Semua Bab The Alpha Cursed Luna: Bab 11 - Bab 18

Kai's POVI've been in love with Dara Adeyemi since I was fourteen years old and too much of a coward to say so.I never told her. I never told Damien either, though I suspect some part of him always knew, the way you know a scent that's always lingered at the edge of a room without ever quite naming it. He was my Alpha before he was anything else to me — my friend, yes, but my Alpha first, always first — and there is a particular kind of loyalty bred into a beta wolf from birth that makes certain feelings feel less like emotion and more like betrayal.So I buried it. I watched Damien and Dara grow into each other over the years — stolen glances across the training yard, the easy familiarity of two people who'd known each other since before either of them understood what wanting someone even meant — and I told myself my place was beside them both, not between them. I told myself that enough times that I nearly believed it.Then the rejection happened, and everything I'd buried came up

Damien's POVTwo days passed without word from Dara, and each one felt longer than the last, stretched thin by pain that had begun creeping back the moment her presence stopped easing it.Elder Mackenzie kept careful track of my condition, her frown deepening with each check. "The relief her proximity offers isn't permanent, Alpha. It buys time. It doesn't heal the wound itself.""I'm aware." I shifted against the pillows, the ache in my chest a constant companion now, dull but insistent, like something gnawing patiently at the edges of my resolve. "Any word from the cabin?""Kai mentioned her cousin arrived. Someone named Eze, from the Guardian enclave." Mackenzie's expression sharpened with interest. "If the enclave has sent someone directly, that confirms more than I'd dared hope — it means they're taking the situation seriously enough to intervene personally.""Or it means they see her as a threat too." The thought settled cold in my stomach. "You said yourself, Guardian bonds uns

Damien's POVThe meeting ended with no resolution, only more questions piled on top of the ones we'd begun with, and I could feel exhaustion pulling at the edges of my vision by the time Corinne's advisors filed out and the great hall emptied."You shouldn't have come," Dara's voice, quiet and close, said. I hadn't heard her cross the room."Probably not." I pressed my hand against the table, hoping the room would stop its slow, unpleasant tilt. "But I wasn't about to let my mother and your cousin make decisions about my own survival without me present.""Stubborn." But there was something almost fond beneath the word, softer than she probably intended it to sound."You say that as if it were new information." I managed to smile, albeit at a higher cost than necessary. "How are you?" Really. That was a lot to hear all at once—enemies you didn't realize you had, threats to your bloodline, and your cousin essentially confirming your entire childhood was based on a lie."Something flicke

Damien's POVWhen the three of us arrived, Elder Mackenzie was waiting in the pack's private archive room, with a stack of ancient texts spread across the table in front of her, their leather bindings cracked with age, making even the air in the room feel heavier."Sit," she said without hesitation, and something about her tone made none of us disagree."Tell us what you found," Eze said, settling into the chair across from her, his usual composure fraying at the edges.Mackenzie's fingers traced the edge of the oldest text with care and reverence. "Two hundred and eleven years ago, a Guardian named Ayo fully mended a fractured bond—not just eased the curse, but completely restored it, healing both parties as if the rejection had never happened at all." She paused, considering her next words carefully. "The records indicate she died within a week."The room became very still."How did they die?" Dara's voice was tight and controlled, as if she were holding herself together with sheer