The Luna Who Chose to Forget

The Luna Who Chose to Forget.

NOVEL STATUS: COMPLETED

PUBLISHED CHAPTERS: 28 CHAPTERS

The Luna Who Chose to Forget – Sneak Peek

The chandeliers at our tenth anniversary gala cost more than my dignity. I’d done the math.

Three hundred guests, six ice sculptures carved into howling wolves, a twelve-piece orchestra playing something by Debussy that nobody was listening to—and at the center of it all, the Nightblood Clan’s favorite party game: betting on whether their Luna would finally grow a spine.

“She’ll never break the bond. A million on the table.”

“Five million.”

“Ten million she doesn’t do it.”

The numbers climbed like an auction for my cowardice. I stood near the champagne tower—always near the champagne tower, because if you’re going to be publicly humiliated, you might as well be within arm’s reach of alcohol—and let their voices wash over me like the tide over a rock that had long stopped caring about erosion.

Ten years. Ten anniversaries. Ten rounds of this exact game. The stakes grew each time, which I supposed was a compliment in its own miserable way. At least my suffering appreciated in value.

Some of them wanted me to show dignity. Others simply enjoyed the show—the same way you slow down past a car wreck, not because you want to help, but because something in your lizard brain craves the spectacle. If they won the bet, they despised me. If they lost, they hated me for costing them money. There was no version of this where anyone in that glittering room wished me well.

“I bet she will break it.”

The voice cut through the noise like a blade through silk—deep, unhurried, certain. The kind of voice that doesn’t need volume to command a room.

Heads turned. A ripple of surprise moved through the crowd, followed by urgent whispers begging the stranger to reconsider.

I searched for the source and caught only a sliver—a sharp jawline, the suggestion of broad shoulders in a dark suit, a profile I didn’t recognize. He stood at the edge of the crowd like someone who had wandered into the wrong party and decided to stay out of sheer curiosity.

A stranger. The only person in three hundred who believed I’d do it.

I almost laughed. Almost.

Read it all on gⱯlnσν𝒆ℓs․com

The truth was, he wasn’t wrong. I had spent ten years rehearsing this moment in the bathroom mirror, mouthing the words while the shower ran so no one would hear. Ten years of almost. Ten years of tomorrow, next month, next anniversary. But something had shifted inside me—quietly, the way a crack spreads through glass before the whole thing shatters.

I walked toward Thane.

He stood where he always stood: at the center of everything, one arm draped around Ravenna like she was a mink coat he was showing off. She was young—twenty-three—with the kind of beauty that photographs well and the kind of ambition that doesn’t. She’d been his mistress for five years. His favorite. The one he paraded, while the others he merely collected.

My hands were steady. That surprised me. I had expected trembling, tears, the usual betrayal of my body. Instead, my fingers moved with the calm efficiency of someone disarming a bomb they’d already decided to let detonate.

I removed my wedding ring first. Then the necklace—a heavy silver chain set with a moonstone that was supposed to symbolize the bond between Alpha and Luna. It had always felt like a leash.

I held both out to Ravenna.

Her eyes went wide. Around us, the murmuring stopped.

“If the ring doesn’t fit, take it to Renwick’s on Fifth—they’ll resize it overnight. The dress will take longer; I’ll change and have someone bring it down. Oh, and a word of advice”—I leaned closer, dropping my voice to a conspiratorial whisper—”there are nine other women living in the house. They know where everything is. They’re mostly friendly. Mostly.”

In ten years of marriage, Thane had installed a woman for every anniversary—a twisted collection, like stamps or vintage wines, except these ones ate the groceries and left their hair in the drain. As Alpha of the Nightblood Clan, he had the money and the power to maintain them all. People outside the clan joked that he ran some kind of feudal harem. Inside the clan, nobody joked. Nobody dared.

“Thane.” I turned to face him. “Let’s break the bond. Right now.”

I had said those words a hundred times. Maybe more—I’d stopped counting somewhere around year seven. But tonight was different, and he knew it, because for the first time I wasn’t asking.

He released Ravenna. Stared at me. His jaw tightened, and something flickered behind his eyes—not anger, not yet. Confusion. The look of a man who has pressed the same button a thousand times and cannot process why the machine has suddenly stopped responding.

“Are you crazy?” His voice dropped low, dangerous. “Playing cat and mouse again?”

I sighed. It came out longer than I intended—ten years of exhaled air.

“It doesn’t matter. Choose the day, the place, the terms. I’ll cooperate.”

I turned to leave. I made it exactly one step.

His hand closed around my arm—not gently, never gently—and spun me back.

“Isolde.” His grip tightened. “Do you intend to leave without taking off the dress?”

I blinked. “You want me to take it off here?”

“That dress is the mark of a Luna.” His eyes were cold, flat, like coins at the bottom of a well. “And you don’t deserve it. Take it off.”

I didn’t move.

“What’s so difficult?” He smiled then—the smile I hated most, the one that showed his teeth without any warmth behind them. “Your father stripped you naked and put you in my bed that first night. If you’re going to leave, leave the way you arrived.”

The orchestra had stopped playing. Three hundred people held their breath. And I stood there in a dress that had never been mine, married to a man who had never been mine either, and thought: so this is how a decade ends. Not with a whisper. With a zipper.

– Continue in The Luna Who Chose to Forget chapter 1 –