REALM OF THE LUNA

CHAPTER 2

“No!” I yelled as the soldiers roughly shoved me into one of the cells. I landed on my stomach as I fell to the ground, my breath knocked out of the me.

The soldier who had thrown me into the cell didn’t care as he grabbed me by the hair and pulled it so hard so that I could make eye contact with him.

“How could you do something so despicable?” He asked as he raised his hand and slapped me right across the face and pushed me so that my back was against the wall.

I took deep breaths to steady myself as my cheek stung from the slap and my tears didn’t let me see clearly. The soldier approached me again and slapped me on the other side of my face, twice.

“Confess. Just tell the truth. Tell us what you did to the former Alpha and Luna of this pack. Did you do all that just because you wanted to be the Luna?!”

I didn’t respond to his accusations. There was a huge lump in my throat that only let me sob so I couldn’t speak. I tried to take all the air I could into my lungs, but that didn’t last long as the soldier kicked me in the gut and I lost all my air.

“Please,” I mouthed as I curled against the ground and protected all I could, but there was only so much hugging myself could do.

The soldier didn’t care to hear what I had to say as he kept kicking until he had his fill before he bent down to meet my eyes.

“Are you ready to speak now?” He asked, c*****g his head. “You know I won’t stop unless the Alpha directly tells me to. And the moment you confess, I’ll go tell him that you’ve confessed, and you could stop getting tortured like this.”

“I didn’t do it. I had nothing to do with anything. Why won’t anyone believe me?” I cried out, and that only seemed to set the soldier off even more as he grabbed me by the hair to pin my head in place.

“You’re crazy!” He yelled as he slapped me over and over again. “You’re an insane person for still staying here and denying everything! You know how much Alpha Devon has worked to find the people who killed his parents all these years, and you’ve stayed with him all this while without batting an eye?!”

I figured that there was no use in explaining. They only needed one thing from me, and that was a confession to something I didn’t do. I was not going to give them the satisfaction, and they would have to kill me if they believed I did what I knew nothing about.

I cried out as the soldier pulled my hair and pushed my head back against the wall. I held on to my head as pain exploded within my skull, spreading fast and rendering me unable to see for a moment.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” the soldier said to me as he stood up and finally headed toward the door. “If you’re ready to tell the truth, you can speak as soon as I open the door. If not, this will only continue until Alpha Devon puts an end to it.”

As soon as he locked the door and left, I slid to the ground in a fetal position and cried my eyes out. My throat was hoarse, and I could feel how sore my cheeks were. My guts hurt from all of the kicks, and in that moment, I wanted them to kill me instead.

The soldier arrived a little too soon for me. As soon as he opened the door, I told him that I had nothing to do with it and that there had to be a mistake somewhere.

The torture continued. The soldier would hit me, leave, and come back about an hour later. At a point, the soldier didn’t return because someone else had taken his place and tortured me even worse than the first one did.

I couldn’t move after hours of everything. When the door opened again, I couldn’t even open my eyes. I already knew what was coming, and I was silently preparing for it.

“Anaya.”

I felt my heart shatter and repair itself all at once at the familiar voice of Alpha Devon. Tears filled my eyes up as I opened them and looked at him, grunting in pain as I tried to sit up through the pain that throbbed in my entire body.

“Why do you keep doing this to yourself?” He asked. “The whole night, you let them torture you, and you still haven’t confessed. This is the last chance I’m giving you to tell me the truth before I make my final decision.”

As I sat there, I didn’t know what to focus more on, the pain coursing through my veins or the fact that he still believed I had killed his parents.

“I was eighteen years old when your parents died four years ago after an attack. I didn’t know a thing. I didn’t know them. I didn’t even know you. I don’t know why you think I did it, but I didn’t.”

I didn’t know how many times I would have to say those words before someone would believe me, but it seemed nobody wanted to hear what I had to say.

“This is ridiculous,” he said as he walked toward me and grabbed me by the arm, pulling me up until I stood.

I moaned in pain as he dragged me out of the dungeon, squinting as the morning sun was too bright for me after spending the whole night in the dungeon.

“I called the entire pack out here because I knew you were going to keep denying what you did,” he said as he led me through the crowd of pack members until we were standing in front of them.

I weakly fell to my knees, unable to stand on my own. I couldn’t face anyone in the crowd, so I stared down at the ground.

“As you all probably know, you’ve believed Anaya was your Luna for a long time because she was mated to me,” he started addressing them. “But we found out recently that she’s a traitor to the pack.”

There were murmurs and gasps from the crowd as they all wondered what their Alpha was talking about.

“The person responsible for the attack that my parents died in four years ago is none other than Anaya over here.”

People yelled and spoken amongst each other at the news, and I shook my head. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do this. There was a mistake somewhere, but nobody was willing to listen to me.

“And by doing what she did, she’s committed an act of treason. And if someone is treacherous, we can’t possibly consider her as the Luna of the pack.”

I knew what was coming. Even the Moon Goddess seemed to understand what was happening as dark clouds gathered in the sky and the wind started to pick up to signal a storm.

“I, Alpha Devon of Silver Fang Pack, reject you, Anaya Woodbury, as my mate. From here on out, you have been stripped of your Luna title and will no longer be addressed as important within the pack.”