All Chapters of The Alpha King's Forgotten Luna: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

"We're doing this my way."Everyone in the tent went quiet. Renata looked up from the map, Rhea's eyebrows lifted slightly, and Damian actually smiled despite the tension still hanging in the air after everything at Ashwood. My own heart was pounding, but I forced myself to stand straight, to sound like someone who'd already made peace with the decision instead of someone still working it out as she spoke."Elena," Renata started carefully, "planning something this dangerous requires—""Requires someone who actually understands what waits inside that mountain," I said, cutting her off. "I'm the one Kestrel wants. I'm the one whose blood powers his ritual. If we walk in there following someone else's strategy, built around protecting me instead of using what I actually am, we're going to fail exactly the way my mother failed."Nobody argued with that. The weight of everything we'd learned, everything Kestrel had done to my mother and countless others before her, settled over the tent l

We ran back to camp with one thought in my head. We were out of time."Move the plan up," I said the moment we reached the main fire. "We go tomorrow night, not in two days."Renata looked up from the map. "Why.""Because Kestrel is gathering captives. A dozen people, maybe more. He wants insurance in case I fail him. That means he is not waiting for the full moon to start preparing. Every day we wait, more people end up in that mountain.""You are sure about what you saw," Rhea asked."I watched them walk into the lower chamber with my own eyes," I said. "Marisol saw her sister. She is alive but she will not stay that way if we wait."Marisol stood quietly at the edge of the group, arms wrapped around herself. She still had not said a word since we left the mountain. I wanted to go to her, but I knew nothing I said would help until we got her sister out."Tomorrow night is too soon," Damian said. "We have not finished positioning Rhea's warriors. We have not tested the signal.""Then

Kestrel screamed, and it was the first time I had ever heard fear in his voice.He was on his knees on the stone floor, both hands pressed to his face. Where his fingers moved, the skin was changing. It cracked and thinned and turned grey. His hair, black as ink a moment ago, was going white in long streaks that spread down to his shoulders.Three hundred years were coming back for him all at once."Stop it," he shouted. "Stop it, girl. You do not know what you are doing.""I do not," I said through my teeth. "But I am not letting go."The power kept coming. It poured through my hand and up my arm and into my chest, and it felt like being filled with molten iron. My vision went white at the edges. My knees shook. If I let go of the basin I was sure I would fall and never get up.Somewhere behind me, chains rattled. I heard the old woman gasp out a word I could not catch.Then I heard footsteps running."Kill her," the scarred descendant yelled. "Now, before it finishes!"He and the ot

I rode out to meet them myself, and this time nobody tried to stop me.The armies had spread across the valley floor by dawn. Three kingdoms, three banners, and a small green one at the very end. Rhea's warriors held the base of the mountain behind me, but I knew we could not win a fight. There were too many of them and too few of us.So I did not plan to fight. I planned to talk."You are sure about this," Damian said. He rode on my left with his jaw set hard."No," I said. "But it is the only thing that might stop a war."Kael rode on my right and said nothing. He did not have to. I could feel him there, steady as a wall.Garrick carried a leather case behind us. Inside it were the records from the archive vault. Every name. Every order. If anything could change these soldiers' minds, it was that.We stopped in the open grass halfway between the lines. Three riders came out to meet us. Two wore crowns of iron. The third wore no crown at all, only a plain green cloak, and my stomach

I spun around with a blade already in my hand.Aldric stood in the tent flap, blocking the only way out, his silver ring catching the lamp light. He did not look surprised. He did not even look tense. He looked like a man watching a plan come together exactly the way he wanted, patient and amused in a way that made my skin crawl."Put that down," he said calmly. "You will only embarrass yourself.""Where is my grandmother," I said."Safe. For now." He stepped further into the tent, forcing me back against the empty chair. "I moved her the moment your little scout friend rode into my camp asking too many questions about my tent placement. Did you really think I would leave something that valuable where a child could find it."My stomach turned cold. Renata's plan had been perfect. That was the problem. If Aldric already knew Doran had been asking questions, he had known about the whole plan before we ever left camp."Renata," I said quietly."No," Aldric said, almost amused. "Your frie