All Chapters of Rejected Luna of The Cursed Alpha: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Next to me, on the wet floor, Draven gasped for breath, struggling to stay upright and not collapse face-first into the water with me in his arms. His obsidian bones had retracted, and his jaw, neck, and wide shoulders had turned back to normal, but with a terrible price.The black cords of the ancient vengeance hadn't vanished. Instead, they had receded into the depths of his marrow, thick and raging, pulsing with an irregular violet heat that burned through the freezing mist and melted his fevered skin.He was alive, but there was nothing inside him."Aria..." Draven rasped. "Aria..." he called again, crawling on his knees and dragging my unconscious body into his lap. "Aria, look at me! Look at me!"I tried to focus my eyes on his face, but I could not hold the light. My limbs went numb, heavy as cast iron. Inside my chest, my Nullifier core was silent, cracked, and empty like an abandoned grave.I could not breathe. The poison I had extracted from him was in my heart, freezing my

Serena’s POVThe frost in the Sunken Hold was different from the cold of the mountain wind; it did not shift and bite and numb the skin. It simply fell upon me like wet wool, crawling in the seams of my bones and making each breath taste like stagnant water and weeping limestone.I was curled on the cold stone floors, dragging the hem of my shift over my knees, wrapped in the rough, unbleached linen saturated with the slimy muck of dungeon walls where prisoners before me had rotted away. My nails were broken and crusted with dark red where I had clawed at the bars when my sentinels first dropped me here.My bones ached, bruised and torn by the heavy gauntlets of men who used to look aside with reverence when I roamed the galleries of the Keep, but the rage in my chest smoldered brighter than any hearth in the Keep.Luna.I had earned the title with blood and pain. Every single full moon I gulped down the bitter, fiery draught of black-spore thistle just to keep my belly flat while tho

The answer was a howl of savage northern warriors, cutting through the teeth of the blizzard. The whip slashed over the backs of the four heavy draft stallions, the carriage lurched forward, and we were plunged into the narrow gorge of the Iron Pass.Under my many layers of fleece and wolf fur, the Tear of Elyra weighed heavily on my breastbone.It was quiet, its silvery light dimmed to a steady and rhythmic pulse. But inside my chest, behind the bone and muscle, I could still feel the phantom pain of the fractures I sustained at the Weeping Altar.I had been arrogant. I had underestimated the danger. In my desperation to save Draven from the beast within him, I had believed that bearing the blood of Elyra was enough. I had believed that the power of my love and raw defiance could swallow the centuries of ancestral retribution without consequences.Mother Morwen's words echoed in my thoughts. I needed my mother.My mind traveled backward through the leagues of snow, back to the tranq

The room fell into absolute, breathless silence.In the stone cradle next to the hearth fire, Leo lay curled up in his sheepskins, totally unaware that his little spark had just rewritten the rules of our ancient bloodline.Mother stood motionless in front of the mantel, the silver ritual bowl hovering still in her hands. Mother Elara stood by her side, murmuring a silent prayer in the old language of the north, slowly stepping towards the oak doors.Beside the roaring fire, Draven lay on the fur blanket.The heat coming from his body created a kind of inferno. His chest was shaking with shallow and sharp breaths, each of which sounded like shards of ice in his throat. The dark veins rising on his neck were pulsating in a violent way, fighting with a wild desperation against the remaining silver static I had infused him with at the gates.“Aria…”His voice was just a rasp, barely audible above the crackle of birch logs.I instantly turned to him, kneeling on the floor by the fireside.

The silence in the royal chamber was almost suffocating, disrupted only by the constant crackling of birch logs in the hearth.Draven remained sitting on the edge of the pallet, gazing down at his hands. His chest was uncovered, clean, and warm under the glow of the fire.For five hundred years, every fifth-generation male of his lineage had been living in a prison of the ancestral disease, without the ability to summon the beast in any other way but by allowing the dark venom to take over their mind. He had ruled over an empire of iron, led wars, and commanded legions, while remaining in his naked human body because of the ancient curse that locked the wolf inside.Mother washed the gray remnants of the black salt from her hands with a cloth dipped into the fresh well water next to the mantel. On the opposite end of the chamber, Mother Elara hovered by the cradle of Leo, gently swaying the wicker structure until the even breaths of my sleeping son filled the room."Draven?" I whisper