The Alpha King Went Mad When I Died

Diana

The dark was cold, and smelled like iron.

I couldn’t feel my arms or legs, but somewhere far above the fog swallowing my brain, a sound tore through the void. It wasn’t a man’s voice. It was a monstrous, feral roar that vibrated straight through my ribs.

“Who touched her?” the voice thundered, raw and bleeding with madness. “Who laid a hand on my mate?”

Mate?

The word echoed in my fading thoughts, strange and impossible, before the black water rushed back over my head and dragged me under.

In the wedding hall, the air had turned into poison.

Zach didn’t just snap. He completely lost his mind.

The Alpha aura rolling off him slammed into the walls, sending jagged cracks spidering up the stone pillars and blowing out every light fixture in the ceiling. Masonry rained down on the carpet. Three hundred guests were pinned flat against the floorboards, weeping and gasping under the weight of an apex predator on the verge of slaughter.

Jax was shaking so hard his teeth clattered. He tried to push himself up, swallowing hard as he looked into Zach’s glowing golden eyes.

“Y-Your Majesty,” Jax stammered. “You don’t understand. She… she lost her mind. Diana had a mental breakdown. She attacked her own sister, she tried to ruin the wedding, and the guards were only trying to—”

Zach moved faster than lightning.

His hand shot out, clamping around Jax’s throat, lifting the grown man clean off the floor with one arm.

Jax gagged, legs kicking uselessly as Zach’s fingers dug into his windpipe, crushing the cartilage until his face turned an ugly purple.

“Why was she wearing a wedding dress?” Zach snarled, voice dropping into a lethal rasp. “Why is my mate lying on your floor, bleeding out from a silver blade, while you stand here in a suit?”

“Jax!” Ivy screamed from behind the altar, her perfect victim facade completely cracking. “Guards! What are you doing? Kill him! Shoot him! He’s murdering your future Alpha!”

Four elite pack warriors scrambled to their feet and drew their silver broadswords, lunging toward the King’s blind spot.

They never even got close.

Zach didn’t drop Jax. He didn’t draw a blade. With a casual flick of his free hand, a blast of concussive golden magic ripped across the dais.

Bones snapped as all four guards were hurled backward, their bodies smashing into the stone walls with enough force to cave their chests in. They hit the floor and didn’t move again.

A collective whimper tore through the hall. Nobody breathed. The entire pack realized the monster of the north could slaughter every living soul in this room in thirty seconds flat.

Zach tossed Jax aside like dirty laundry. Jax hit the floor coughing up blood, clutching his ruined throat, crawling backward toward the shadows.

Zach didn’t chase him. He had already forgotten Jax existed.

He dropped to his knees beside me, hands shaking so violently he could barely hold them steady. The terrifying, untouchable monarch vanished, replaced by a desperate, broken boy pressing both palms against the gaping wound in my stomach.

“Diana… no, no, please, stay with me,” he begged, voice cracking as warm golden light poured from his hands, trying to knit my torn flesh back together. But the silver poison was too deep, burning away the healing magic as fast as he pushed it in. “Look at me, sweetheart. Don’t close your eyes. Please.”

Tears streamed down his cheeks, splashing against my cold forehead.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, leaning down until his forehead rested against mine. “I stayed away because your father begged me not to bring the northern wars to your doorstep. I stayed on the borders just to watch over you. Just to keep you safe from the shadows. I thought… I thought you loved him. I thought you were happy.”

My eyelids fluttered open for one tiny second.

Through the red haze, I saw the raw truth laid bare on his face.

“If you had looked at me once,” Zach whispered, a sob tearing out of his chest, “just once, Diana… I would have laid the entire realm at your feet. I would have given you everything.”

The words hit my dying heart harder than Ivy’s dagger.

A mate. He was my mate.

The one man I spent my whole life believing hated me… had loved me in silence for years. And I had thrown myself at the feet of a lying, thieving bastard who traded my life for land permits.

I had loved the wrong man.

“Stay with me,” Zach pleaded, voice breaking into a wail as my head rolled to the side. “Diana, don’t leave me! Diana!”

My final breath left my chest in a soft, rattling sigh. The last thing I heard before the void swallowed me whole was Zach’s broken scream ringing off the stone ceiling:

“I will burn this pack to the ground. I will make every single person who touched you bleed until they beg for death.”

Then, silence.

Gasp.

My eyes snapped open, and I shot upright in bed, screaming.

My hands flew to my stomach, frantically searching for the gaping hole, the silver blade, the slick warmth of my own blood soaking through white lace.

There was nothing.

No blood. No torn flesh. No ruined wedding dress. Just a soft pair of oversized flannel pajamas and the crisp scent of fresh cotton.

I froze, chest heaving.

Sunlight poured through wide sheer curtains, illuminating a room with pale blue walls, white bookshelves stacked with old novels, and a small desk cluttered with high school sketchbooks.

My old bedroom.

“Diana? Sweetheart, what on earth is wrong?”

The bedroom door pushed open, and a woman walked inside carrying a tray with two steaming mugs of tea and a plate of buttered toast.

My heart completely stopped.

Standing in front of me was a woman with soft brown curls, gentle hazel eyes, and warm smile lines around her mouth.

My mother.

My mother, who had died of a mysterious wasting illness two years ago. My mother, whose grave I had wept over while Jax held my hand and whispered sweet lies about taking care of me forever.

“Mom?” My voice came out as a fragile, trembling squeak.

“Did you have another nightmare, baby?” she asked gently, setting the breakfast tray down on my nightstand before sitting on the edge of the mattress, smoothing a warm palm over my forehead. “You were screaming like someone was chasing you.”

She was warm. Real. Solid.

I scrambled to the side table, trembling fingers grabbing the small silver desk calendar sitting beside the lamp.

May 14th.

Three years ago.

I was nineteen again. It was two days before Jax planned his big, public proposal in the town square.

The memories rushed through my mind like a raging torrent: Ivy’s smug laughter behind the dressing room door, the forged property deeds, the silver dagger plunging into my gut, the slow poison that stole my mother’s life six months from now, and Zach… Zach Hamilton kneeling in my blood, weeping like his soul had been torn out of his body.

I didn’t lose my mind. I didn’t cry.

A slow, terrifying chill settled deep into my bones, pushing aside the shock until nothing was left but razor-sharp clarity.

The gods had given me a second chance.

A slow, wicked smile spread across my face.

The door banged open suddenly, and my personal maid, Lily, burst into the room out of breath, clutching her apron.

“Lady Diana! You’re awake!” Lily gasped, pointing excitedly toward the courtyard below. “Lord Jax is downstairs in the grand foyer! He brought three dozen white roses, half the council is with him, and people are saying he’s about to get down on one knee!”

My mother beamed, turning back to me with glowing eyes. “Oh, Diana! He’s finally doing it!”

I took a slow sip of the hot tea, leaning back against the pillows with unbothered calm.

“Tell him to wait,” I said smoothly.

Lily blinked in sheer disbelief. “W-what?”

“You heard me, Lily,” I murmured, tilting my chin as I caught my reflection in the vanity mirror across the room. The naive, desperate girl who begged for Jax’s affection was dead and buried on that wedding floor. In her place was someone who knew every single move her enemies were about to make. “Let him wait in the cold. In fact… tell him I might not come down at all.”