POV Blake
Here's the thing nobody tells you about pretending to be someone else: sometimes the lie becomes more real than your actual life.
Three weeks into my stint as Fake Amelia, and I'm having a full-blown identity crisis.
Not because I'm failing—that would be simpler. No, I'm spiraling because I'm fucking thriving, and that wasn't part of the plan.
Bloodmoon pack is everything Nightshade isn't.
Where my birth pack operates on fear and hierarchy, these wolves actually seem to—brace yourself—give a shit about each other.
Pack members greet me with genuine smiles instead of calculating my genetic worth. Elders offer advice instead of disappointment. Even the omega wolves walk with their heads up.
It's like discovering sunshine after twenty years in a basement.
"Luna Amelia!" A tiny voice crashes into my legs, and I look down to find Norah, age six and approximately three feet of concentrated chaos. "Are you coming to school today?"
Right. The pack school.
My newest obsession and probably the stupidest thing I could've gotten attached to.
"Wouldn't miss it, little monster." I ruffle her dark curls, ignoring how natural the gesture feels. "What's today's topic?"
"Finger painting!" She bounces like a caffeinated rabbit. "Mr. Tony says we're doing pack portraits!"
Great. Tiny wolves creating art. What could possibly make me more emotionally compromised?
The school is a converted barn that somehow manages to be both rustic and high-tech—tablets next to wooden blocks, smart boards beside finger paint stations.
I've been coming here for two weeks, initially as part of my "perfect Luna" act, but somewhere between story time and snack distribution, it stopped being pretend.
These kids don't care that I'm allegedly grieving my twin. They don't know I'm a genetic disappointment. To them, I'm just Luna Amelia who does funny voices during story time and doesn't get mad when they spill juice on her jeans.
"Alright, chaos gremlins," I announce, clapping my hands. "Who wants to hear about the time the Moon Goddess got stuck in a tree?"
Twenty tiny hands shoot up, and my chest does that dangerous warm thing that definitely isn't part of the mission.
I'm halfway through my heavily embellished mythology lesson when I get a spectacularly terrible idea.
"Hey," I tell Norah during snack time, "think our Alpha would want to help with lessons sometime?"
Her eyes go wider than physically possible. "Alpha Matthias? Here? Teaching us?"
"Worth asking, right?"
Because apparently, I'm not content with regular self-destruction. I need to go advanced.
So that same evening, I cornered Matthias in his study. "I have a proposition."
He looks up from his laptop, one eyebrow raised. "Should I be concerned?"
"The pups at school would lose their minds if you did a lesson. Battle stories, pack history, whatever. Just... you being there would mean everything to them."
Something in his expression softens, and fuck me, it's like watching granite develop feelings.
"When?"
"Really? Just like that?"
"Of course. The young ones are our future. When would you like me there?"
And so two days later, I watched Matthias sprawled on the classroom floor, surrounded by tiny wolves hanging on his every word about proper shifting form.
He's patient with their endless questions, and demonstrates breathing techniques with exaggerated movements that make them giggle. Even lets tiny Norah braid flowers into his hair because "Alphas need to be pretty too."
My ovaries practically explode.
This is bad. This is very, very bad.
I'm not supposed to develop feelings. I'm definitely not supposed to imagine what our own pups would look like. (His eyes, definitely. My stubbornness, unfortunately.)
"Thank you," I tell him after, when the kids have sugar-crashed and we're walking home. "That meant everything to them."
"To them?" He gives me a look that sees too much. "Or to you?"
"Don't get cocky, Alpha. Your flower crown's crooked."
He laughs, adjusting Norah's masterpiece, and I pretend my heart isn't doing backflips.
But the real problem, besides my inconvenient feelings, is Sage Helen. Matthias's mom has adopted me with the determination of a woman who's never met a stray she couldn't feed.
She appears at random with herbal teas, drags me to the healing gardens, and listens to my carefully edited stories with the kind of maternal attention that makes me want to confess everything and sob in her lap.
"You're looking peaked, my dear," she says one afternoon, studying me with those too-knowing eyes. "Have you been sleeping well?"
"Like a baby," I lie, ignoring the bone-deep ache that's been getting worse.
My skeleton's throwing daily tantrums now, like a toddler who missed nap time.
"Hmm." She doesn't look convinced. "Come. It’s tea time."
Resisting Sage Helen is like resisting gravity—theoretically possible but practically stupid. I follow her to the healing center, where she putters around with herbs while I pretend my joints aren't staging a revolt.
"I've been having some pain," I admit, because apparently her mom energy breaks down my defenses. "It just aches. Probably from training."
She turns sharply. "What kind of pain?"
"Like..." How do I explain that my bones feel wrong? "Growing pains? But I'm only twenty, so that's stupid."
Her expression does something complicated before settling on determination. "Sit. I have just the thing."
The tea she brews smells like forest and moonlight, which shouldn't be a scent but somehow is. "This will help ease your body, and your soul."
I want to make a joke about new-age werewolf medicine, but the first sip shuts me up.
Warmth spreads through me like liquid comfort, unknotting muscles I didn't know were tense. The bone-ache fades to background noise.
"Holy shit," I breathe. "What is this?"
"Language, my dear." But she's smiling. "Old family recipe. Rest here for a bit. Let it work."
The garden hanging chair is surprisingly too cozy, or maybe that's the magical tea talking. Sun filters through the herbs, bees buzz lazily, and for the first time in weeks, my body doesn't feel like a prison.
I don't mean to fall asleep. But the dream hits like a slap.
Amelia stands in our childhood room, wearing the clothes she died in, looking exactly like me but somehow more. Always more.
"You're wasting it," she says, voice mixing love and disappointment like a cocktail. "I died for this chance, and you're wasting it."
"I'm doing what they asked—"
"I sacrificed everything. My life, my future, my husband—"
"Your what?"
But she's fading, the dream dissolving into accusations and grief.
"You were always the stronger twin, Blake. So why do you keep choosing to be weak?"
I jolt awake gasping, skin clammy with sweat and guilt. I'm cradled against something warm and solid and—
"Shh." Matthias's voice rumbles through his chest where my head rests. "You're safe. Just a dream."