All Chapters of Crowned by the Moon, Rejected by the Alpha.: Chapter 41 - Chapter 47

The two words poised in the red air like a blade waiting to descend. The commotion surrounding them held still, as if the wood itself were holding its breath, waiting to determine if the plan formed centuries ago by the old wizard would be frustrated by a plot to alter the very nature of the plan.Draven gazed at Aria with the calculating interest of a collector looking over some valuable relic. His shape rippled in the light of the blood moon, darkness gathering around him like a living entity as he considered choices that lay beyond mortal understanding."How interesting," he said finally, his tone laced with sarcasm that crawled across her skin. "The Luna throws herself on the grave of her mate. How very selfless. How very poignant.""Take me," Aria said again, still with palms against the ward barrier between them. "I am stronger than Kale, my magic deeper. I would be a better vessel.""ARIA, NO!" Kale's angry roar shook the warfield as he thrashed uselessly in unseen bonds which

The initial shadow cut like a knife across moonlight.Aria sensed it before she saw it, something that had misfired that had her spirit retreating in horror. The wall that had resisted three waves of Eclipse wolves shook, and she stood immobile in horror as tendrils of pure shadow started seeping between her pack's forms."Hold the line!" Kale's voice growled in the uproar, but even his alpha voice could not conceal the tension. His silver gaze met hers across the field, and in that brief moment of eye contact, she could read what he could not speak in words. The rites were having their effect. Black magic from Draven was undoing all that they had established.Rebecca broke ranks, and Aria's heart missed a beat as she looked to see why. A huge Eclipse wolf, whose coat was clotted with glyphs etched in something that looked like blood, had shredded a hole in the protection ward with blades that shone like obsidian. It attacked the young wolf, still not quite past his first full moon, a

The quiet that followed Draven's withdrawal felt even more foreboding than his attack.The broken grove was strewn around Kale indiscriminately, his chest rising and falling with short jerky gasps. The moon shield was gone, but Aria's sense of connection between them vibrated like the sound of a plucked lute. She touched her fingers to his shoulder before he fell."Kale!" The cry ripped from her throat as she fell to one knee beside him, her hands scrambling down his chest as she sought to comprehend why he was hurt. He was alive, his heart rate steady, but something was irrevocably broken. Black veins were creeping beneath the skin like ink on water, spreading outward from the three parallel gashes across his chest that she was positive she hadn't seen a matter of seconds before."The shadows," he whispered, hardly more than a breath. "When I held you.They marked me."Going-away gift. Although their escape had been worked out, the dark sorcerer had managed to injure them. Wounds were

Shadows peeled away as Draven prowled through those pitch-black corridors of his lair, boots thudding on stone that seemed to swallow up every other sound. The walls? Alive with blood runes—old as time, throbbing with this eerie red glow that twisted and jumped in the corners of his vision, almost like they were laughing at him. Even the air felt wrong, thick as grave dirt, and if you listened, really listened, if you were unlucky enough, maybe you could still hear screams echoing around—leftovers from all the souls he’d offered up, like the world’s most morbid echo chamber.His sanctuary was no cozy hideout, either. It clawed its way underground, deep beneath the Shadowlands—more like a dead god’s ribcage than any cathedral, really. Sharp stalactites hung everywhere, but forget water: these dripped some ooze collected from centuries of nightmares and misery. Right in the center squatted the altar, slick and glossy as obsidian, stained darker than any night, like it had soaked up ever