The Pack's Daughter (Aysel and Magnus) novel Chapter 2

Aysel’s POV

Three nights ago, Celestine came to find me.

“You know Damon’s planning your Luna Coronation, right?” she said sweetly, though venom laced every syllable.

Her eyes—those wide, shimmering amber eyes everyone called gentle—hid something darker that only I ever saw: envy, sharp and starving.

“I heard the Elders wanted to skip the ceremony entirely and announce the bond straightaway,” she continued, brushing an invisible speck from her silk sleeve. “But Damon insisted on doing it properly—he wanted to hear your ‘yes’ himself. Isn’t that romantic?”

I looked up from the documents on my desk, keeping my tone even. “So?”

Her lips curved, too slow, too deliberate. “So, Aysel, you—of all wolves—don’t deserve happiness.”

She tilted her head, the candlelight glinting off her pale hair. “Let’s make a bet, cousin. Three nights from now, your pretty coronation won’t happen at all.”

And in that moment, I understood. She’d already set something in motion.

Celestine Ward, my aunt’s daughter—taken in by my parents after her mother’s death—my cousin by blood and foster sister by name, the Moonvale darling, my rival by fate, was never content unless she was standing on the ruins of my joy.

The Luna coronation ended in chaos.

One cry, one name—Celestine—and Damon had run.

As if the moon itself had called him.

The guests scattered. The chants died. The pack banners hung heavy, dripping with wax and silence.

Skylar tried to insist on driving me home—she’d seen my face, pale as bone—but a message came from the Frostfang elders. Something urgent. She had to go.

So I told her to leave. I lied and smiled like always, because that’s what I’d been trained to do.

The hall emptied. I stayed behind, staring at the crushed moon-roses littering the marble floor. For a long while, I said nothing. Then, quietly, I laughed.

Because it was almost funny, wasn’t it?

The ceremony, the vows, the illusion of choice.

I left the Moonvale Hall past midnight, walking along the river under the faint scent of blooming nightshade. The moonlight on the water looked like a wound trying to heal.

I didn’t want to go home. Not yet. The house would smell like disappointment and old grief.

That’s when I noticed them—footsteps behind me. Too close. Too steady.

Rogues, or drunk wolves from another pack.

Didn’t matter.

I lifted my phone, pretending to take a selfie, and caught their reflections in the screen—three of them, closing in.

My pulse slowed instead of quickening. Funny. Fear had long ago stopped visiting me.

I pressed the emergency rune on my phone. Damon’s name flashed across the screen—he’d insisted on setting it up last year after a fight broke out during a council banquet.

“If you’re ever in danger,” he’d said, holding my wrist to program the mark. “Call me. Don’t be reckless again. Promise me.”

I had promised.

And tonight, for the first time, I actually kept it.

The call connected.

“Aysel?” Damon’s voice was low, tired—familiar enough to ache.

He sounded distracted. I could hear soft beeping in the background. A healer’s ward.

“Someone’s following me,” I said.

There was a pause. Too long. Then:

“Aysel, I really can’t do this tonight. Please, don’t make a scene.”

He thought I was lying. Again.

A woman’s voice drifted faintly through the receiver—my mother...oh now is Celestine’s mother, Luna Evelyn.

“Damon, give me that.”

Then her voice, sharp and cold: “Aysel Vale! Your sister just barely survived an attack, and you’re still out prowling like some wild stray? Stop making excuses for attention! No one’s leaving this ward, do you hear me?”

Click. Disconnected.

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