They held a funeral for me.

Not after they pulled the plug—before it.

That was the moment reality fractured entirely.

They had already buried me in their hearts. Already scrubbed my name from their family records. I wasn’t just dead to them; I was erased, like a smudge on a pristine portrait they never wanted to admit was theirs.

“I’m sorry you had to find out like that,” Kelly had said softly one night. “If you go back, Leo… they might just try to kill you again.”

Kelly and her sister, Nelly, were the two nurses who saved my life. Unidentical twins—opposite in both personality and voice, but bound by a fierce protective loyalty. Where Kelly was soft and soothing, Nelly was sharp-edged and brutally honest.

“You’re a Luna now,” Nelly said, sitting beside me, arms folded across her chest. “Do you really want to be loved just for what you are? Not for who you are?”

She wasn’t wrong. They could either try to end me again to cover up their crimes… or worse, accept me now that I had value. That’s all I’d ever been to them—a pawn, an image, a means to a greater end. Now I was a rare commodity. A Luna. A prize.

But I wasn’t a prize for them.

I would never be theirs again.

It’s been two weeks since I left the hospital. Legally, I was dead. The doctor who once cared for me had quietly released me with a forged death certificate and a new name scrawled into records that didn’t exist. There was no home to go back to. No family to find comfort in.

But I wasn’t alone.

Kelly and Nelly took me in.

“We’ve got a spare room,” Kelly had said with a small smile. “Just until you find your feet.”

“Or until you figure out what kind of monster you’re going to become,” Nelly added with a smirk.

I laughed, because the alternative was sobbing.

---

I turned nineteen in that coma.

I should have presented at sixteen. That was when most people discovered what they were. But three years of uncertainty had hollowed out pieces of me. I had lived in a shadow, unsure of where I belonged, unsure if I was broken.

Now I knew.

And I had work to do.

Being a Luna isn’t just about having a rare scent or an intimidating presence. It’s about how you walk, how you move, how you speak. It’s in your eyes, your stance, the way a room bends itself around your existence. It’s not arrogance. It’s knowing your power—and wielding it with deadly grace.

But I wasn’t there yet.

I had to teach myself what I’d missed in those three lost years. How to talk like a Luna. Walk like a Luna. Eat like one. Look like one. It should’ve come naturally… but I was late, and that meant imperfection.

And I couldn’t afford imperfection.

Not if I wanted to take back what was mine.

---

My reflection in the mirror wasn’t unfamiliar, but it wasn’t me either.

The face was the same—angular jaw, high cheekbones, slanted eyes. A little older now. A little wearier. My crimson hair fell just past my shoulders, waves curling gently at the ends. It used to shine like blood in the sunlight. Now it was darker, richer. More violent. The crimson eyes I inherited from my mother were still there—but mine were deeper, like rubies dipped in ink.

My sister, Iris, had the same fire in her eyes—but she never had to dull it. She was accepted. She was loved.

I was a mistake. Or so they told me.

But even mistakes could become weapons.

My body was tall—over six feet—and slender. Years of my mother’s whispered warnings echoed in my ears.

"An Omega should be small, soft, unthreatening. Never outshine an Alpha. Never compete. Blend in. Submit."

Maybe if I’d grown bigger. Maybe if I’d been stronger, more masculine—just more—I could have stopped Simon. Fought back. Defended myself.

But I wasn’t enough then.

I would be now.

---

That night, I lay in bed beneath an unfamiliar ceiling in a quiet apartment that smelled faintly of lavender and antiseptic. I listened to the ticking of the wall clock. To the sound of the city outside, muted through glass. And I cried.

I hadn’t cried since I woke up.

I thought I’d exhausted every tear in that coma.

But grief has layers. And that night, I peeled one back and let myself unravel.

I cried for the boy who waited until sixteen for a presentation that never came.

I cried for the young man who loved a monster and called it devotion.

I cried for the child who heard his mother sentence him to death and said nothing.

I cried because I didn’t know who I was anymore.

---

“You need a name,” Nelly said the next morning over bitter coffee. “Leo Winslow is dead.”

“Something fitting,” Kelly added gently. “Something powerful. You’re not just reborn, Leo. You’re remade.”

A new name. A new life. A new truth.

Not hiding.

Not surviving.

Becoming.

---

I spent the next few weeks training in silence.

Kelly helped me with posture and voice—how to command attention without raising it. How to soften my scent with inhibitors when needed, and how to sharpen it like a knife when it wasn’t.

Nelly taught me how to fight. She’d once been a combat medic, and she didn’t hold back. She said the world wouldn’t either.

“You’re not just rare, you’re dangerous,” she said, pinning me to the mat. “People will come for you, either to claim you or kill you. Be ready for both.”

I bruised easily. But I healed fast.

My body wasn’t what it used to be. Something inside had shifted. My reflexes were sharper. My stamina nearly inhuman. I was evolving into something more.

Something terrifying.

Something divine.

---

Every night, I stared out the window and whispered the same words.

"I will come back."

Not to beg for love.

Not to earn forgiveness.

But to reclaim everything they stole from me.

I may have presented late.

But I was still a Luna.

And that meant something sacred.

It meant I was no one’s mistake.

It meant I was power in its purest form.

It meant I was the one they should have feared all along.