All Chapters of The Forbidden Claim: Three Alphas, One Luna: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The air in the Lycan badlands didn't just smell of sulfur and dried blood; it tasted like it.We’d been running two days and two nights, maybe more, really… just leaving the lush towering pines of the Obsidian Claw territory way behind. The land had snapped sideways into some kind of nightmare—jagged black volcanic rock everywhere, deep seams splitting open like wounds ,and fissures coughing up toxic green steam, while the skies stayed choked with thick ashen clouds, all the time.This was where King Thorne banished my father’s people. The prison. Yeah, a wasteland built to unmake them slowly, without any fuss.My mother was left back, at least safely enough under the heavy -armedguard of Kaelen’s most trusted enforcers, tucked in the packhouse, recovering. Now it was just me, my Vanguard, and Vane’s squad. That’s it, no wiggle room.“Stay close,” Kaelen ordered through our telepathic bond. His midnight-black wolf body pressed too close to my right flank like a stubborn shadow that re

The high tower didn't just shake; it screamed.Massive slabs of obsidian tore loose from the ceiling and slammed down on the stone floor, with that explosive force that makes your teeth ring.Then, right through the center of the bedchamber, a jagged glowing fissure opened up like a wound. It vented this blinding column of toxic green steam and superheated air. The ancient curse of the Citadel of Ash was awake, and it was hungry, like starving in a way you can actually feel.I could feel it clawing at my skin. Not only heat… no, it was this parasitic, magical vacuum thing, wandering around blind, searching for the pureblood Luna life force needed to lock in and anchor that collapsing mountain.“Kill them all!” Warlord Karn roared, cutting through the deafening roar of the crumbling volcano like his voice had claws too.The twenty elite Lycan assassins charged out of the green smoke. They were huge bipedal nightmares, carrying heavy iron broadswords plus spiked maces, like they were bo

The march north was a brutal, silent descent into absolute sub-zero hell.For three days our freshly forged, almost-brittle army raked across the dying tundra.To my left just marched thousands of huge bipedal Lycans. Their thick, heavy footfalls kept crunching through the frost that kept getting worse and worse.To my right sprinted the elite, four-legged enforcers from the Obsidian Claw pack. Honestly, the friction between those two groups was a razor-thin wire, tugged tight mostly by the terrifying crown I wore. No real breathing room for anything else.But when we finally crested that jagged, frozen ridge, staring down at the Great Glacier, the political animosity just… vanished."Moon Goddess protect us," Caleb murmured, his heavy dark-brown wolf shape shifting awkwardly, like the deep snow was personally rude to him.Out past everything, stretching across the horizon of the frozen wasteland, was the apocalypse.The first-born didn’t move like soldiers. They slid forward like a s

We didn't find the Oracle. The Oracle allowed us to find it.By the dawn of the third day, in the Desert of Bones, the black veins had finished chewing up my arms, and now they were spiderwebbing up my throat like they owned it. Aggressively too, not subtle at all.I couldn’t walk.Kaelen carried my fevered, shaking body against his chest, his jaw locked into this straight line of grim, too desperate determination, while Caleb and Jace scouted the dunes ahead, the sand shifting like it was breathing."There!" Jace shouted suddenly, his voice cracking against the dry wind.From the center of a massive, superheated depression in the sand, there rose the colossal, petrified skull of an ancient dragon. It wasn’t even the bone part that pulled my focus. It was the blinding pure golden light spilling from its cavernous eye sockets and jagged jaws. The light didn’t burn like the desert sun—no, it radiated this ancient, absolute calm, like something final and quiet.The second we crossed the

The Obsidian Claw packhouse had been my prison for nineteen years. Today, it was the center of a new world.The ruined courtyard, where my mother had nearly been executed just weeks ago, was completely changed.They cleared the shattered cobblestones, then replaced them with a massive, tiered dais of polished white marble, like it had always belonged there.And up on the towering walls, hanging there like they never even hesitated, were the unified banners of our new kingdom. The black wolf of the Obsidian Claw, intertwined flawlessly with the silver crown of the Lycan Badlands.Standing before that dais was the greatest army the North had ever seen. Thousands of towering bipedal Lycans stood shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of Obsidian Claw wolves. The animosity was gone, forged into this unbreakable brotherhood, in the apocalyptic fires of the Great Glacier.I stood at the very top of the dais in a gown of deep midnight-blue silk.Beside me stood my mother, her cheeks brightened