my mind clouded by the nightly draught of moon-tea, would sink into a dreamless sleep.

Upon waking, Silas would forcibly implant fabricated memories of a passionate night into my mind.

But today, an old Seer had intercepted me in the woods. Her trembling claws fastened onto my arm. She told me Silas spent his nights with a she-wolf named Lyra — a Rogue. And the man who had occupied my bed for three years was not my husband. He was a clone. A soulless homunculus, birthed in a subterranean laboratory.

The Seer had implored me not to drink the tea.

The heavy oak door groaned. The clone entered, a porcelain cup trembling upon a silver salver. He moved with Silas’s practiced stride, but his eyes held the dull, vacant quality of polished river stones.

“Your moon-tea, my Luna,” he said.

I rose from the pillows. My fingers brushed his as I accepted the cup. For an instant, a strange, galvanic tremor passed between our skin — a spark extinguished before it could catch. I inclined my head, feigning a long swallow.

The moment his back was turned, I moved without sound to the water-closet and forced the noxious fluid back up my throat.

I am no mere Omega. The ancient blood of the White Wolf flows in my veins — a legendary purifying fire that neutralizes any poison. I burned the Wolfsbane from my system in moments. Now, lying in the oppressive dark, my senses were preternaturally sharp.

“Listen to me,” Silas’s true voice commanded from the corridor. A crushing density filled the air — the Alpha’s Command. “You are nothing but a vessel of my flesh. A biological echo meant to perform a function. You will enter that room and play your part.”

I heard the clone emit a strained gasp. “Yes, Alpha.”

Under the silk sheets, my hands curled into fists. The man I had called my mate had delivered me into the hands of a laboratory experiment. He had made a mockery of the Luna’s station.

The brass handle of the bedroom door began to turn.

The counterfeit Alpha was entering my chamber.

He thinks I’m asleep and drugged. But my White Wolf is wide awake — and I’ve already begun to destroy them both.