The Stand-In Queen Chapter 04
I didn’t wait for his answer. I turned and walked toward the hall doors.
He reached to stop me. I sidestepped him gently.
“This Bond, I return to you. Not as a trade. As an ending.”
I looked at the four of them one last time, my voice barely audible:
“I won’t be coming back. Consider these six years my repayment for being born into the family. From here on, take care of yourselves.”
I hated them for bringing me back.
If they had left me alone, I would have lived out my days with my foster mother in the countryside.
She wouldn’t have cried herself blind from missing me, and died alone on a winter night.
The next morning, I woke in a cottage in the outlands.
The table was covered with letters like scattered snow.
The maid whispered, “They were sent by the King and your parents… I did as you asked. I told no one where you were.”
I opened a few at random.
“Ayla, Mother knows you’re angry. What was said yesterday came from temper. We know we were wrong. Come back and let us talk properly, won’t you?”
“Ayla, wherever you are, return at once. I will never agree to the severance.”
Kael’s handwriting was messy, nothing like his usual forceful strokes. Could he actually be panicking?
I kept looking, and found another hand. Delicate. Feminine.
Elara.
“Ayla, stepping aside is simply returning what was mine. Playing the victim now only makes me look like the villain.”
“How naive. Did six years as Luna Queen convince you this was real? Did you actually start believing you belonged?”
“That night, he told me himself. Only I am worthy of bearing his heir. Marrying you was nothing but a stopgap to spare the pack humiliation.”
“Remember this. You will always be my replacement. And what replacement could ever dream of being loved?”
“Ayla. You will never win against me.”
I went rigid.
So the tenderness he had shown me over six years was all a lie.
Her words were shears, slicing through the last of my self-deception.
To comfort her, he hadn’t even spared me a shred of dignity.
Then everything I had done yesterday to hold myself together must have looked like a complete joke to her.
I forced myself to focus, and handed the severance document to the maid.
“Deliver this to the Pack Hall immediately.”
I tucked Elara’s letter inside with it.
I packed quickly, hired a carriage, and drove deeper into the outlands.
I settled in a cottage by the water.
That night, I pulled a yellowed scroll from beneath my pillow.
An Ancient Scroll, copied from the pack’s archive chamber.
A Rejection Ceremony requires both parties, the witness of Elders, the eyes of everyone. I refused. And he had written “never.”
But my mind was made up.
The scroll recorded that with blood as the catalyst, one could unilaterally tear the Mate Bond apart.
I gripped a silver blade and aimed it at my fingertip.
Runes began to glow faintly across the parchment.
Then,urgent footsteps pounded across the yard outside. The maid rushed up, breathless, shouting from beyond the door:
“Miss! Something terrible!”
My hand froze.
