Rejected His Miracle Luna Fated Her Second Chance Alpha by Paprika
Chapter 78

Chapter 78

-Ignatius-

It was my mother who told me the story of how she had found her mate. It was one of those days where, instead of locking herself away in her study. Misirah had scooped me up and carried me outside to show me a fallen bird’s nest that she had

found

It was days like that I looked forward to the most, the days when my mother felt like a real mother, like she cared about me and wanted to include me in her private lonely life. I would watch Angie interacting with her mother, the pecks on the cheek, and the handwritten notes that were left for her when her mother had to work late on some days.

I would watch the small acts of affection and, even from a young age. I learned that my mother was not like most. There was something that my friends around me had that I did not. Although I could never quite figure out what exactly it was that was

missing.

For the most part, Moirah seemed repelled by me. She would keep her distance. She went about her motherly duties of washing me, feeding me, making sure that I brushed my teeth. But when I tried to reach for her, tried to wrap my little arms around her or k*ss her cheek the way I had seen Angie do with her mother, Mourah would wrench herself away, sometimes pushing the to the floor.

She would stare at me like I was a stranger. Like she couldn’t remember where I came from or why I was in her house. Sometimes she would look around herself in a daze like she couldn’t recall how she had gotten there at all.

But on some days, as few and far between as they were, I truly felt like my mother loved me. On days like that day, when she called me with excitement to come and see what she had found. I would drop whatever it was I was doing and rush to her side, ecstatic that my mother, my real mother, was back.

On that particular day. Moirah pulled me close to her side and tipped the fallen nest to show me three small speckled eggs

nestled inside.

I was curious and I peered into the tiny enclosure made of twigs and leaves as Moirah explained where the eggs had come from. “Do you know what a Cu ckoo bird is?” she had asked me as she stroked my hair and I shook my head.

“Cu ckoo birds are evil little creatures. They’re aggressive and cruel. They also lay their eggs inside the nests of other kinds of birds. When the egg hatches, the unsuspecting bird takes care of it as if it were one of its own.

“Sometimes, when the baby Cu ckoo gets bigger it throws the other bird’s eggs out of the nest completely. The bird has no choice but to raise the Cu ckoo like its real mother. Because of the way of nature, the poor bird feels like it doesn’t have a choice but to stay and mother the thing.

She sounded unusually angry at that, but her voice softened when she noticed my distress.

“Can you guess which egg belongs to the C uckoo bird?”

I examined the three eggs in question. They all looked the same to me. All of them had a teal tinge to their shells and brown speckles spread across them. One of them, however, was slightly bigger than the others. I pointed it out and Moirah nodded, picking the egg up with the tips of her fingers. “That’s right. Well done, Ignatius.“

“What are you going to do with it?” I had asked tentatively when she placed the rest at the foot of the tree it had fallen from and kept the Cu ckoo egg in her palm.

“People are always saying it’s best to not mess with nature,” she said it bitterly and I assumed that she was thinking of things that only grown-ups knew about. “They say there are consequences to disrupting the flow

She lifted her hand to her face, examining the egg through the cra cks in her fingers. “But sometimes, those rules are meant to be broken. And surely such an imposter deserves to be punished?”

I cried out in horror as she crushed the egg in her hand. Yellowy liquid and congealed blood ran down her arm and she

stared at her denched list. I remembered the look on her face when she had done it. There was anger there, frightening Tury But there was also relief as if she was finally allowed to breathe again.

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Chapter 70

After that, she had taken me in her arms, her fingers still dripping with the gruesome fluid, and lulled me when I began to cry, “It’s alright baby, it was only an egg”

Eventually, my sobbing receded and she had offered to push maron the swing that my father had built in a nearby tree nutsisle of our house. That cherred me up almost immediately and I rushed to the tire and rope contraption and waited for Moirah to make me fly.

I remembered the rhythmic thump of her hands on my back that pushed me into the air. I giggled gleefully as I swung into the air with legs kicking and then fell back down to earth again.

swang, squealing with excitement when the ground seemed so far away beneath me, Moorah began to speak. And all the while there was that thump of hands on my back, pushing me higher and catching me again.

“You know, I met your father completely by accident,” she had said quietly and her voice trailed away like she was looking back into the past. I was too busy enjoying myself to truly listen to what she was saying but her words held weight all the

“My parents were travelers. Rogues. My mother had always wanted to senle down agam but my father would have none of it. He had been the Alpha of a small pack until he was kicked out. He never did let it go, and he refused to join another pack as anything less than an Alpha He dragged my mother and me along with him on his latile search for conquest.”

At the mention of her father, my interest was piqued. “You said it was his finger in the jar, Was it his finger?” The thought of a severed finger in a jar enthralled me for some reason.

“No, she had laughed and I thought I must have said something right because my mother never laughed.

“No that wasn’t his. But it should have been. My father went up against your father, Elbot, when we stumbled on territory one day. Elliot was the Alpha to be and he wasn’t too happy to have lurkers on his turf. My father, hows tough to back down. Eventually, Ellot put hum in the dirt.”

There was a wistful tone in her voice that I couldn’t understand. My mother had cried but I was ecstatic, I was final The second Elliot’s eyes caught mine, we were in love and married soon after that. My mother wouldn’t accept it and disappeared the night Elliot killed my father. I never saw her agum.“

Her voice turned bitter after that. And the thump on my back grew more aggressive, pushed me to new heights, and winded me with the force of it.

“I did love your father once, or at least I thought I did. Elliot was charming, he promised to protect me. It was only after he put a child in me that he let his true colors show. And now I’m trapped again, fated to take care of a monster and his son.”

I swung into the air once more, flying so high I thought I would swing a complete 180 around the tree branch. When I fell back down again the hands at my back were gone. I swung back and forth, waiting for the momentum to slow enough for me to climb off without falling while I watched my mother walk away from me. I never heard her laugh again.

Now, as I watched my parents collide with one another in a flurry of teeth and claws, I thought back to that day, Moirah had tried her best to love me. But she had never quite managed it. I was always going to be another bar in her prison cell. Years of pent-up anger and the greatest need to run away had twisted my mother into something else entirely.

That tire swing didn’t exist anymore. Neither did the house. My father had burned it down the day my mother left and after that, we built a new house.

Only that house was situated as far away from the previous one as Elliot could manage. Even the field was gone, abandoned and mattended, it became nothing but a scar of dead earth and soil that poisoned anything that tried to grow there.

I wanted to intervene in my parent’s battle but my legs refused to move. I no longer knew who I was supposed to be defending. My father was lighting the woman who had sworn revenge on my people. My mother was lighting the man who had sworn revenge on hier.

I winced when my mother’s woll yelped as Elliot caught her in his jaws at the scruff of her n*eck. It was a horrific battle. It was wrong and terrifying and I could do nothing to stop them. They were determined to tear each other to pieces.

Unable to get to her feet from where Elliot had pinned her dow, Moirah shifted back to human form in the blink of an eye

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LID ONTS

Chapter 78

and sl*pped away from Elliot before he could snap his jaws down again.

She darted across the clearing and threw open the canvas curtains of the tent. My father shifted too and bolted after her but not before Moirah, bleeding and breathing heavily, could bring a vial of dark liquid to her l*ps.

She gulped down every last drop and, as soon as Elliot was upon her she turned, shattering the glass against his head and shifting once more, While Elliot stumbled back, wiping blood from his eyes that poured from a nasty ga sh in his forehead Moirali dropped to the floor like her b*dy had suddenly given up. Elliot raised his fists and I finally began to move.

“No, don’t

I shifted on the spot and sprinted to my father, stopping his fist midair and wrenching him away from where my mother lay, seemingly unconscious.

“Leave her alone! I kicked at my father who fell to his knees, growling. “She’s down. You’ve done enough.”

Eliot spat blood on the floor and looked up at me with angry eyes. “Now you’re defending her? She’s the reason the Bielke is in trouble.”

Elliot stood up and tried to push past me but I pushed back, glancing over my shoulder at my mother who didn’t seem to be breathing. What was the stuff in the jar?

Furious, Elliot barrelled towards me again, fur breaking out on his skin as he roared, “Can’t you see what she’s doing?! That’s how she’s been turning these shifters! She’s going to wake up stronger.

The words had barely passed his l*ps when something thumped against my back, into my back.

I gasped and sta ggered forwards a few steps. Sudden pain shot through my back, traveled up my spine, and made my head spin. Elliot’s eyes were wide with shock. I had never before seen my father truly stunned.

Whatever had buried itself in my back was suddenly removed and I felt hot blood beginning to flow. I turned slowly, hazily, and faced my mother, Moirah’s face was a blank slate, her eyes were cold and wide open. Her pupils were pinpricks. She looked taller, stronger. Her clawed right hand was red with blood. My blood

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