THE LYCAN KINGS TREASURED LUNA

You don't realize how quietly a heart can break until you're standing inside your own silence, wishing for someone, anyone to hear you. But in my world, the only thing that listened back was the echo of everything I'd lost before I even had the chance to hold it.

I've always felt like I never belonged, not in this pack, and definitely not in the family I was placed with.

The day I took my first breath, my mother took her last. My father, unable to survive the vacuum her death left behind, followed her soon after leaving me orphaned before I could even form a memory or so I was told. I know them only through a few faded photographs and not once have I ever felt their absence as love lost.

Alpha Joe, our pack leader, handed me off like an unwanted gift to Ama and Vargos. For a while, a sweet cruel while, they treated me like their own. Until I was seven and Ama's belly began to swell with new life.

Then the world shifted. Suddenly, the arms that once cradled me grew cold. The eyes that once sought me out in a crowd turned past me like I was nothing more than air.

They were so obsessed with their new baby, they forgot I needed food, warmth , and love too. I learned to fend for myself, scrounging leftovers from the fridge, and burning my small hands trying to cook meals that tasted as bad as it looked.

When the baby came, they stripped my room bare to make way for his nursery and dumped my things into the storage room like I was no more important than old Christmas decorations.

The storage room had no windows. The summers baked me alive,and the winters froze me to the bone. I slept on a pile of my own clothes because they never bothered to give me a blanket.

At first, I hated Levon for stealing them away. But with time, the hatred rotted into something sadder. You can't lose what was never really yours. And as he grew, i became less of a sister and daughter and more of a servant.

And now...

Today was my eighteenth birthday.

Normally, birthdays meant nothing to me. But today was different. Tonight, under the moonlight, my dormant wolf gene would awaken and I'll finally be a full-fledged werewolf.

Even better, once I shifted, I could leave Ama's house, move into the packhouse, find work in the neighboring human town, and start saving enough to finally leave Khragnir and see the world.

A small, secret smile tugged at my lips. I've been waiting for this moment my whole life.

"Narine!" Ama's shrill voice sliced through the storage room walls. "It's five in the d*mn morning! Get your useless self moving!"

I closed my eyes and breathed deep. Hold it in, Narine. Just a few more hours.

I rose stiffly from my pile of clothes and made my outside. There she was, leaning over the railing like a queen surveying her dirty little peasant.

"I'm sorry, Mother," I whispered. It didn't matter if I was wrong or right. Apology was the only language she spoke.

Ama sneered. "Sorry? You should be. Living off our kindness all these years. The least you could do is pick up more slack. It's the weekend."

More slack? What more could I possibly do that wasn't already dumped on my shoulders?

I swallowed the bitter rage clawing up my throat.

"I'm sorry, Mother. I'll start on the chores right away."

Nothing I did would ever be enough. To Ama, I was a burden.