All Chapters of The Rejected Luna’s Hidden Legacy : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

FELICIA“Tell me, Alpha Blackthorn,” I said, refusing to look away. “If you were trying to destroy every kingdom without starting a war… where would you strike first?”Lucien answered without hesitation.“The Moon Bonds.”The room went silent.⸻He laid it out before the full council, calm, methodical, nothing like the man who’d stood frozen in this same room three days earlier with his sword half-drawn, color still gone from his face.No one else had suggested stronger armies or higher walls. He didn’t either. He pointed instead at something none of us had thought to protect … the sacred system holding werewolf society together in the first place, invisible and unguarded because no one had ever imagined someone would dare attack it directly.He’d already moved on it, he admitted, weeks before any of us knew to worry. Elite Blackthorn Shadow Guards, quietly stationed near the most vulnerable Moon Shrines the moment he’d noticed unusual troop movement along our borders, acting on insti

POV: Felicia“If I told you the man who ruined both our lives was your father…” I whispered.Lucien didn’t blink.“…I’d believe you.”Then he said the one thing I wasn’t prepared to hear.“The question is whether I’ll have the strength to kill him.”⸻I made myself say the rest of it, the truth I’d only just admitted to myself somewhere between the letter and the scout’s trembling report, my voice steadier than I expected it to be.“He manipulated you. I believe that now.” I held his gaze, refusing to soften it, watching him brace for whatever came next. “It explains why you chose what you chose. It doesn’t erase what you chose.”“You were used,” I said. “But I was still the one abandoned.”He didn’t argue. He didn’t reach for a single excuse, even one I might have handed him if he’d asked.Only silence, and something raw moving behind his eyes, his jaw working like he was holding back words he’d decided he no longer had the right to say.For one unguarded second, my hand lifted towar

FELICIA“Open the gates.”Every soldier looked at me like I’d lost my mind.The woman kneeling outside the kingdom’s walls smiled through split lips.“I told you,” Selene whispered. “One day I’d be begging you for my life.”⸻Hours earlier, back in the war room, the guard we’d dragged from the tunnels finally broke, his hands shaking too hard to hold the cup of water someone had offered him.He wasn’t a traitor. Not really. Aldric had taken his wife and daughter months ago and forced every stolen secret out of him with their lives as collateral, a threat renewed, I imagined, every time his resolve wavered.Half the council wanted him executed on the spot, an example carved into the record for anyone else tempted to bend.I refused. I ordered a rescue mission for his family instead, ignoring the sharp intake of breath that rippled around the table.The outrage that followed was immediate. Senior nobles exchanged glances that questioned, without saying it outright, whether the Chosen Qu

POV: Felicia“Your Majesty!” Cassian shouted, racing up the ramparts. “The western gate didn’t fall…” He stopped, breathless. “…it was opened from the inside.”⸻The palace dissolved into controlled chaos within minutes … soldiers scrambling to mobilize, the council splitting into factions hurling blame in every direction, names of trusted guards suddenly suspect in every mouth. Somewhere beneath all of it, I understood the enemy had already won something no army could take back.He’d made us doubt each other before he’d struck a single blow.⸻I found the ramparts alone sometime after, watching thousands of soldiers gather in the dark below, torches strung out across the valley like scattered stars, the cold biting through my cloak.For the first time since the crown settled on my head, I let myself wonder whether every choice I’d made had only walked my people closer to slaughter, my hands gripping the stone until my knuckles ached.⸻Lucien joined me without asking, and neither of

POV: Lucien“You still think you’re the hero?” Aldric laughed softly. “Son… you’ve been my greatest victory since the day you were born.”⸻I’d come believing this was about my children … a trade, a threat, something I could fight my way through with a blade if it came to that. Instead I found him waiting calmly beside ancient runes carved into the shrine floor, my mother watching from the shadows with an expression I still couldn’t read, something between grief and pride.Neither of them looked like people expecting a battle.That should have warned me more than it did.⸻Felicia hadn’t stayed behind. I understood that only later, once Cassian’s strike team began moving through the tree line … she’d never trusted herself to wait safely anywhere, a flaw Orion had warned would cost us all one day, one she wore like a second skin now.Aldric didn’t reach for a weapon. He didn’t need one.He simply started talking, and every word took something else away from me, his voice unhurried, alm