Chapter 6

​"The sky... the Moon Goddess has turned her back on us!" a high-ranking elder screamed from the darkness, his voice echoing frantically off the collapsing pillars.

​"Bring the torches! Get the light back into this room!" Alpha Garrick’s voice boomed, laced with sheer, unadulterated panic. "Guards, secure the perimeter!"

​As a few royal warriors struck flint, casting a dim, flickering amber glow across the ruined hall, the true horror of the court became visible. High Priestess Vanya was still on her knees, her hands clutching her chest as she stared at Seraphina’s glowing wrists.

​"This is a violation of the sacred laws," Vanya rasped, her voice trembling so hard her teeth clicked. "Two fated mates... it is impossible. In three thousand years of recorded history, the Goddess has never given one soul to two Alphas. It cannot exist!"

​"Then she is not a mate. She is a curse! Look at what she has done to the ritual. She has stolen the light from the sky!" 

An elderly Alpha from a neighboring sector snarled, stepping forward with his hand resting heavily on the hilt of his sword. 

​"He is right!" 

Another voice shouted from the shadows of the royal court. 

"She is a wolfless anomaly. A mutation that has brought an ancient demon into our sacred grounds. She must be purged before the entire Seven Moon Kingdoms fall to ruin!"

​"Silence!" Kaelor’s voice was a tectonic rumble, a sound so laden with lethal authority that the stone floor beneath the speaking Alphas cracked. 

He stepped directly in front of Seraphina, his massive frame shielding her from the growing glare of the court. His molten gold eyes burned through the dim torchlight. 

"The next man to call my mate a curse will have his tongue ripped from his throat before he can draw another breath."

​"Your mate?" Lysander’s low, mocking purr sliced through the tension. He stepped up onto the top platform of the altar, his obsidian eyes fixed on the frightened girl behind Kaelor. "You still speak as if you own her, Ashthorne. Her skin bears the raven's wing. She belongs to the Midnight Eclipse as much as she does to your shiny obsidian throne."

​"She is a Vaelcrest," Alpha Garrick interjected, trying to regain control of his shaking pack. "She is a servant of the Silver Crescent! Your Majesty, if she is a curse, let my executioners handle her. We did not know she possessed such dark magic—"

​"Touch her, Garrick, and I will erase the Silver Crescent from the maps," Kaelor hissed, not even looking back at the terrified Alpha.

​"Priestess Vanya!" Brandon shouted, his face pale but distorted with anger as he pointed at Seraphina. "Tell them! She has no wolf! How can a wolfless freak have two Alphas? She must have used human witchcraft. She trapped them!"

​"It is not witchcraft, you foolish boy," Vanya whispered, her eyes tracking the intricate lines of the raven's wing and the silver crescent on Seraphina's wrist. "The marks are forged in the stars. But a soul divided... it means the ancient prophecy of the anchor is unfolding. If she dies, the bonds break, and the Alphas will tear the continent apart in their madness."

​"Then we kill her now and save the kingdoms the trouble!" the elderly Alpha roared, drawing his blade.

​"No!" Seraphina cried out, but her voice was drowned by a sudden, sharp whistling sound slicing through the air.

​From the high, shadowed rafters of the shattered dome, four figures clad in absolute midnight-black leather dropped like stones. They didn't wear the crest of the Crimson Dominion, nor the Silver Crescent. Their faces were masked, and their daggers gleamed with a dull, sickening purple hue.

​"Wolfsbane," Lysander muttered, his predatory instincts reacting a fraction of a second before anyone else.

​"Protect the King!" the royal captain shouted, but the assassins weren't aiming for Kaelor.

​Two of the masked figures lunged straight at Seraphina, their poison-tipped blades aimed directly at her throat.

​"Seraphina!" Kaelor roared.

​With impossible speed, Kaelor pivoted. His Lycan strength exploded as he threw his heavy fur cloak forward, catching the first assassin’s blade in the thick material. With a brutal twist of his wrist, Kaelor snapped the assassin's arm, the bone breaking with a loud crack, before driving his elongated claws straight through the man's chest armor.

​But the second assassin was already behind him, driving a dagger down toward Seraphina’s exposed shoulder.

​"Get away from her," a freezing voice growled.

​Lysander appeared from the shadows like a ghost. His hand shot out, clamping around the assassin's throat mid-air. The sheer force of his grip crushed the man’s windpipe instantly. Without missing a beat, Lysander used the assassin’s own momentum to slam him into the stone floor, the tiles shattering under the impact.

​"More in the rafters!" 

Seraphina screamed, pointing upward as three more cloaked figures dropped down, their eyes glowing with a feral, unnatural red light.

​"Stand behind me, little star," Kaelor commanded, his voice tight as he kicked a heavy stone bench into the path of the oncoming attackers, crushing two of them against the wall.

​For a terrifying, chaotic minute, the two deadliest enemies on the continent fought side by side. Kaelor was a tempest of raw, golden power and brutal, crushing strikes, while Lysander moved like a lethal shadow, his icy claws ripping through throats before the attackers could even register his movement. They fought with a terrifying, synchronized symmetry, driven by the exact same primal instinct: Keep her alive.

​"Who sent you?" Kaelor roared, pinning the last remaining assassin to the shattered altar by his throat. He pressed his claws into the man's neck, drawing dark, foul-smelling blood. "Speak, or I will feed your pack to the crows."

​The assassin let out a bloody, wheezing laugh. "The anchor... must fall. The sky has turned black... the true king... will rise..."

​Before Kaelor could squeeze the answers out of him, the assassin's eyes rolled back into his head, black foam bubbling from his lips.

​"Cyanide," Lysander said, stepping over a corpse and wiping the dark blood from his claws onto his leather trousers. 

He looked around the room, his obsidian gaze sweeping over the terrified royals who were still cowering behind their guards. 

"They didn't come to kill a king. They came to eliminate the girl."

​"They are part of the rogue factions from the outer valley," Alpha Garrick stammered, holding his sword with a trembling hand. "They want to start a war!"

​Kaelor turned slowly, his golden eyes locking onto Seraphina, who was shivering against the broken base of the altar, her hands pressed tightly against her chest. 

"They will have their war. But she is coming with me to the obsidian capital. Guard!"

​"Do not touch her!"

Lysander stepped between Kaelor's advancing warriors and Seraphina, his dark aura flaring up once more, dropping the temperature in the room until frost began to form on the stone steps. 

"Look around you, Ashthorne. Your precious court wants her head on a spike. Your elders think she is a curse. You think you can protect her in a palace full of vipers?"

​"She is my fated Luna!" Kaelor bellowed, his fangs bared. "She is safer with my army than with a rogue who rules from the dirt!"

​"She won't survive a single night in your court," Lysander countered, his voice dangerously calm as he cast a sidelong glance at Seraphina. "Are you alright, little bird?"

​"I... I can't breathe," Seraphina whispered, the conflicting energies of the room and the suffocating darkness outside making her head spin.

​"Your Majesty," Alpha Garrick called out, his voice gaining a desperate edge as he saw the royal guards hesitating. "The rogue Alpha is right about one thing. The pack is in chaos. We must arrest her until the high council can determine if she is a threat to the treaty!"

​"Arrest her?" Kaelor turned his fury onto Garrick. "If any of your men lay a finger on her, I will execute your entire line."

​"Then let me make this easy for everyone," Lysander whispered.

​Before Kaelor could realize what the rogue Alpha was planning, Lysander dropped a small, heavy iron sphere onto the cracked floor. The moment it hit the stone, it shattered, unleashing a massive, blinding explosion of thick, midnight-black smoke laced with crushed moon-fern and silver dust.

​"Guards! Protect the King!" the captain roared as the room was plunged into a coughing, sightless frenzy.

​"Seraphina!" Kaelor shouted, his golden vision trying to pierce through the magical smoke, but the silver dust was specifically designed to blind and disorient a Lycan's heightened senses. He lunged forward blindly toward the spot where she had been standing, his hands sweeping through the empty air.

​In the middle of the black fog, Seraphina felt a cold, strong hand wrap securely around her right wrist—right over the raven's wing mark. The icy touch didn't hurt; it felt like a splash of freezing water that instantly cleared the suffocating heat from her mind.

​"Trust me," Lysander’s deep voice murmured directly into her ear.

​"Lysander—"

​Before she could protest, he scooped her up into his massive arms as if she weighed nothing at all. With a powerful, explosive leap, Lysander launched himself through the shattered glass of the grand dome ceiling, escaping into the pitch-black night air.

​The cold wind of the Whispering Woods slapped Seraphina in the face as they cleared the roof. Below them, the packhouse courtyard was a chaotic sea of shouting warriors and flickering torches, but Lysander was already moving through the highest branches of the ancient trees with the grace of a phantom.

​Inside the ruined sanctuary, the thick black smoke finally began to clear under the force of Kaelor’s roaring aura.

​The High King stood in the center of the ruined altar, the stone beneath his boots completely shattered from the sheer pressure of his rage. He looked at the empty space where Seraphina had been standing just seconds ago. The faint, ghostly scent of silver starlight and ancient earth was fading, rapidly being replaced by the bitter cold of winter pine.

​"Your Majesty..." Alpha Garrick approached slowly, his hands raised in surrender, his face drenched in sweat. "They... they are gone. The rogue has taken the girl into the deep territory."

​Brandon stepped forward, a nervous, wicked smile touching his lips. "The rogue did us a favor, Your Majesty. The mutation is gone. Now we can proceed with the census—"

​Kaelor turned his head, his golden eyes burning with a terrifying, demonic light that made Brandon’s smile freeze and instantly vanish. Kaelor reached out, grabbing Brandon by the front of his formal tunic and lifting the Alpha's son off the ground with a single hand.

​"If you speak of her in that tone again, I will feed your remains to the border rogues," Kaelor said, his voice a deadly, quiet whisper that carried more terror than any shout.

​He threw Brandon into the dirt like a piece of unwanted trash and turned toward the shattered ceiling, looking out into the absolute, starless darkness of the Whispering Woods. His inner wolf was howling in his mind, a raw, agonizing sound of a predator whose mate had been stolen from his grasp.

​Kaelor gripped the hilt of his ancient obsidian sword, his knuckles turning white.

​"Call the vanguard," Kaelor commanded his captain, his voice echoing through the silent, terrified courtyard. "Mobilize every warrior in the Crimson Dominion. Hunt them down. I don't care if I have to burn the Midnight Eclipse pack to ash, and I don't care if I have to tear this entire continent apart stone by stone."

​He narrowed his golden eyes into the dark forest.

​"I will find you, Seraphina," Kaelor swore into the black night. "And God help anyone who stands in my way."