The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 513

Chapter 513

“… Never be good enough,” the man was slurring. “Look at you. Runt of a dead litter. You’ll amount to nothing, girl, and any pups you ever have will be failures just like you.”

The dream shifted.

She was a teenager now, washing in a river cold enough to turn her hands blue, mending the one dress she owned, mouthing words to herself over and over. Copying the way highborn wolves talked until the rogue accent came out of her voice. Then older, on the road alone, wearing everything she owned on her back, sticking her thumb out for passing cars that didn’t pick her up until one did. It was full of males who laughed as they tried to hurt her, but she hurt them back twice as hard and ran, leaving her pack behind.

And then came Goldenveil, back before the village.

Dad was young in the dream. Younger, at least. The cane aged him beyond his years. The moment my mother saw him, she set her sights on him. The Alpha. Not just an Alpha. A Lycan. A rare bloodline worth passing on to her children, if she played her cards right.

The wedding went by in a blink of an eye. The births, too. Mine was in there somewhere. She passed all three of us off to the midwives like parcels to be shipped off, closed her nightgown, and never breastfed. Not even Eli.

I think I’d always known that Mom didn’t really love us, not in the way mothers do. She cared for us, but we were tools to her. We were a foothold in the life she had built for herself. Nothing more.

The dream shifted again, and Bastian was five, then eight, then twelve, running drills in the yard until his hands bled while she stood over him with her arms crossed.

“Again.”

Falling, getting up.

“Again.”

No dinner until the form was perfect.

“Alphas don’t get to be tired, sweetheart. Again.”

The wind rose, the yard tore away, and I was on the summit.

Snow. The sun glaring. Bastian leaning her against a rock, turning back to dig his headlamp out of his pack for Dominic. I watched my injured, shivering mother rise off that rock without a wobble. I watched her shake white powder into her palm from a little pouch, and I caught the smell of it even in a dream. Sweet, then bitter. Rancid.

She clapped it over Bastian’s face from behind.

He dropped like a puppet with his strings cut. And Dominic was already turning, already running.

“What did you do?!”

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