LOGINShare
Chapter five
Last Updated:
2025-12-08 19:19:29The woman stepped out of the sleek black car like she owned the world.
Her heels clicked sharply against the stone path, each sound echoing through the courtyard with a level of authority that sent a chill skittering down my spine. Her presence alone felt… heavy. Like she carried a storm behind her eyes, one she would unleash on anyone who dared breathe incorrectly.
I froze where I stood.
She was beautiful in a way that didn’t feel real—tall, elegant, her dark hair cascading over her shoulders like flowing silk. Her lips were painted the color of blood. Her dress… expensive, fitted, the sort you wore only if you intended to be seen and feared.
The maids who had been walking with me immediately bowed. Their heads dipped so low their foreheads nearly touched the ground.
My heart picked up.
Who was she?
She didn’t look at them. She didn’t look at anyone. Until her gaze found mine.
And when it did, the faintest smile curved at the corner of her red lips. Not a warm smile. Not a polite one. A smile that told me she already knew everything about me, and none of it pleased her.
“Who are you?” I whispered before I even realized the words had escaped.
The maids exchanged horrified glances. One of them—Hayley—caught my wrist discreetly and whispered, “My Lady… that’s her.”
My breath stilled. “Her who?”
Hayley swallowed hard. “Valeria.”
The name hit me like a slap.
Valeria.
Arthur’s former betrothed.
The one the pack elders once insisted would become Luna.
The woman who was supposed to stand beside him until he rejected the arrangement years ago.
She finally stopped in front of me, her eyes sweeping over my body in a slow, assessing motion that made heat prickle my skin. Not admiration. Not approval.
Judgment.
So much judgment.
“I see,” Valeria murmured, her voice smooth like silk but sharp beneath the surface. “This is the girl.”
Girl. Not woman.
Not Tyla.
Not mate.
Just girl.
Her gaze flicked to my hands, the ones Arthur always held protectively. Her jaw tightened barely, but I caught it.
“We have not been properly introduced,” she continued. “But judging by how my staff trembles around you, you must be the one who has… caught Arthur’s attention.”
Heat shot up my neck. “I didn’t catch anyone’s attention.”
Her smile widened. “No? And yet the palace is in chaos over you.”
I took a shaky breath. “Why are you here?”
A soft, humorless laugh escaped her lips. “This palace is my home. I was raised here. Trained here. Prepared here. I was meant to stand at Arthur’s side long before you crawled into his bed.”
I flinched.
She stepped closer. I stepped back.
“Arthur and I,” she whispered, her perfume invading my senses, “share a history your kind will never understand.”
“My kind?” My voice was small, breaking.
“An omega with nothing,” she clarified, not even bothering to soften the blow. “No lineage. No influence. No power. No reason to stand where you are standing.”
My throat burned.
“Arthur chose me,” I finally whispered, clinging to the one truth I had.
Valeria’s eyes hardened. “Mates can be replaced. Luna cannot.”
I froze.
She leaned even closer, her whisper brushing my ear. “You will learn that soon enough.”
Before I could respond, a guard approached hurriedly.
“Lady Valeria, Alpha Lucas requests your presence inside.”
She lifted her chin elegantly. “Of course.”
But before she walked away, she paused, tilted her head, and spoke softly:
“Enjoy your stay, little omega. It won’t last long.”
She turned, her heels clicking like a death sentence as she disappeared into the palace.
The moment she was gone, my legs gave out. I sat heavily on the courtyard bench, my heart pounding so fast I thought it might burst.
Hayley knelt beside me. “My Lady… please don’t listen to her.”
But her words didn’t reach me.
All I could think was:
Arthur is gone.
Valeria is here.
And she wants him back.
My stomach twisted painfully.
And for the first time since waking up in Arthur’s palace…
I felt truly, terrifyingly alone.
Latest chapter
Craving the alpha soldier Chapter one hundred seventy-six
FinalThe morning did not mark itself as final.That was the first thing Tyla understood when she woke up. There was no sense of conclusion in the light, no weight pressing the air into significance. Dawn arrived as it always had—slowly, without permission, touching the edges of the land before settling fully into being.She lay still for a long time, listening.The world was awake. Birds moved in the trees beyond her camp. Wind traveled low along the ground, disturbing nothing it did not need to. Somewhere far off, water ran over stone, patient and uninterrupted.Arthur was not there.That truth no longer startled her. It no longer arrived like a wound reopening. It existed the way gravity existed—unchangeable, present in every movement she made.She sat up, folded her blanket, and prepared to leave.There was no urgency. No destination waiting to validate her effort. The path ahead curved gently downward, disappearing between rock and scrub. She could follow it. Or she could stop he
Craving the alpha soldier Chapter one hundred seventy-five
Tyla POVThe path did not change because Arthur was gone.Tyla noticed that first—not as cruelty, but as fact. The ground held its familiar firmness. Stones rested where they always had. The wind moved through the grass with the same indifferent patience. The world had not paused to acknowledge the loss, and it would not.She walked anyway.Morning stretched itself thin across the valley as she descended, light spreading without urgency. Each step landed cleanly. Balance remained intact. Her body remembered how to move even as something within her resisted the ease of it.Grief did not arrive as it collapsed.It arrived as accompaniment.By midday, she reached higher ground where the air cooled and the view widened. The river Arthur had followed was visible in fragments below, catching light in brief, broken flashes. She stopped there, not to rest, but to orient herself—to understand where she stood in relation to what had ended.Arthur had not been a destination.He had directions .
Craving the alpha soldier Chapter one hundred seventy-four
Tyla POVTyla sensed the absence before she understood it.The land still moved as it always had—wind through grass, water shaping stone, birds cutting precise arcs through air—but something in her own rhythm no longer returned the same echo. Steps landed. Balance held. Yet the continuity she had trusted felt thinned, stretched across distance.She stopped on a narrow ridge just after midday.Below her, the valley opened in muted layers, rain-fed streams threading through darker earth. Smoke rose faintly near the western edge—too thin to be a signal, too deliberate to be nothing. Tyla studied it longer than necessary.She had not intended to turn back.Intention, however, had never been the only measure of truth.By late afternoon, she altered her course—not sharply, not dramatically. Just enough to test whether alignment still existed. The land allowed it. The path curved westward with minimal resistance, as though the ground itself recognized the adjustment.She followed.The terrai
Craving the alpha soldier Chapter one hundred seventy-three
Arthur POVMorning arrived without a decision.Arthur woke to it already present—light diffused through clouds , the river audible beyond the trees, its voice unchanged. His body registered the day before he moved: the leg stiff, swollen, uncooperative. Pain existed, but it was no longer the sharp kind. It had settled into something denser, structural. A condition rather than a warning.He remained still for several breaths, letting awareness map what movement remained possible.Enough, he decided. Not everything. But enough.The others were already awake. He heard them nearby, quiet but alert, moving with the careful efficiency that came when uncertainty replaced routine. No one spoke to him immediately. They had learned, over the weeks, to wait until presence invited engagement.Arthur sat up slowly, bracing himself with one hand against the ground. The motion cost him more than he expected. He adjusted without comment.They had planned to move today. The ridge ahead still waited. T
Craving the alpha soldier Chapter one hundred seventy-two
Tyla POVTyla woke to the sound of rain moving through leaves.Not falling hard—no urgency in it—but steady, deliberate, as though the sky had decided on continuation rather than release. The kind of rain that did not interrupt movement, only altered it.She lay still for a while, listening.The shelter held. The fire had reduced itself to warmth without flame. Morning existed, but it did not insist on being named yet.When she rose, her body responded easily. Muscles remembered yesterday’s distance without complaint. She tightened the strap of her pack, ran her fingers once along the worn edge of its fabric, and stepped outside.Mist hung low among the trees. The path ahead was partially obscured, but not lost. It rarely was.She began to walk.The land here differed from Arthur’s valley—narrower trails, denser growth, ground softened by water and decay. Roots crossed the path like old decisions, forcing attention with every step. Tyla welcomed the demand. It kept her present.By mid
Craving the alpha soldier Chapter one hundred seventy-one
Arthur POVArthur woke before the others, as he often did now. Not because of urgency, but because the land no longer allowed sleep to linger past usefulness. Dawn pressed lightly against the horizon, thinning the dark without breaking it. The valley breathed beneath him—slow, patient, unchanged by his presence.The fire had burned down to a shallow bed of embers. He stirred them once with a stick, then let them rest. Warmth remained in the stones, in the ground itself. Enough.His body registered the night in familiar ways: stiffness along his lower back, a dull ache in his left knee that had learned to speak only when it mattered. He stood carefully, testing balance, listening to what the body allowed. It allowed movement.They would move today.The rise they had climbed yesterday had not been the final one. Arthur had known that even before reaching the summit. The land did not resolve itself so easily. Beyond the valley, the terrain shifted again—steeper, less forgiving, marked by
You may also like
Mated in the Shadow of My Sister
Lady Gwen1.3M viewsMated to the Alpha Knight
Elizabeth Jane668.5K viewsThe Shadow Alpha
Kajal Haripersad595.8K viewsTHE ALPHA'S VIRGIN SLAVE : SUBMIT ALPHA IAN'S CURSE
Muleba Makukula797.1K viewsThe Beta Test Luna
Cheryl156 viewsCOUNTDOWN TO LEAVING YOU, ALPHA
Queen Ash203 viewsThe Luna Awakening: Rejected and Reborn
Onyedikachi Ugwoke267 viewsWhispers of The Crescent Moon
Alicia James 147 views
