He Claimed My Best Friend, I Claimed My Future Chapter 02
Marina was shocked.
“I thought you wanted to wait until after the next full moon because you couldn’t say goodbye to your friends. I even guessed you might have found your mate.”
“If you had someone here, we wouldn’t have to move. You could come home on breaks.”
I held back the sting behind my eyes and shook my head.
“Leaving sooner is better.”
Marina looked at my reddened eyes. She didn’t ask anything else. She just pulled me into a hug.
I didn’t sleep well that night. I drifted in and out of sleep, and when I woke up, my head was pounding.
When I checked my phone, someone had posted a video of Lucian and Serena kissing in the pack group chat.
Dozens of comments:
[So sweet. They really do look like a future Alpha and Luna.]
[I could tell during training they were meant to be. My instincts were right.]
Among all the messages, Lucian sent a voice note from Serena’s account. “Yes. She is mine.”
More wolves chimed in with excitement.
I wasn’t surprised by any of it, but my heart still ached fiercely.
I scrolled quickly and found that someone had taken a screenshot of me from the video, cropped and isolated.
[What’s that face Nora’s making? Hilarious. She didn’t actually think she had a chance, did she?]
[She’s not even worthy. She’s just Serena’s shadow.]
[Shadow. Yeah, that fits.]
[I honestly don’t know how an Omega like her ended up in our training group. I mean, you have to be a strong warrior to qualify.]
No one thought Lucian could ever like me.
He was too brilliant. And I was just an Omega.
Three years ago, when Lucian first kissed me by the forbidden forest, my wolf had woken up deep in my chest.
My chest had burned like it was on fire, and my wolf let out a loud, joyful howl. I’d never seen her so happy. I’d never known a kiss could feel so good.
His blue eyes locked onto mine, and I forgot everything else. I just wanted to lose myself in that kiss.
Lucian’s cheeks had flushed too. He’d stroked my hair and said, “I want to claim you right now.”
But he couldn’t. Lucian’s time was never just his own. He had training, patrols, the Alpha Heir Trials to prepare for, and a perfect, calm, and powerful image to maintain in front of everyone.
For three years, I’d been the shadow behind him.
No one knew we’d held hands. No one knew he’d kissed me secretly in the empty training grounds. No one knew he’d put his jacket over my shoulders and whispered for me not to be afraid.
Because of tradition, when others were around, he acted like a stranger. Some wolves started spreading the rumor that the future Alpha didn’t like Omegas. But we couldn’t clear it up.
Serena would curse them out for me.
“Nora doesn’t like Lucian. Say that again and I’ll shut your mouth for good.”
Lucian comforted me in private.
“I don’t explain things because I don’t want them to get jealous and say worse things about you. Once the Alpha Heir Trials are over, we can be together openly.”
I believed him.
For that hope, to catch up to Lucian, I trained like my life depended on it. I wanted to be worthy of being a future Luna.
I learned to run, to tell different howls apart, to recognize the complex scents in the air. I fell off cliffs and got scratched by thorns. But I never stopped training.
In long distance runs, I started at the back of the pack.
But as other wolves tired out, I kept passing them one by one. My lungs burned. The world shrank down to just the sound of my feet hitting the ground. Still, I pushed toward the finish line.
In the end, I placed tenth in the long-distance run. That was already a record for an Omega. I was out of breath and drenched in sweat, but I was smiling.
Then I noticed Serena had fallen behind. She’d taken a spill and ended up around twentieth. I ran toward her right away.
But Lucian got there first. He knelt beside her and started rubbing her calf.
Serena winced and snapped at him, “What are you doing here? Come to laugh at me for losing to you?”
Lucian grinned. “I’m here to give you a consolation prize. Your running form is off. That’s why you keep falling. I noticed it a while ago. Stay after training, and I’ll help you fix it.”
He pressed deeper into her muscle. Serena half laughed, half yelled at him.
I’d been in so many training sessions, and I’d never gotten that much attention from Lucian. He’d never offered to help me improve.
Later, Lucian explained.
“She’s your best friend, so I suggested extra training. If we met alone, it might give us away. With Serena there, we’d have a reason to be together more.”
He said it was for me.
But what I saw was Lucian spending time openly with Serena, joking and bickering.
And most of the time, I sat silently to the side, unable to get a word in.
Our classmates saw them growing closer. They said they made a great couple. They laughed and called me a third wheel.
So many times, I wanted to tell Serena that Lucian and I were together.
But Lucian always stopped me.
“Serena can’t keep a secret. If it gets back to my parents, we’re in trouble. Wait. Just wait until the Alpha Heir Trials are over. I’ll claim you.”
All I ended up waiting for was Lucian announcing to the pack, “Yes. Serena is mine.”
From start to finish, I was just an excuse for them to get closer. A shadow who didn’t matter.
I put my phone down, my face wet with tears.
But the ache inside me didn’t hurt anymore. My wolf had shaken off the blow.
This really was the last time I would cry over Lucian.
