Rejected By My Alpha , Claimed By His Father

Chapter Five: The Attack

Magnus moved before Luna’s brain fully processed the sound a blur of motion, alpha speed she’d never seen up close, already shredding through his shirt as his shift began mid-stride.

“Stay behind the tree line,” he snarled over his shoulder, voice already deepening into something less human.

Luna had never once, in her life, followed an order like that.

She sprinted after him instead, healer’s instincts overriding every ounce of self-preservation, because the voice screaming Kane’s name belonged to Elena her sister and the horn meant blood was already being spilled somewhere in the dark.

She burst through the tree line into chaos.

A dozen wolves, sleek and unfamiliar, silver-grey coats she didn’t recognize from any allied pack, were locked in combat with Ashford wolves along the border clearing. Elena was on the ground, blood soaking through her shoulder, Torin standing over her in wolf form, snapping at an attacker twice his size. Kane was mid-shift, half wolf, half man, roaring orders that nobody in the chaos could follow.

And Magnus Magnus was already a wall of black fur and fury, tearing into the nearest attacker with a violence that made Luna’s stomach drop.

“Cole Pack markings,” someone shouted. “It’s Victor’s wolves they’re not allied anymore, they’re attacking”

Luna didn’t have time to process betrayal. She dropped to her knees beside Elena, hands already glowing faintly with the healer’s gift, pressing against the wound before she’d even finished the thought.

“Stay with me,” she said, voice fierce. “Elena. Stay with me.”

Elena’s eyes fluttered, unfocused, blood loss already dragging her under. “Lu they came out of nowhere Seraphina wasn’t lying, her father never wanted the alliance, he wanted”

A shadow fell over them both.

Luna looked up into silver-grey eyes and a snarling muzzle inches from her face an attacking wolf, breaking from the fight, coming straight for her and her wounded sister with nothing between them and death but Luna’s bare hands.

She didn’t have time to scream.

A black blur slammed into the attacker from the side with a force that shook the ground, and Luna watched, frozen, as Magnus mid-fight, blood already matting his fur put himself directly between her and the wolf that had been about to tear her throat out.

The two wolves went down in a snarling, thrashing knot of teeth and claws, and Luna scrambled backward, dragging Elena with her, heart hammering so hard she could barely breathe.

Magnus was strong. He was fast. But the attacking wolf fought like something with nothing left to lose, and as Luna watched in horror, its jaws closed around Magnus’s shoulder with a sickening crunch that ripped a roar of pain from his throat.

“MAGNUS!”

She didn’t know she’d screamed his name until the sound tore out of her, raw and desperate, and something in the pack bond something new, something that shouldn’t have existed yet snapped into place inside her chest like a key finding its lock.

Magnus’s head turned toward her voice for just one fatal second.

It was long enough for the attacking wolf to lunge for his throat.