TRAGEDY OF THE ALPHA’S LUNA

CHAPTER 4: THE CORONATION

Mara's POV

"He already answered me."

I hadn't slept since I heard those words. Three days had passed, and still they echoed every time I closed my eyes.

Now I stood in front of a mirror while two attendants pinned my hair into place, and none of it felt real. Not the silver gown. Not the weight of the ceremony bearing down on the whole territory. Not the fact that in a few hours, I would officially become someone's Luna.

"Hold still," one attendant murmured, and I realized my hands were shaking.

Outside my window, the courtyard had already filled with wolves gathering for the coronation. Word had spread fast after the mating ceremony. Everyone had an opinion about me now.

Some bowed when I passed.

Some glared like I'd stolen something that wasn't mine to take.

I'd heard the whispers too *a woman like her doesn't belong beside an Alpha* but none of it frightened me the way that voice had.

*He already answered me.*

Jonah still hadn't explained what that meant. Every time I brought it up, his jaw tightened and he changed the subject, and I was running out of patience for it.

"You look beautiful," he said, appearing in the doorway like he'd been summoned by my thoughts.

"Don't." I turned to face him. "Don't try to distract me with compliments. I need answers, Jonah. That voice…"

"I need you to trust me." His voice was low, urgent. "Please. Just for today."

"Trust is supposed to go both ways." My chest tightened. "You keep asking me to trust you while giving me less and less reason to."

He flinched like I'd struck him, but he didn't argue. He just kissed my forehead and left, and I stood there feeling more alone than I had in weeks.

I had almost an hour before the ceremony began. I didn't spend it getting ready.

Instead, I followed one of the elders.

I'd noticed him slipping toward the eastern wing of the estate, the section everyone called restricted, the one nobody entered without explicit permission from the Alpha's family. He moved like a man who didn't want to be seen, and that alone was enough to make me follow.

The door he vanished through led to a narrow room lined with shelves of aging documents, dust thick enough to taste. I waited until his footsteps faded deeper into the archive before slipping inside myself.

The first folder I opened nearly stopped my heart.

*Ellison. Calder.*

Both names, side by side, on documents that looked decades old. My eyes skimmed lines about bloodline compatibility, about a ritual, about something described only as "the binding" before a shadow fell across the page.

"What are you doing?"

I spun around. Jonah stood in the doorway, and I had never seen him look at me like that, furious, and underneath it, terrified.

"I could ask you the same thing," I said, holding up the folder. "Our families have been connected for generations, Jonah. There's a ritual. Documents with both our names. What is this?"

"Put that back." He crossed the room and took it from my hands, more roughly than he probably meant to.

"No. I want answers."

"I don't have all of them!" His voice cracked, loud enough to startle a cloud of dust from the nearest shelf. Then, quieter: "I don't have all of them, Mara. I know our families are tied together somehow. I know there's history neither of us was told. But I don't know what the ritual is, or what it does, or why my father spent his whole life terrified of it."

I searched his face and found something I recognized immediately.

The truth.

But not the whole truth.

"You're still hiding something," I said quietly.

"I'm not lying to you."

"That's not what I said."

Before he could respond, a horn sounded through the estate, deep, resonant, impossible to ignore.

The coronation was beginning.

"We'll finish this," Jonah said, tucking the folder beneath his arm. "After. I promise."

I didn't believe him. But there was no time left to argue.

The hall was packed by the time we entered, every wolf in the territory crammed shoulder to shoulder to witness their future Alpha take his place. Jonah walked to the dais alone first, and I watched from the side as the ceremonial words were spoken over him, as the ancient markings on the floor lit faintly beneath his feet, as the room collectively held its breath.

"Alpha Jonah Calder," the officiant intoned, "protector of this territory, bearer of its wolves."

Jonah rose as Alpha.

The hall erupted in cheers, and for one moment, watching him standing there transformed by title and history, I let myself believe we might actually survive this.

Then they called me forward.

I walked the length of the hall with every eye tracking my movement, feeling the weight of a thousand judgments pressing against my skin. When I reached the dais, Jonah took my hands, and the crown; cold, heavier than it looked like it was lowered onto my head.

"Luna Mara Ellison," the officiant announced.

For a few beautiful seconds, nothing hurt. Nothing was wrong. I was simply standing beside the man I loved, both of us finally where we'd fought so hard to be.

Then Jonah collapsed.

It happened without warning, one second upright, the next crumpling to his knees like something had reached inside him and yanked. I felt it a heartbeat later through our bond: pain, blinding and total, ripping through him like fire.

"Jonah!"

He screamed, and the sound tore through the hall, silencing every murmur, every whisper.

His body convulsed. Bones cracked and reshaped beneath his skin, faster and more violent than any shift I'd witnessed, and when his wolf finally broke free, it was wrong. Too large. Too dark. Its eyes wept blood instead of tears, and a low growl rolled out of it that seemed to shake the walls themselves.

The crowd surged backward as one.

I didn't.

I moved toward him instead, ignoring every scream telling me to stop, and his wolf's head snapped toward me, blood-slick eyes locking onto mine.

I braced for teeth.

Instead, it spoke.

Not through the bond this time. Out loud. A voice that dropped through the hall like a stone through glass, audible to every wolf in the room.

"She must die."

Chaos exploded around me.

Jonah fought against his own body, claws raking down his chest as he tried to wrestle back control, blood pouring from wounds that wouldn't close. I could feel him through the bond, desperate and drowning, screaming somewhere underneath the thing wearing his skin.

"Jonah!" I ran the last few steps toward him, ignoring the hands trying to pull me back.

For one moment, his eyes cleared.

Brown, not gold. Human. His.

He looked at me like it might be the last time he ever would.

"Run," he choked out.

Then his wolf surged forward and swallowed him whole again.

I didn't run.

I couldn't.

But before I could reach him, hands seized my arms from behind, wrenching me backward. I twisted to see elders closing in around me, faces contorted with something between terror and fury.

"The curse has awakened!" one of them shouted, pointing a shaking finger at me like I was something to be burned.

"The Luna brought it with her!" another screamed, and the words rippled through the hall like fire catching dry grass.

Every wolf in the room turned toward me.

I searched the faces surrounding me, the same wolves who had bowed to me an hour ago, who had watched the crown settle onto my head with something almost like reverence and found nothing left of that in their eyes.

They weren't looking at their Luna anymore.

They were looking at their enemy.