Chapter: Chapter 32: Masks and MirrorsElena's POVThe Resort was beautiful in the way that obscene wealth always was understated, tasteful, and utterly removed from reality.I stood in the grand lobby beside Adrien, watching people who controlled billions flow past us like we were invisible. Tailored suits. Designer dresses. Jewelry that cost more than most people made in a lifetime. Everyone moved with the casual confidence of those who'd never known the consequences."You okay?" Adrien murmured, his hand at the small of my back."No." I tried to smile. Failed. "But I'm here."We'd arrived an hour ago. Checked in under our real names no point in aliases when they'd sent the invitation directly to me. The staff had been perfectly professional, perfectly discreet. No questions about why Adrien Sterling, recently resigned CEO, was attending an elite investors' summit. No curiosity about Elena Santos.They knew. Of course they knew. Everyone here knew exactly who we were and why we'd come."The opening reception is in the As
Last Updated: 2025-11-27
Chapter: Chapter 31: The InvitationElena's POVThe envelope arrived four days after our fight about the authorities. We'd ignored the Syndicate's ultimatum, let their deadline pass without responding to their offer. I'd expected retaliation, or at least another threatening call. Instead, we'd gotten this.I found it in the mailbox at the end of the long driveway, something that shouldn't have been possible. We were using aliases. The safe house was rented through a shell company. No one should have known we were here.But there it was. Cream-colored. Heavy stock. My name is written in elegant calligraphy.Ms. Elena SantosMy real name.My hands shook as I carried it back to the house."Adrien," I called out, my voice tight. "Miguel. You need to see this."They appeared within seconds. Both saw the envelope and went pale."How did they find us?" Miguel asked."I don't know." I set the envelope on the table like it might explode. "Should we open it?""It could be anthrax. Or some kind of biological weapon" Adrien starte
Last Updated: 2025-11-26
Chapter: Chapter 30: Ghost in the NerworkElena's POVFew days after the threatening call, Miguel did something I didn't expect.He started working again.I found him in the safe house's small office, really just a converted bedroom with a desk and a window overlooking the woods. He was hunched over Michael's laptop, the one we'd grabbed from the building while we were rescued."Miguel?" I stood in the doorway, not wanting to startle him. "What are you doing?""Something useful." He didn't look up from the screen. His fingers flew across the keyboard, lines of code scrolling past. "I can't sleep anyway. Might as well work.""You should be resting""Resting doesn't help. It just gives me more time to think. To remember." His voice was flat. Exhausted. "But this? This I can do. This I'm good at."I came closer, looked at the screen. Couldn't make sense of what I was seeing. "What is it?""Michael's laptop. I've been trying to decrypt his files for the past three days." He pulled up a folder. "There's more here than what you sen
Last Updated: 2025-11-25
Chapter: Chapter 29: Closing InElena's POVAdrien's resignation was announced the next morning.The silence in the safe house felt heavier after that. Like the walls were pressing in on us. Like the air itself was thicker, harder to breathe.Miguel hadn't left his room all morning. I'd checked on him twice. Both times he was just lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Not sleeping. Not reading. Just existing in some gray space between waking and nightmare.Adrien was at the kitchen table, going through emails from his legal team. His company. His board. Watching his empire crumble in real-time through a laptop screen.I was pacing. Because I couldn't sit still. Couldn't stop moving. Couldn't shake the feeling that we were running out of time.Then Miguel's phone rang.I heard it from the other room. I heard him answer.Then silence.Then footsteps.Miguel appeared in the doorway. His face was white. Completely drained of color."They called," he said. His voice was barely a whisper.Adrien looked up sharply. "Wh
Last Updated: 2025-11-24
Chapter: Chapter 28: The NightmaresElena's POVThe screaming woke me at 3 AM.I bolted upright, heart hamming, reaching for Adrien in the darkness. He was already moving, already out of bed, already running toward Miguel's room.I followed.Miguel's door was open. Inside, he was thrashing in his bed, tangled in sheets soaked with sweat. His eyes were closed but his mouth was open, screaming words I couldn't understand."No no, please I didn't tell her anything please don't Elena ELENA!"Adrien reached him first, grabbed his shoulders. "Miguel! Wake up! You're safe"Miguel's eyes snapped open. Wild. Unfocused. He swung at Adrien, connected with his jaw. Adrien stumbled back."Miguel, it's me!" I moved forward carefully, hands raised. "It's Elena. You're safe. You're not there anymore."He looked at me. Didn't recognize me for several horrible seconds.Then recognition crashed in and he collapsed. Just folded in on himself, pulling his knees to his chest, hands over his head like he was protecting himself from blows."I'
Last Updated: 2025-11-23
Chapter: Chapter 27: The Calm Before the Next Storm Elena's POV One week. One week in the safe house, and Miguel was finally starting to look human again. I watched him from the kitchen doorway as he sat at the table, eating actual food instead of the broth he'd been limited to. His hands still trembled slightly aftereffects of whatever Victor had been pumping into his system but the color was returning to his face. The hollowness in his eyes was fading. "You're staring," he said without looking up. "I'm allowed to stare. I thought I'd lost you." I came into the room, poured myself coffee. "How are you feeling?" "Like I got hit by a truck. Then dragged behind it for a few miles." He managed a weak smile. "But better than yesterday. The Doctor said the drugs should be out of my system in another week." The doctor had been checking on Miguel twice daily, asking no questions, taking cash payment. The kind of doctor who understood that some patients needed to stay off the radar. "And mentally?" I asked carefully. Miguel's smile f
Last Updated: 2025-11-21
CROWNED BY BLOOD
“I, Marcus Steele, Alpha of the Silver Moon Pack, reject you, Luna Blackwood, as my mate and Luna.”
Luna Blackwood’s wedding day becomes her nightmare when her Alpha publicly rejects her, declaring her too weak to bear his children. As her former best friend steps forward as his chosen replacement, Luna’s world crumbles.
But what Marcus doesn’t know could destroy them all.
Luna carries the last royal werewolf bloodline, a secret that makes her the most powerful supernatural being alive. Hidden from those who hunted her kind to extinction, she possesses abilities that could reshape their world forever.
When mysterious Alpha Kai Nightshade reveals the conspiracy behind her rejection, Luna faces an impossible choice: remain broken and hidden, or embrace her destiny as the prophesied Lycan Queen who will unite all supernatural beings.
From public humiliation to ultimate power, Luna’s transformation will prove that being rejected was the best thing that ever happened to her.
But first, she has a war to win.
Read
Chapter: Epilogue: The Keeper of Stories(Two Hundred Years Later)The child asked the question all children eventually asked."Was Luna real?"The Keeper of Stories, an old woman whose silver hair caught the light from Kai's Tree just so smiled and set down her pen. The library around them hummed with the quiet energy of thousands of volumes, each one containing fragments of truth passed down through generations. But none were as worn as the book she had been transcribing, its pages filled with Luna's own hand."Real as the tree that shelters us," the Keeper said, gesturing to the window where ancient branches spread wide, their bark still glowing faintly with celestial light. "Real as the stones you walk on. Real as the air you breathe.""All of that is true," the Keeper replied, and at the child's confused expression, she laughed softly. "Come. Let me show you something."She led the girl through corridors lined with portraits, some painted, a few captured in the newer art of light-drawing that the scholars had recently p
Last Updated: 2025-10-29
Chapter: Chapter 126: Love Beyond the VeilI sat beneath Kai's Tree, my back resting against bark that had grown smooth and familiar over years of coming here to think and remember and simply be. My fingers traced the glowing patterns that pulsed beneath the surface, following veins of light that mapped his essence like rivers on an illuminated manuscript. The tree hummed with his presence, not metaphorically but literally, I could feel the vibration in my bones, could sense his consciousness distributed through wood and leaf and root.My children rested beside me very grown now, their faces carrying the lines that come from years lived fully rather than merely endured. Their eyes held echoes of all we had survived together: the curse and the wars, the transformations and reconciliations, the long slow work of healing that never truly ended but which had brought us here, to this moment of profound peace.Seraphina sat to my right, Alexander was to my left, solid as stone but gentler than he had once been, having learned that t
Last Updated: 2025-10-28
Chapter: Chapter 125: The Circle of StonesThe air was still that evening in a way that felt intentional rather than accidental: no wind disturbing the leaves, no birdsong breaking the silence, just the rhythmic sound of chisels against stone that rang like heartbeats across the garden. The students of the Sanctuary knelt in concentric circles around the monument.The monument had grown over the years since its founding, expanding organically as more names needed recording. Rows upon rows of letters etched into pale marble that seemed to glow faintly in certain lights, circling the sacred tree that had grown from Kai's seed and which still pulsed with his lingering presence. The tree had become massive now, its branches spreading wide enough to shelter dozens beneath its canopy.I stood at the edge of the gathering. I watched as each child stepped forward in turn when their name was called, approaching the stone with expressions that ranged from solemn to fearful to quietly determined.I stepped forward into the circle where t
Last Updated: 2025-10-28
Chapter: Chapter 124: The Story They Will TellThey sang about me now, and the songs had taken on lives of their own. Not in Hollowshade alone, where memory was still fresh and people could point to actual places where specific events had occurred. But across the realms in distant kingdoms and hidden valleys, in places I had never visited and among peoples who knew me only through reputation.Some called me the Flame Queen, the one who burned kingdoms for love and watched the ashes scatter without remorse. Their songs painted me as a force of nature, passionate and destructive as wildfire, consuming everything in my path while claiming it was for protection. They weren't entirely wrong, but they missed the quiet desperation, the slow corruption, the thousand small choices that accumulated into catastrophe.Others whispered about the Moon Curse, the creature who devoured her own soul and nearly took the world with her. These stories emphasized transformation over intention, focused on the wolf rather than the woman, made me into a
Last Updated: 2025-10-28
Chapter: Chapter 123: Ashes to GraceThe air smelled of rain and forgiveness, that particular scent that comes after a storm has passed and the earth is washing itself clean. I walked barefoot through the glade where so much had happened, my feet finding the same paths I had run as wolf, where claws had torn earth and blood had stained stones. Each step sank into ground that was soft and welcoming, earth that once rejected me as contaminated but which now welcomed me home like a mother embracing a wayward child.This was where I screamed as my body remade itself, bones breaking and reforming, humanity bleeding away as the wolf emerged. Where I became the monster my children would have to fight, the nightmare that would haunt them for years.The memory burned, immediate and visceral despite the years that had passed. But it no longer owned me the way it once had, no longer defined every thought and feeling, no longer dictated who I was allowed to become.I lay down on my side, lowering myself slowly until my cheek pressed
Last Updated: 2025-10-27
Chapter: Chapter 122: The Mother's FlameLanterns swayed from the trees like luminous fruit, woven with moonflowers and silver threads that caught starlight and transformed it into something softer, more intimate.It was the first Festival of the Mothers since peace had truly returned, since the last threats had been defeated and the slow work of healing had progressed far enough that people felt safe celebrating rather than merely surviving. I stood at the center of the courtyard, barefoot upon the stone circle.They had asked me to light the first flame, to stand as representative of all mothers who had struggled and failed and somehow continued anyway. The invitation had come from the council of village elders, presented with careful formality, giving me every opportunity to decline if the honor felt too heavy or the symbolism too fraught.It felt strange after everything I had done, after all the ways I had failed at the very role I was now being asked to represent to be honored in this way. The whispers still followed m
Last Updated: 2025-10-25
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