Neglected Luna: Her White Wolf Rises

They call me the "invisible wife," the domestic servant with a title. For eighteen years, I played the role of the weak, submissive Luna to my Alpha husband, Anthony.

But the scent of overripe peaches and another wolf's musk on his custom suit shattered my illusion.

He wasn't just cheating; he was popping illegal Bond-Blockers to numb our sacred connection, hiding his betrayal while I catered to his every whim.

Desperate for the truth, I tracked him to the Moonlight Hotel. I expected to find him in bed with his mistress, Katia.

I didn't expect to hear my own teenage son, Jacob, laughing with them.

"Mom is just a human in a wolf's skin," he sneered through the door. "I'm ashamed she's my mother. Katia is what a real Luna looks like."

His words cut deeper than any blade. They mocked my lack of scent. They called me a defect.

They didn't know the jagged scar on my chest exists because I poured my entire essence into Jacob's dying lungs the night he was born.

I became "weak" solely to keep him alive.

And this is how they repay me? By plotting to replace me with the woman spending my inheritance?

They want a powerful Luna? They're about to get one.

I wiped my tears and looked in the mirror, my hazel eyes flashing a blinding, predatory silver.

The White Wolf has been dormant for sixteen years, but tonight, at the Pack Gala, she wakes up to hunt.

Chapter 1

The first intimation that my life was a meticulously fabricated stage play was not a smear of lipstick on a collar, nor the alien scent of perfume clinging to a suit; it was an iMessage, glowing with a placid blue light on the family's shared iPad.

I'd been wiping down the counters after dinner, the sharp, clean scent of lemon oil still hanging in the air. Anthony, my husband-a celebrated architect-was ostensibly on business in Chicago. Jacob, our sixteen-year-old son, was supposedly cloistered in his room, preparing for his SATs. The house was settled, breathing with the low thrum of the dishwasher.

I picked up the iPad from the granite island, my intention being to consult the forecast for my morning run. But a banner notification lay upon the glass, a preview of a message that seemed to lock my diaphragm in place; I opened my mouth to draw a breath and found I could not, only a faint, dry hiss escaping my throat.

From a number I did not recognize: *Last night was insane. Can't stop thinking about that hotel room. You owe me a Round 2... soon.* It was followed by a vulgar string of pictograms-a winking face, a splash of water, an eggplant.

The low hum of the dishwasher was suddenly lost to a more insistent sound, the violent thumping within my own chest, a sound so loud I felt the vibration of it behind my eyes.

My first thought, a mother's reflex, flew straight to Jacob. My son. My quiet, sometimes sullen, but fundamentally decent boy. Was he... entangled with someone? Someone older? The notion was not a bucket of sludge, but a slow, cold pouring of wet cement into my veins. The reference to a hotel room felt so squalid, so perilously adult.

I sank onto a barstool, the strength fleeing my legs. Jacob was a good boy, but he was sixteen. Sixteen-year-old boys, I knew, were vessels of impulse, driven by a hormonal tide they barely understood. My mind raced, conjuring the image of some predatory woman from his part-time job at the bookstore.

I needed counsel, but I could not speak of this to my friends. The shame felt like a personal failure, a stain upon my own maternal competence. So I did what any desperate, anonymous soul in this century does. I turned to the cold, blue light of Reddit.

I found a private parenting forum, a digital space I occasionally visited for guidance on navigating the treacherous terrain of the teenage years. Using an anonymous account, I laid out the situation, my fingers trembling as I typed. I kept the details sparse.

"Found a suggestive message on a shared device. I believe my high-school son (16M) is in an inappropriate relationship with someone older. The message mentioned a 'hotel room.' I'm terrified and don't know how to approach this. Any advice?"

The responses materialized quickly. Sympathy, mostly. Suggestions on how to broach the subject without accusation. The standard fare of such places.

Then, one comment landed like a stone thrown into a still pond.

User4815162342: "Hold up. You're assuming it's your son?"

I blinked at the screen. What could that mean? Of course, it was my son. Who else?

I typed back, a defensive heat rising in my face. "Yes. Who else?"

Another user, SuburbanGothMom, chimed in. "Read the message again. Carefully. The phrasing. 'You owe me a Round 2.' Does that sound like a boy of sixteen? Or does it sound like someone accustomed to being in command?"

The air in the room seemed to thin and grow colder. I scrolled back up to my own post, re-reading the words I had transcribed. *You owe me...*

Redditor_JaneDoe: "Also, the hotel room. Most hotels require a credit card and someone over 21 to check in. Can a 16-year-old on a bookstore salary procure a hotel room for a tryst?"

My breath caught in my throat. No. No, he could not. Jacob's debit card had a fifty-dollar-a-day limit that I had set myself. He complained about it ceaselessly. He could not afford a soda at the cinema without a lecture, let alone a hotel room.

My mind became a fog of denial. This was absurd. These were strangers on the internet, weaving fantasies from the ether.

But the seed of doubt had been planted. It was a tiny, poisonous thing, but it was already beginning to sprout. The comments kept coming, a cascade of dispassionate logic that chipped away at the marble facade of my life.

"OP, is there another man in the house?"

The question hung there on the screen, both obscene and accusatory. My fingers hovered over the keyboard.

Anthony.

My Anthony. The man who brought me coffee in bed each morning. The man who was lauded in glossy magazines as the model husband and father, a visionary architect who still made time to attend his son's soccer matches. The man I had loved for two decades.

The idea was so preposterous I almost laughed. A brittle, hollow sound.

But the Reddit thread had taken on its own momentum. The commenters were like coroners, dissecting a body I had not even realized was dead.

Then came the top comment, the one that made the floorboards seem to dissolve beneath my feet.

LegalEagle88: "OP, consider all possibilities. The language, the pictograms... they feel more mature, more transactional. Do not fixate on one suspect without more data. Who else, a man, has access to the device? A 16-year-old boy is one possibility. A man in his forties is another. The context fits one of those scenarios far better than the other."

The screen blurred. A peculiar chill began not in my blood, but on the surface of my skin, as if a window had been opened onto a winter landscape; the fine hairs on my arms stood erect. The eggplant pictogram. The demanding tone. The hotel room.

It could not be.

Anthony.

My vision cleared, focusing on the screen with a terrible new precision. The absurdity curdled into a thick, choking dread. My stomach churned. A wave of nausea so profound washed over me that I had to grip the cold granite of the counter to keep from folding in on myself.

*He's in Chicago,* I told myself. *He's at a conference.*

The sound of the front door opening made me jolt. Keys rattled in the ceramic bowl by the door.

"Alex? I'm home! Surprise!"

Anthony's voice, warm and familiar, echoed from the foyer. He was home a day early.

He walked into the kitchen, his handsome face breaking into that wide, charismatic smile. He was still in his travel clothes, a tailored blazer and expensive denim. The perfect portrait of the successful man returning to his perfect home.

"I finished up early and couldn't wait to see my two favorite people," he said, dropping his briefcase and pulling me into a hug. He smelled of expensive cologne and the faint, sterile air of an airplane cabin. He kissed the top of my head. "I missed you."

He pulled back, his smile faltering as he studied my face. "Hey, you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

He held up a small, elegant box from a famous Chicago chocolatier. "I brought you your favorite dark chocolate caramels."

His eyes were full of concern. The same warm, brown eyes that had looked at me across a thousand dinner tables. The eyes of my husband. The father of my child.

A liar.

I managed a weak smile, my facial muscles feeling stiff and foreign. "Just... tired. Long day."

He set the chocolates on the counter and wrapped his arms around me from behind, resting his chin on my shoulder. His touch, usually a comfort, now felt like the bars of a cage. "Poor baby. Why don't you go up and take a hot bath? I'll handle everything down here. I'll even come up and give you a back rub later." He knew me. He knew precisely what to say.

I let him hold me for a moment longer, a final, desperate test. I leaned my head back against his chest, the rhythm of his heartbeat a steady, duplicitous drum against my spine.

"No, I'm okay," I whispered, wrenching myself from his embrace with a mechanical stiffness. I feared if I remained a moment longer, the woman who had played the part of 'wife' for twenty years would crack from within, not into pieces, but into a fine, white powder. "I'm glad you're home."

He squeezed my shoulders, his performance flawless. "Go on, I insist. I'll go say hi to Jake."

As he headed upstairs, I walked over to his briefcase, which he'd left by the counter. My hand was shaking. I felt a pang of guilt, of shame for my suspicion. This was Anthony. My Anthony.

He'd offered me his phone on the drive home from the airport once, when mine was dead. "Use mine, honey, check whatever you want." He had nothing to hide. His phone was an open ledger of business emails and texts from his mother.

I forced myself to stop. I was becoming paranoid, driven to madness by anonymous voices on the internet.

I decided to unpack for him. A wife's normal task. A way to feel normal again. I carried his suitcase into the laundry room. I unzipped the main compartment, pulling out his shirts and suits, the familiar scent of his cologne filling the small space.

Then I unzipped the front pocket.

My hand brushed against something small and square. A foil packet.

I pulled it out.

I stared at the cheap linoleum floor of the laundry room, at the faux-marble pattern swirling in the vinyl, and the pattern suddenly became the only thing in the room I could comprehend.

It was a condom wrapper. A high-end, ridiculously expensive brand he had never used with me. The same brand, I realized with a fresh wave of nausea, that I had found a stray one of in the bottom of Jacob's laundry basket a month ago and had dismissed as teenage experimentation.

My knees buckled. I crumpled to the floor, the foil wrapper cold against my palm. The room spun. The air in the small room, thick with the scent of detergent and his cologne, now seemed a toxic vapor; each attempt to breathe made my lungs burn. The Reddit comment echoed in my head. *A man in his forties...*

The pieces clicked into place with a sickening, final snap.

It wasn't Jacob.

It was never Jacob.

It was my husband.

My phone buzzed on the counter where I'd left it. A new notification from Reddit. I crawled over to it, my body trembling uncontrollably.

It was a direct message from LegalEagle88.

"I'm a divorce lawyer, by the way. If your gut is telling you it's your husband, listen to it. And if it is, don't confront him. Gather proof. Then, you will take everything he has built, from the Italian desk in his office to the fawning articles written about him, and you will turn it all to ash."

My vision sharpened. The nausea receded, replaced by a glacial calm. The tears that had been threatening to fall froze in my ducts.

I looked at the condom wrapper in my hand. I thought of my son, upstairs, being greeted by his deceitful, manipulative father. I thought of twenty years of my life, a lie.

I unlocked my phone. This time, my fingers were not trembling. They moved as if they were separate from me, like the components of a well-oiled machine executing a command without hesitation or emotion. I navigated back to the Reddit app and replied to the lawyer.

"Tell me how."