The Stand-In Wife – Today was my one-year wedding anniversary with Kane Nightwalker. He’d gone to the East Coast on business two months ago — well, technically, he’d traveled north to handle a territorial dispute for the Nightwalker pack — and despite the time difference, he’d made a point of calling me at 8 a.m. to say he’d bought my favorite flowers and wanted me to meet him at the pack border that evening. No sooner had I hung up than the doorbell rang. I opened the door. The young werewolf delivering the flowers was all smiles. “Congratulations, ma’am. Happy anniversary to you and the Alpha. Many years of happiness.” In his hands were nine white roses. I took them and smiled. “Thank you.” I closed the door, put the roses in a vase, and gently touched the petals. The truth was, I didn’t like white roses. They were delicate. They wilted too easily. White roses were my sister Leah Grey’s favorite flower. And for the past year, that name had belonged to me. My phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. It was a number I’d never saved but knew by heart.
A number I’d used for ten years. Whoever was calling was clearly impatient. By the third ring, I declined the call and sent a text instead. “On my way.” I put on my coat and left the pack’s central territory — this was the most upscale werewolf neighborhood in Silvermoon City. The entrance had a high-precision scent-recognition system. The pack guard knew every resident and greeted me with a smile. “Mrs. Nightwalker, heading out?” I smiled and nodded. Once outside, I turned a few corners and spotted a white sedan covered in mud, parked at the intersection. I opened the passenger door. The sharp stench of cigarette smoke hit me. “Put it out,” I said, rolling down my window. “Kane hates the smell of smoke.” The driver turned her head. “Why weren’t you answering my calls?” I paused. “Kane sent flowers this morning. You called right when I was talking to the delivery guy.” “Oh.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “What kind of flowers?” I was silent for a moment. “White roses.” She laughed suddenly. “He still remembers I like white roses.” She turned to look at me. “You know, Ella, it’s such a shame you never went through your Awakening ceremony and never got into one of those Werewolf Council-accredited academies.” She opened her window to let in some air. “Once we’re back in our rightful places, you should go through with the Awakening. I’ll give you money for plastic surgery, and you can apply to a good school’s acting program.
Who knows? You might even become a big star. It’s gotta be better than slumming it in a bar.” “Forget it,” I said quietly. “That world’s way too deep.” She snorted. “Deep? So what? Back in the day, you were waiting tables during the day and slinging drinks at the Darkmoon Tavern at night, getting groped by customers left and right. At least as a celebrity, some rich guy might decide to keep you as his little bird in a gilded cage. That’s gotta be better than before, right?” I looked at her in disbelief. She paused, coughed a couple of times, and made a face. “Oh, come on, I’m joking! Why so serious?” She turned the key in the ignition and muttered, “You weren’t like this before. I used to make way worse jokes, and you’d laugh along. Have you gotten so deep into playing me that you’ve forgotten who you really are?” “Maybe,” I said, turning to look at the face identical to mine. “Sis.” That’s right. The woman sitting next to me was my twin sister. A sister I hadn’t even known existed until two years ago. I was raised by my dad. According to him, my biological mother had an affair with a wealthy werewolf businessman shortly after giving birth to me, divorced my dad in a hurry, and married the guy.
Every time he brought up my mother, he’d fly into a rage. He’d been good-looking back in the day — one of the best-looking guys in town, apparently. Plenty of women had chased after him when he worked at the lumber mill. But my mother’s infidelity had become a wound that never healed. Back then, in a small town like ours, news of an affair spread like wildfire. My biological mother left with her wealthy werewolf for his city, and my father became the talk of the town. People embellished the details of her betrayal, passing the story from mouth to mouth until even my father stopped trying to shut it down. Once, a coworker publicly called him “a loser whose wife ran off on him.” My dad couldn’t let that slide. He beat the guy up, had to pay a fortune in medical bills, and got fired from the mill. After that, he spiraled. He started drinking, gambling, letting himself go. Whenever he got drunk, he’d grab my hand and curse the mother I’d never met. But he never once hit me. He’d always say, slurring his words, “Ella, my girl, at least you look like me.” For a while, he even got a new girlfriend. He seemed to pull himself together and found a construction job. I was a junior in high school then.
I worked nights at a restaurant to help pay off his debts, so when I heard he’d found work, I was over the moon. He told me his new girlfriend was a solid, hardworking woman. Once they got married, he said, I could focus on school and quit working. But a few months later, there was an accident at the site. A worker died. My dad and the other workers confronted the general contractor and the developer, demanding answers. Things got ugly. He got into another fight. This time it was worse. He lost his job again and landed in jail. I was still in high school. I rushed to the police station, only to see his girlfriend standing outside, hands on her hips, screaming at him. I didn’t know what had happened. I just heard her call him a liar. “You promised me a gold ring! If you’re broke, don’t talk marriage, you shameless bastard!” After that night, she was gone. And my dad went back to his old habits. The heavy drinking, the irregular meals — it all caught up with him. He gained weight, his hair grayed, and his face sagged. You couldn’t see the handsome man he’d once been. When I was a senior, he got into another fight. This time, it wasn’t him doing the winning. When I got to the hospital, he was unconscious in a bed.
He never left the hospital after that. Debt collectors showed up at our door. I hid in the kitchen, shaking, a kitchen knife clutched in my hand. The neighbor lady called the cops. Only then did they leave. My dad needed care. The medical bills kept piling up, and the debt kept growing. I made a decision. I dropped out of school. During the day, I stayed at the hospital with my dad. At night, I went back to working at the restaurant. On my twentieth birthday, Brianna, a girl I’d worked with at the restaurant, found me and shoved a business card into my hand. She was wearing heavy makeup and smiled at me. “Ella, you’re too pretty to waste yourself like this.” I was broke. I was drowning in debt. So I took the card and started working at the Darkmoon Tavern. I never went to any of my old classmates’ reunions. I’d been in the advanced program at a top-tier high school. Most of my classmates were at Ivy League schools. And I was slinging drinks at a dive bar. I figured it was just my lot in life. Until Leah Grey showed up. She caught me outside the Darkmoon Tavern after my shift. “Are you Ella?” The moment she spoke, I froze. She took off her sunglasses and grinned at me. “Hi there. I’m your twin sister, Leah Grey.” I just stared at the face looking back at me. According to her, she’d had no idea I existed either — until she’d found a photo our mother had hidden away and learned she had a twin sister.
The back of the photo had the name of a photo studio in our town, so she’d tracked me down. She was decked out in designer labels. Her hair was perfect. She had a cool boyfriend who rode a motorcycle. She said she wanted to meet our dad, so I took her to the hospital. “You’ve had such a hard life.” Tears streamed down her face at his bedside. “Ella, we’re sisters. I’m going to help you.” She secretly prepaid a whole year of our dad’s care, hired a top-notch caregiver, paid off our debts, and made me quit the Darkmoon Tavern. She took me traveling, bought me clothes, got me facials, took me to fancy restaurants, taught me how to behave. When I was with her, people treated me with respect. I wasn’t some small-town nobody anymore. I wasn’t a bar girl who had to smile for tips. At first, I didn’t want to accept her help. But she said it was our mother’s way of apologizing. “You’ve had such a hard life. If Mom knew, she’d do the same.” “Don’t worry,” she said with a wink. “I’ve got plenty of money. My parents don’t even keep tabs on me.” The dad she was talking about was her stepfather, Marcus Grey — one of Silvermoon City’s richest men, the Alpha of the Grey pack. Maybe it was because I’d never had that kind of family bond from anyone but my dad, I treasured her. I was grateful to her. I even felt a little dependent on her. Once, at a pool party, a bunch of people shoved me into the water. I couldn’t swim.
Leah couldn’t either, but she grabbed a floatie and jumped in after me. We both swallowed water anyway. Later, I asked her why she’d done it — jumped in when she couldn’t swim. She just laughed. “Silly, I’m your big sister.” She took me to Silvermoon City and asked, “Do you want to meet Mom?” I said yes. She dressed me in her clothes, and I pretended to be her when I met the woman I’d never seen before — not once in twenty-three years. She didn’t realize I wasn’t Leah. That night, Leah was practically bouncing off the walls with excitement. She dragged me and her boyfriend River Summers out for drinks. I got drunk, and through the haze, I heard her say, “See? I told you. Even Mom couldn’t tell. Who else is going to figure it out?” She said, “River, the gods are on our side.” After I’d been in Silvermoon City for a while, I discovered Leah’s secret. She had another boyfriend. Kane Nightwalker. I saw him waiting outside her apartment one day, holding a huge bouquet of white roses. Leah’s room was piled high with his gifts — lipstick, necklaces, handbags, all top-tier luxury brands.
She didn’t even look at them. I didn’t understand why she was doing this. When I asked, she was quiet for a long time, then said with red-rimmed eyes, “Ella, I honestly don’t know what to do.” She said Kane was someone her stepfather wanted her to marry for a pack alliance. And River — the motorcycle-riding, unemployed painter — was her one true love. “I know Kane is great. He says he liked me from the moment we were set up. He really is perfect. He’s like… the textbook Alpha. But I love River.” Tears were pouring down her face. “Ella, what am I supposed to do?” I clumsily wiped her tears. “Can you not marry Kane?” “How?” She shook her head. “It’s already set in stone. The whole city knows. This isn’t just about us. If I run away from this wedding, Mom will take the hit too. And Dad will definitely have River killed. River is an artist. He’s going to be a great artist someday. I can’t drag him down.” She pulled out a bottle of pills. “Before I found you, I’d been taking antidepressants for almost a year. I’m so miserable. I’ve even thought about killing myself.” “Ella,” she said, looking at me with tearful eyes, “River and I have already completed the blood-bound ritual. The baby is his.” My jaw dropped. “What?” “Ella,” she said, grabbing my hands, “can you do something for me?” That day, River drove his car, with me in it, straight into a tree. We staged an accident. When I woke up in the hospital, I was Leah with a little bit of amnesia.
Kane held my hand at the hospital and said, “Leah, don’t be scared. Even if you can’t remember, I’m here.” For the next three months after being discharged, I pretended to be Leah and went on dates with Kane. I still remember our first real date. His eyes lit up when he saw me. “Wow,” he said with a laugh. “You didn’t keep me waiting for half an hour today.” My heart skipped a beat, but I imitated Leah’s tone as best I could. “Oh, really? I guess I just changed faster today.” He looked me over. “You forgot your gloves today, though.” My heart was pounding. I was already regretting agreeing to this. No matter how much I looked like her, this was her fiancé. Sure, he hadn’t noticed at the hospital, but on a real date, was there any way he wouldn’t figure out I was a fraud? Just as I was scrambling for an excuse, he took my hand and wrapped it in his warm palms. “Here,” he said. “This way you won’t be cold.” No one had ever treated me like that. Especially not a guy. I just stared at him, forgetting for a moment that I was supposed to be acting. He laughed and brushed a strand of hair from my face. “What’s with the spaced-out look? You seem to actually like looking at me today, little princess.” And so, after dating Kane for three months, I married him — as Leah. It was a perfect pack alliance.
Both the Greys and the Nightwalkers got what they wanted. Everyone was happy. I became Mrs. Nightwalker and moved into his luxury apartment in Silvermoon City. But Leah lost the baby. She’d been riding on the back of River’s motorcycle, speeding recklessly with some friends, and she miscarried. Even after that, she still loved River. And she left Silvermoon City as Ella Winters, going to another city with him. For a year, I played the part perfectly. No one ever suspected I wasn’t the real Leah. Sometimes I wondered if I’d gotten too deep into the role myself. A sudden brake jolted me back to the present. “How’s River?” I asked quietly. “Has he contacted you lately?” “Don’t even mention him.” She laughed bitterly. “Turns out Mom was right. Love without money is nothing but trouble. I was such an idiot not to believe her.” She stopped at a red light and turned to look at me. “It took me a year to realize how good Kane really is. Thank god for you, Ella. Thank god you were there to keep him safe for me.” “That diary you keep? Such a good habit.” She pulled the car over and handed me back the journal. “Otherwise we’d have to do the whole amnesia act again. So dramatic.” I touched the journal. It was a gift from Kane on our wedding day. “Did you… memorize everything?” She waved a hand. “Of course I did. Don’t worry. He couldn’t tell you apart from me back then, and he’s not going to notice now. Besides, he’s always traveling for work. You two barely saw each other. Now he’s been gone two months. Even if there are tiny differences, how would he spot them?” It was true. Over the past month, she’d cut her hair to match mine. She’d even dragged me to the same salon and had them compare our skin inch by inch, making sure from our faces to our bodies, our skin tones to our body shapes, we were exactly the same. She pulled out a tube of lipstick and applied it, then suddenly turned to me. “I forgot to ask — you mostly wore my shade 96 and shade 32, right?” I hesitated, then gave a small “mm-hmm.” She smiled and held out her hand. “Come on. Time to swap back our phones and car keys.
Kane’s coming home tonight. Once we officially swap back, you stay here. If everything goes smoothly, in three months I’ll find someone to do your surgery.” I paused, then pulled out my phone and car keys and handed them over. “Kane,” I said, hesitating, “has a bad stomach. If he gets home late from work, remember to make him some plain congee.” “I know,” she said with a laugh. “You’ve said it a hundred times. Don’t worry. I won’t blow it.” She winked and blew me a kiss. “Acting-wise, we’re both top-tier, aren’t we?”