All Chapters of The Alpha King's Hidden Luna: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Ruth's POVFour minutes.That is how long my daughter was dead.I know because I counted every second from the hallway floor, my back pressed against the cold wall, my fingernails digging crescents into my palms. The nursery door had closed behind the medical team, but I could hear everything—Chen's sharp commands, the rhythmic compression of tiny chest, the high-pitched whine of equipment I couldn't name.One minute. The crash cart rolled past me, wheels squeaking against the hardwood. A nurse I didn't recognize pushed through the door without looking down at me.Two minutes. Marcus appeared from somewhere, his face gray with shock. He tried to pull me to my feet, but my legs wouldn't work. He settled beside me instead, his arm around my shoulders, his breath ragged in my ear.Three minutes. The sounds from the nursery changed. Voices overlapped, urgent and desperate. I heard Chen say "again" and then "again" and then something in a language I didn't understand.Four minutes. Silence

Ruth's POVHe arrived with one bag.I watched from the second-floor window as Langmore crossed the courtyard, a worn leather duffel slung over his shoulder, the morning sun catching the silver collar-band now locked around his throat. Two guards flanked him—not for protection, but for humiliation. They walked half a step ahead, forcing him to follow like a criminal being escorted to his cell.The pack made sure he felt every inch of his fall.Warriors who had once treated him with the careful respect afforded to allied Alphas now stepped directly into his path, forcing him to go around. Servants who should have offered water after his journey kept walking, their eyes fixed straight ahead. A young wolf, barely sixteen, spat at his feet as he passed the training grounds.Langmore said nothing. Did nothing. Just kept walking with his single bag and his silver collar, his face blank as stone.I hated that I noticed. I hated that some small, treacherous part of me wanted to go down there a

Ruth's POVMy father collapsed in the middle of a sentence.One moment he was commanding the room, his voice carrying the iron authority that had held Silver Crown together for thirty years. The next his words cut off mid-syllable, his hand shot to the edge of the war table, and his legs buckled beneath him like strings had been cut."Father!"Marcus reached him first, catching his shoulders before his head could strike the stone floor. I was there a heartbeat later, my hands pressing against his chest, feeling for the steady heartbeat that had been my compass since childhood.It was there. Racing, erratic, but there."I'm fine." Daniel's voice was a rasp, nothing like the commanding tone of moments before. He pushed against Marcus's grip, trying to rise. "Old wound. The spear wound from Ashfall. It flares up when I don't rest enough.""You need a healer," Marcus said. "Let me call Chen—""No healers." Daniel's eyes sharpened, cutting through the fog of whatever had just dropped him.

Ruth's POVThe border marker rose from the earth like a gravestone.I remembered it. Eight months ago, I had passed this stone in the opposite direction, rain soaking through my thin dress, my feet bare against the mud, my body breaking with every step. I had been running then—fleeing in the dark like a criminal, though my only crime was loving a man who chose lies over truth.Now I returned in a Silver Crown convoy. Three armored vehicles. Twelve guards. Chen with her medical equipment. And Luna, strapped safely in a carrier beside me, her small face peaceful in sleep.The convoy slowed as we crossed into Bloodmoon territory. Through the tinted windows, I watched the landscape I had once called home—the dense forests, the rolling hills, the scattered farmhouses that dotted the valley like scattered teeth. Everything looked the same. The trees still bent in the autumn wind. The sky still stretched gray and endless above.But I was not the same.The woman who had fled this place had be

Langmore's POVThe jar felt like a grenade in my hands.I stood in the pack house's archive room, surrounded by the evidence of my own destruction, while Chen ran her analysis and Ruth watched me from across the table. Luna slept in her carrier between us—the only peaceful thing in a room thick with poison and truth.I had pulled Thomas's ledger from the floorboards myself, the one we had discovered months ago during our initial investigation. The seal on the back cover—pressed into wax like a signature—matched the jar exactly. A crescent moon split by a dagger. The same hand. The same source. The same conspiracy."The compound is called Lunawort extract," Chen said, her voice clinical in the way physicians become when the news is too terrible for emotion. "It's derived from a rare mountain herb found only in the northern territories. When administered in small, consistent doses over time, it suppresses the reproductive hormones in female wolves. The effect is reversible once exposure