The Luna He Should Have Killed

Chapter Five

Toby's scream tore across the courtyard.

For one impossible moment, it sounded less like the voice of a warrior and more like the voice of a little boy hill watching the world end.

Then he moved, grief and blind rage twisted his face.

Every Blackthorn soldier in the courtyard seemed to anticipate it. Toby barely managed two steps before three men intercepted him.

He fought like something feral, twisting violently as they tried to pin his arms behind his back.

"Let me go!" he roared.

One soldier caught an elbow to the jaw and stumbled backward. Another lost his grip entirely. For a brief second, Toby broke free.

He dropped to his knees beside our father, and the entire courtyard watched.

Toby reached for Father with shaking hands, grabbing at his shoulders as though he could somehow force him awake.

"Father." Blood soaked through his fingers as he pressed trembling hands against the wound on Father's throat.

"You can't die."

His voice cracked.

"You can't."

No one moved.

Even the Blackthorn soldiers hesitated.

Toby had spent years fighting beside our father; he was his closest man. He had worshipped him, believed in him. Followed him into battle after battle.

Now he was staring at the impossible.

Something in Toby's face changed.

The grief and shock disappeared from his expression.

What remained frightened me far more. It was hatred, pure, consuming hatred.

Slowly, he lifted his head.

His eyes locked onto Ronan Blackthorn.

If Ronan noticed, he gave no sign of it.

The Alpha King stood calmly in the center of the courtyard, his black coat untouched by the chaos around him. His expression remained unreadable as he watched Toby rise to his feet.

"You."

Toby's voice was terrifyingly quiet.

"You killed him."

Ronan regarded him calmly.

"He started a war that killed my father," he simply said.

Toby laughed.

The sound was ugly and hollow, stripped of anything resembling humor.

"He fought for our freedom from that bastard! Freedom from your kind!

A cruel smirk tilted the corners of Ronan’s lips. "No," he replied. "He was a greedy fool fighting for himself and not the martyr you desperately wish he was."

The words landed like a physical blow.

Toby's face twisted.

Then he moved.

A fallen sword rested near one of the dead soldiers. He snatched it from the ground and charged before anyone could stop him.

The courtyard exploded into motion.

Soldiers shouted, and men surged forward from every direction.

I don't think Toby expected to survive. I think he simply stopped caring because the charge lasted only seconds.

A Blackthorn soldier intercepted him from the side while another stepped directly into his path. The sword slipped from Toby's grasp as steel struck flesh. The momentum carried him forward another step before his knees buckled beneath him.

He hit the ground hard.

And this time he didn't move.

A horrible sound escaped my throat.

My father was dead.

Now Toby was gone too.

The rebellion that had consumed thirteen years of our lives had collapsed in less than a minute. My knees gave out. I crashed onto the blood-slicked ground, the warm, metallic blood of my family smearing across the dirt beneath my trembling palms. I hyperventilated, shaking so violently I could not pull air into my burning lungs.

The sounds of the courtyard—soldiers moving, prisoners being dragged, orders called across the wreckage—came to me as though filtered through deep water, distant and distorted and belonging to a world I no longer had any footing in.

Then a disturbance rippled through the far end of the courtyard.

Heads turned as the crowd near the gates parted.

Alpha Magnus Rune walked through.

My stomach dropped before my mind caught up with why. Then his eyes found me across the courtyard, and recognition moved across his face, followed immediately by a smile that made my skin crawl.

"Well," he drawled, surveying the c*****e with mild amusement. "This is unfortunate."

His gaze traveled slowly over me. The blood covering my dress, the tears streaking my face, the way I trembled where I knelt in the ground seemed to interest him far more than the dozens of bodies scattered around the courtyard.

"But not entirely."

A few of his warriors laughed quietly behind him.

Revulsion rolled through me.

Even now.

Even after all of this.

He was looking at me like a prized horse he had purchased at auction.

Magnus finally turned his attention toward Ronan.

"The contract was signed, Alpha,” he said in a loud voice that echoed across the courtyard. "Silas Corvin may be dead, but an agreement remains an agreement. The girl belongs to Magnus Rune."

Silence followed the declaration.

My heart hammered painfully against my ribs.

No.

After everything that had happened, it couldn't end like this.

Magnus extended a hand toward me without even looking in my direction.

"Come here, girl," he said, a hint of impatience in his tone. “My soldiers and I have a…”

He never finished the sentence because in a swift, mechanical movement, Ronan Blackthorn stepped forward, his blade sinking deep into Magnus’s chest.

Magnus gasped, his smug smile melting into shock as he dropped to his knees. Ronan pulled his sword free with an effortless yank, and Magnus collapsed face-first into the ground; he was dead before he even hit the surface.

The silence that followed felt almost unreal.

One of the most powerful Alphas in the kingdom had just died in the middle of a crowded courtyard, and Ronan Blackthorn looked no more affected than if he had stepped over a puddle.

Slowly, Ronan lowered his gaze.

For the first time since entering the courtyard, his eyes settled on me.

They were a cold, unforgiving green, utterly devoid of pity as they held mine across the blood-soaked courtyard. Magnus Rune lay dead between us, my father and Toby not far behind him, yet somehow it was that look that finally made fear crawl down my spine.

A faint smile touched his mouth.

"Tell me, Alessia Corvin," he said quietly, "who do you belong to now?"