THE WORTHLESS LUNA THEY BURIED

Three

Angeline's POV

I took a slow, deep breath, and my eyes opened. The ceiling was unfamiliar. High, vaulted, with exposed dark beams. Where am I?

My gaze drifted to the floor-to-ceiling window leading to a balcony, where a man stood with his back to me.

My eyes tracked from his polished leather boots up long, straight legs in dark pants, to a torso that spoke of lean, silent power rather than brute strength. A complex tattoo stretched from his wrist over a corded forearm and disappeared under the rolled sleeve of his grey shirt. He checked his wristwatch, the movement flexing his bicep.

His hair was blond, swept back over his shoulders. The side profile was sharp, clean, like a face carved from marble for some forgotten temple.

Who is he?

“I see you’re better now, since you can stare that much.”

His voice was low, smooth, and it jolted me. He turned.

My lips parted. I couldn’t help it. He was… beautiful in a way that felt dangerous. High cheekbones, a strong jaw, and eyes the colour of sharp, cold jade. They held me pinned.

He walked to the king-sized bed and sat on the edge, his gaze sweeping over me, observant, assessing.

“Finally. After three days, you’re awake.”

“Three days?” I blinked, my voice raspy. I’d been out for three days? And he’s just… been here?

Then it crashed back. The grave. The dirt. The burst of power. The shadow at the edge.

“Was it you?” I asked.

He gave a single nod. “I was passing the cemetery. Saw you. Decided to bring you to my pack before the lingering rogues that night decided to make you a snack.”

“Your pack?”

He studied me, his head tilting slightly. “You don’t know me?”

I shook my head. “No.”

His green eyes narrowed, as if my ignorance was a personal slight. But what did he expect? I’d lived in the shadows, Chad’s little secret. I knew no one.

“I’m Sloan Neeson.”

“Sloan? Nee…” The name hit me like a punch to the gut. Sloan Neeson. Alpha of the Dark Howls pack. I’d overheard the guards at the prison talk about him in hushed, fearful tones. A prodigy. Ruthless. He’d killed his seven Gamma uncles at sixteen when they tried to usurp him, and took his throne in a single, blood-drenched night. Honoured by the Alpha King. Feared by everyone else. Ice ran in his veins.

He watched the recognition dawn. “I guess you can recall me now.”

I inhaled, pulling my knees up. “Yes. Why did you save me?”

“I didn’t. You saved yourself, I think. I just helped a little.” He leaned closer, those green eyes drilling into mine. “And… you had that fight for survival gleaming on you. It was interesting.” His voice dropped. “Who are you? Why were you in a cemetery, half-dead?”

“I was buried alive. By someone I thought was my everything. Betrayed by the two people who were my only family. My husband and my sister.”

“Husband?”

“My ex-husband.”

I pushed the duvet back and got out of bed, my legs shaky. I walked to the window, staring at the pale sliver of the half-moon in the daylight sky.

He rose. “What was your offense?”

I let out a bitter chuckle. “Love. I loved and trusted a man blindly. He wanted my sister. He sent me to jail for his crime, brought her back, and when I didn’t die in there, he decided to finish the job himself to hide his sins.”

“Who is he?”

I turned to face him, the name ash in my mouth. “Chad Marlow. Alpha of the Black Dawn Pack.”

Sloan’s expression didn’t change. Not a flicker. His face was an unreadable mask. I braced for disbelief, for the same dismissal I’d always gotten.

“I guess you don't believe me. Well, It’s not shocking,” I said, the old defensiveness rising. “He maintains a pious image. Cameras love him. I didn’t believe he was a monster either, until I was in the dark with dirt in my mouth.”

“I believe you,” Sloan said, simple as that.

I stared, astounded.

He walked closer. “I watched you tear your way out of that grave in your wolf form. I’ve never seen anyone, let alone someone so… petite… fight for life like that after being buried.” A ghost of something—respect?—flitted in his eyes. “It was impressive.”

I chuckled, the sound hollow. “I can’t just die when I’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain by staying alive.”

“Talking about gain,” he said, his gaze sweeping over me again, speculative. “I could have those vultures who wanted you dead shredded and buried in that same cemetery. It would be… poetic. You could even dig the holes yourself.”

I knew he could. His reputation wasn’t for show.

“Why?” I asked, crossing my arms. “Why would you want to help me? You don’t know me.”

He shrugged one shoulder, a graceful, lethal movement. “Let’s say I don’t find betrayers, cheaters, or liars entertaining enough to let them keep breathing. They clutter the planet.”

I looked at him, then shook my head. “I don’t want them shredded.” I walked past him, feeling a new chill in the air. “I want them broken. I want them to languish in anguish. And I want to do it myself.”

“Okay then,” he said, his voice dropping to a murmur near my ear. “I can support that. I can change your life. Build you into the weapon you need to be.”

“In exchange for what?”

He drew closer. His eyes trailed down my body, not with lust, but with a cold, calculating assessment, as if appraising raw material. They narrowed, then lifted back to mine.

“Loyalty.”

Loyalty. It was a simple word, and I wasn’t naïve enough to think that’s all Sloan Neeson wanted. But after I gave him my vow, kneeling on the floor of his study with the scent of old books and power in the air, his focus shifted. It wasn’t on possessing me. It was on forging me.

He started the very next day. Before dawn, in a private gym that smelled of sweat and polished wood, he became my personal hell.

“Your wolf has awaken,” he stated, not asking, as I panted after a brutal series of sprints. “Stop fighting her. She’s not a separate thing. She’s your rage, your instinct. She’s the part of you that clawed out of a grave. Stop being afraid of her.”

I was. The power was still new, terrifying. During our first sparring session, I held back, using the weak, defensive blocks I’d used as a wolfless woman trying not to get hurt.

He backhanded me across the mat. Not hard enough to break bones, but hard enough to make my vision swim and my pride scream.

“Pathetic,” he’d growled, his green eyes glacial. “Is that how you fought in the coffin? Like a scared rabbit? I think your wolf would be ashamed.”

Shame burned hotter than the sting on my cheek. The next time he came at me, I didn’t think. My wolf, Gia surged forward. A snarl ripped from my throat, and I moved faster than I thought possible, sweeping his legs. He hit the mat with a satisfying thud.

He looked up at me from the floor, and for the first time, I saw something other than ice in his eyes. A spark of interest. He smirked. “Better.”

That became our rhythm. Brutal training at dawn. Strategy and pack business in the afternoon, where he taught me to read financial reports and corporate alliances like battle maps. Pack management in the evenings, where I learned to command not through an Alpha’s innate dominance, but through ruthless efficiency and a will of steel.

In six months, I was no longer just his project. I was running pack security drills, my voice calm and cutting as I pointed out flaws in their perimeter. I was overseeing supply chains, my sharp eye catching discrepancies that had slipped past his Beta for months.