The Sickened Luna's Last Chance novel Chapter 322

Ella’s POV

I took a step back instinctively, a fear colder than the rain rushing through me. Margaret couldn’t know who I was. She couldn’t recognize me. I was supposed to be dead and buried.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met,” I said, forcing a smile.

Margaret’s sharp eyes studied my face for a long moment. Too long. I always hated the way she seemed to see straight through everyone she met, and right now was no different. “You look so familiar. You remind me of someone I once knew…”

I wanted to turn tail and run, but I couldn’t. That would only make me look more suspicious, and knowing Margaret, she might say or do something vindictive just for the hell of it.

Instead, I shrugged, trying to look more confused than how I really felt–which was terrified. “Maybe you’ve seen me around the territories?” I asked. “I was in the Luna Trial recently. Made it to the final round and everything.”

“The Luna Trial…” Margaret’s eyes flickered with recognition, and suddenly her expression brightened. “Ah, that’s where I know you from! I thought Alpha Alexander chose you as his bride.”

Relief flooded through me. She thought she only recognized me from the gossip and news coverage, not because I was her dead stepdaughter.

“Oh, that was just a mistake,” I said quickly, waving my hand and smiling even though the amount of fake smiles I’d put on recently was beginning to hurt. “He meant to choose someone else. Just a mix–up with the names.”

“How… unfortunate. I suppose beauty isn’t everything, though, is it?”

I bit my tongue. Margaret’s gaze glittered with malicious glee at her own words, as if the mere thought of another woman’s misfortune–especially a younger one who she apparently deemed as pretty and therefore more of a threat, which was exactly how she felt about me in my past life and no doubt how she felt in this one.

She never liked attractive young women. They just served as a reminder that she was aging, and not very gracefully, judging from her rather obvious recent facelift; I wondered if that was where she and my father went during my funeral, actually. To hide away in their vacation house while she recovered from her plastic surgery.

If I wasn’t bitter toward them before, I certainly wasn’t now.

Of course,

I didn’t say any of that out loud. Even if I could have done so without revealing myself, I wouldn’t have. Margaret may have been a nasty person, but she didn’t deserve to die.

“I suppose not,” I said instead. “Anya deserved to win, and I’m glad she did.”

did.”

Margaret’s lips curved. “Yes, well, the poor girl has her work cut out for her. Alpha Alexander hardly waited a fortnight before he was searching for another Luna. What does that say about the way he feels regarding love?”

“Perhaps he had reasons other than love to search for a new Luna,” I bit back.

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“Hm. Perhaps.” Margaret stared at me for a long moment.

“Well, the rain is worsening, so I should get going,” I said, moving to walk past her. “I apologize for running into you.”

Margaret simply hmphed and brushed past me, hurrying toward the library. I stood there in the rain for a moment, watching her disappear through the heavy doors. Honestly, I was curious as to what she was doing at the library to begin with. She had never been the reading type; not as long as I’d known her, at least. And in a storm like this, no less?

Without really thinking about it, I found myself turning around and heading back toward the building. The rain was coming down harder now, soaking through my cardigan and making my hair stick to my face. But I had to know what she was up to, if anything at all.