Chapter 9: The Queen Lives

Lucien

“Tell me the truth.”

I slammed the forged letter onto Selene’s table hard enough to rattle her teacup. “Or I’ll burn every lie in this pack to the ground.”

She looked at the paper. Unhurried. Then she smiled, and it was the smile that told me everything before she said a word.

“…So you finally started asking the right questions.”

⸻

She was still pouring tea when I’d stormed in, still perfectly composed, like grief and rage hadn’t just carried me across half the manor at a dead run. “You’ve been avoiding me, Alpha,” she said, not even glancing up, the steam curling lazy between us.

I threw the letter to the floor instead of answering. “Did you write this?”

She glanced down at it, almost bored, and laughed … short, genuine, worse than any denial. “No.” A pause, savoring it, her eyes finding mine over the rim of the cup. “Someone far smarter did.”

I realized then, watching her, that she had never once been afraid of me. Not during the rejection, when I’d stood two feet from her reciting words meant to end another woman’s life. Not now, with my hands still shaking from a dead healer’s blood.

⸻

I laid it all out for her … the altered ledger, the healer bleeding out under my hands, the forged renunciation, a timeline that had never once made sense. She listened with her chin propped on one hand, unbothered, dismissing each piece like lint off a sleeve.

Then she pressed a palm flat over her stomach, gentle, deliberate.

“Careful, Lucien. Stress isn’t good for your heir.”

My wolf snarled up through my chest before I could stop him.

For the first time since that night in the Great Hall, I didn’t believe her.

⸻

I crossed the room and closed my hand around her wrist before she could pull back, forcing every sense I had toward the pulse under my fingers, my jaw tight, every muscle in me braced for what I already feared I’d find.

Heartbeat. Breath. Blood.

One heartbeat. Only one, steady and alone beneath my grip.

No second pulse fluttering beneath hers. No unborn pup my wolf should have felt the instant I touched her, the way he’d felt every expectant mother in this pack since the day I was made Alpha.

Her eyes widened … real fear, there and gone in under a second, her wrist going tense in my hold … before the mask slid back into place, smooth as glass.

“You should’ve figured it out sooner,” she said, almost gently, and pulled her hand free.

⸻

She didn’t bother denying it after that. She rose instead, crossed to the window, and looked out at the training yard like the conversation bored her.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Expose me.”

I frowned. She kept talking before I could answer.

“The elders chose me. Not because they believed me.” She turned, finally, something almost pitying in her expression. “…but because they needed Felicia gone.”

The room tilted under me. This had never been about Selene at all.

⸻

She told me just enough to gut me.

Years ago, the elders had unearthed an old prophecy … a rejected Luna carrying the Moon Goddess’ blood would rise to become the most powerful queen the kingdoms had ever seen. If she’d stayed at my side, no Alpha alive would ever have outranked her, and every seat of power they’d clung to for generations would have bent to a woman they’d spent years underestimating.

They’d feared that more than they’d ever feared me. So they’d erased her instead.

And I’d been the blade they’d used to do it, standing in that hall reciting words I’d believed were mine, my own hands doing the damage while grief made me think it was destiny.

I opened my mouth to demand the mastermind’s name.

Selene bit down on her own tongue hard enough to draw blood, and silver runes ignited across her skin, smoke curling up from beneath as she collapsed to the floor, choking on whatever curse had just sealed her mouth shut for good.

Whoever stood above the elders had made sure none of them could ever name him.

⸻

Days passed in a haze of quiet investigation, and rumors began drifting in from every trade route at once, carried by merchants who all told some version of the same impossible story, their voices dropping low with the kind of reverence usually reserved for gods.

A forgotten kingdom had returned. Its lost princess had woken. She commanded a wolf made of silver light, chosen by the Moon Goddess herself, and every kingdom bordering hers had gone quiet with the shock of it.

I refused to believe it until a merchant in the market square said her name without knowing I was listening, his hands still busy weighing grain, his voice pitched only for the woman beside him.

“Her name is Princess Felicia Silvercrest.”

Everything in me went still.

⸻

I couldn’t breathe for a moment. The stalls, the noise, the whole square blurred at the edges while my heart tried to remember how to beat around the sound of her name in a stranger’s mouth.

She was alive. Against everything I’d told myself to survive believing otherwise, against every night I’d spent convincing myself grief was easier than hope, she was alive.

The merchant kept talking, oblivious to what he’d just done to me. “The kingdoms have started calling her… the Queen of Moonlight.”

I closed my eyes. The girl who used to fall asleep against my shoulder, the one I’d rejected in front of three hundred witnesses … she didn’t exist anymore, not as I’d left her. Someone greater had grown out of the wreckage I’d made, and I had no right to any claim on who she’d become.

⸻

My Beta found me still standing there when the square had gone quiet again.

“What now?”

“I’m bringing her home,” I said, before I’d even finished thinking it.

He stared at me. “Home?”

I looked south, toward a kingdom I’d never once set foot in, and felt the word die in my throat.

“…No.”

A long silence. My chest ached with what came next.

“I’m going to beg for the chance to come to hers.”

⸻

I was halfway to the stables, saddlebags already half-packed, when the Great Hall doors slammed open behind me. A scout staggered in, blood soaking one shoulder clean through his tunic, and dropped to his knees before he’d even fully crossed the threshold, chest heaving.

“Alpha…”

He fought for breath like the words themselves weighed something too heavy to lift.

“Silvercrest has closed its borders.”

I frowned, already moving toward him, dread pooling cold in my stomach. “War?”

His face said the answer before his mouth did, eyes wide, hands shaking against the floor. “Not because of war.”

He swallowed hard, forcing the rest out. “Because someone has declared a bounty.”

The hall went dead silent around us, every warrior within earshot going still.

“One hundred million gold,” he whispered. “…for the head of the Moon Goddess’ Chosen Queen.”

Something in my chest tore loose. My wolf surged up through every vein I had, rage burning clean through the grief I’d been carrying for weeks, my hands curling into fists hard enough to ache.

“They’re hunting my mate.”