ALPHA QUEEN AND ROGUE

CHAPTER 5

WOLVES OF THE FORGOTTEN BLOODLINE

The elder turned to her. “The Rite of the Hollow Moon. The test that reveals your true bond, your blood oath, and the power of your soul. It will show who you are… and who will die because of it.”

She stepped forward without hesitation. “Then let it show me.”

Kaelen grabbed her wrist. “This isn’t a game. If you’re not the one in the prophecy—”

“Then I die,” she said. “Better that than being a puppet in someone else’s war.”

Nyra gave a solemn nod. “At moonrise, we begin.”

Hours later, beneath a moon now pulsing like a living wound, Seraphina stood alone inside the Hollow Circle—twelve obsidian stones arranged in an ancient pattern. Her robes had been stripped, replaced by a simple cloth woven with glyphs of truth.

Kaelen watched from the shadows, jaw tight. If she failed, the bond would kill her. If she succeeded…

No. He could not afford to hope.

The elder raised his staff. “Speak your name to the moon.”

“I am Seraphina Wynmere. Alpha. Queen. Daughter of the Moon.”

The wind stilled. The trees leaned in.

The elder carved a rune in the air. “Speak your wound.”

“My heart was broken when my guard died for me. I watched my people fall like stars. And I do not know if I am worthy to lead what remains.”

A beam of silver moonlight struck her chest, burning the sigils onto her skin. She cried out but did not fall.

“Speak your truth.”

She lifted her eyes to the moon. “I fear what I could become. But I fear more what will happen if I do nothing.”

Silence. Then—howls, dozens of them, from every edge of the forest.

The ground beneath her cracked. Roots coiled. Fire erupted—not from without, but from within her. A radiant blaze poured from her eyes, her mouth, her veins. She rose, levitating, arms spread wide. Her scream shook the stars.

When the light died, she collapsed.

Kaelen was the first to reach her. Her breathing was shallow.

The elder touched her forehead. “She is marked. She carries both the blood of unity… and destruction.”

Kaelen paled. “Then it’s true.”

“She is the Flame-Bound Alpha,” Nyra whispered. “The Moon Goddess’s final gamble.”

Seraphina opened her eyes. They glowed, not silver, but gold.

And then—

A deafening sound shattered the stillness.

A horn. Low. Echoing. Unnatural.

Kaelen stood. “That’s not possible.”

From the mist emerged a figure riding a creature no longer seen in the living realms. A Dreadmare, dead for centuries.

The rider’s face was hidden, but their voice carried power.

“Kaelen Kaelvar,” it said, “your father sends his regrets.”

Kaelen’s face drained of color. “That’s not my father’s envoy.”

Seraphina tried to rise. “Who is it?”

Kaelen stepped in front of her, blades drawn.

“It’s the Shadow Heir of Bloodmoor. The one who never died.”

The rider lifted their helm.

And Seraphina saw her own face staring back.

Seraphina, suddenly found herself waking up before Seeress Lysanda and wondered if everything was a dream, until she saw Captain Daevan Thorne still bleeding from the injuries he sustained from the attack, but the Queen was found lying down unconscious at the entrance Kingdom of Elarwyn. She had fallen asleep so deeply from the injuries she sustain and did know when Kaelen secretly brought her to Elarwyn.

A heavy silence cloaked the War Hall of Virethorn, broken only by the crackling of blue-violet witch-fire in the braziers.

King Alpha Garrick Bloodmoor stood at the center, his crimson cloak pooling around his boots like spilled blood upon obsidian stone. The vaulted ceiling above was etched with iron runes—ancestral glyphs of dominion and war—glimmering faintly with residual magic. Beneath him, the obsidian model of the realm rotated slowly, balanced on a pivot of carved dragonbone. Each kingdom was represented by silver shards, and rivers flowed across the surface in threads of quicksilver. A world held in his clawed grasp.

“Two winters ago,” Garrick began, his voice a low growl that echoed with age-old fury, “a nameless maid poured nightshade into the wine of King Alderic and Queen Lyriana. They died smiling—because they trusted their wine. And their people wept—because we whispered.”

He turned the pivot beneath the map and unlocked a hidden compartment at its base. From within, he retrieved a vial no longer than a man’s thumb, sealed with molten wax and gleaming like a blood-red tear.

“This,” he said, holding the ruby vial aloft, “is the final draught of their demise. A poison born from the roots of the Hollowshade Tree, steeped in dragonfly marrow, brewed under a black moon.” He stared into the vial, his reflection twisted within it. “Seraphina Wynmere rules on borrowed breath. It is time to collect the debt.”

Lady Sirelda stepped forward from the shadows beside him. Her pale skin shimmered with an unnatural luminescence, like ice under starlight. The silver circlet resting upon her brow glinted with embedded frost-crystals that pulsed faintly with her heartbeat.

“The Seeress’s words have not changed,” she said, her voice as still and cold as snowfall on a grave. “The Moon-Touched Queen will either unite the fractured realms or ignite them in ruin. She is either the beginning of an age—or its funeral pyre. I say we extinguish her before her flame kindles the world.”

General Thorne Axebite, scar-faced and broad-shouldered, slammed his iron gauntlet on the council table, making the miniature realm shudder. “Open war razes doubts. Our wolves howl for it. They grow restless behind city walls. The old ways—blood, conquest, ash. That’s how we deal with pretenders and prophecies.”