All Chapters of The Cursed Alpha King's Forbidden Luna: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Yvaine's POV It took three long days for the walls of the room to start feeling like they were closing in on me. I didn't even know where I was in relation to Zayden's quarters. The maid had said ‘ far away’ when she'd shown me in, like that was supposed to mean something to me. Far from what? Maybe far from him, that was all I understood. They'd given me fresh clothes, soft things that didn't smell like smoke or forest or blood for once, and a room with a bed bigger than anything I'd ever slept in. It should have felt like relief. Instead it felt like being shelved. Then whispers started flying around before I even understood what they were whispering about. I caught pieces of it through the door, when maids thought I wasn't listening, or didn't care if I was. He came back and killed his own brother, the first thing he does when he returns. At first I didn't know who the he was supposed to be at first. Then I did, and something in my chest went cold and sick at once. No, Zayden

Yvaine's POVZayden was crowned king, and I still couldn't make myself believe it.Not in the way you believe a fact, that you accept and move past. More like a word stuck sideways in my throat, impossible to swallow all the way down. Like, what the actual fuck?The last time I'd really seen him, truly seen him, not just a glimpse across a hallway or his voice drifting through a door, he'd been sitting across from me with his brother's photograph in his hand and grief eating him out from the inside. Now he stood at the top of a red carpeted stairway with a crown waiting for his head, and somehow that felt like the less believable version of him.The weeks between then and now had taught me how to survive on my own.I'd learned there were two reasons nobody here wanted to speak to me, and I'd learned them the hard way, through silence and stares and the occasional door shut a little too firmly in my face.Zayden, Rhett, and Kael had vanished into something that looked, from the outsid

Zayden's POVThe council chamber had never felt smaller.I sat through two hours of border disputes I barely absorbed, trade agreements that needed my seal, a dozen minor grievances funneled up through whatever process had existed long before I ever sat in this chair. Osric spoke more than I did, correcting procedures I didn't know I was violating, reminding the room, without quite saying it outright, that I was new to all of this and they would all have to be patient.Was that my fault? I had never sat through a single royal lesson that might have prepared me for any of this. Nobody had ever imagined I would end up in this chair. Not even me.So I let him talk. It cost me nothing, and it saved me energy I needed elsewhere. Osric got to play the gracious, guiding uncle in front of the entire table, and I got to be left alone with my thoughts. As far as I could tell, we both came out ahead.The Veilbrand had been bothering me since somewhere in the second hour. Nothing sharp enough to

Yvaine's POVThe cell was cold and small. There were stones on three sides, bars on the fourth, a cot bolted to the wall with a blanket so thin it was just a discomfort. Someone had left a cup of water by the door hours ago. I hadn't eaten since morning, and the hunger had settled into a sour ache that did nothing for my temper.I sat on the cot with my legs pulled up and my back against the wall, feeling hungry and hurt. A slow, burning anger that kept turning back on me, because I was the one who had walked myself into this.And It wasn't the first time someone had locked a door on me. Nikolai’s world had taught me cages. I had not expected this kingdom’s version to feel so familiar.I should have known. The second that maid smiled at me, after days of being looked through like glass, I should have asked myself why. Nobody in this palace had said a kind word to me since I arrived, and then one of them was suddenly warm, suddenly chatty, suddenly telling me about a room she thought

Yvaine's POV I was on my feet as soon as my ears picked on approaching footsteps, one of my hands pressed against the cold wall, and the chain on my wrist pulled tight against my skin. Rhett appeared at the bars with a grin that looked like it had been waiting all night. "There she is." "Am I free?" My voice came out as a croak. I hadn't talked to anyone since the interrogation room. "Yes, you are." He held up a keycard like a magician, and the lock gave a polite little beep. The air left me in one long, shaky rush. He stepped in and crouched at my wrist, undoing the cuff at my wrist. My wrist was a circle of red, from the pulling out of frustration. He turned my hand over in his palm and patted the angry band with the care of someone handling a bruised peach. "You know, I look away for one afternoon," he said. "One. And you get yourself arrested. How do you even manage it?" I twisted my hand free. Not you too." "All right. All right." I tried to stand, my legs disagreed. He