chapter 2
1255 Words
Alaric pov :
The royal throne room of the Lycan Court was steeped in a suffocating chill. I sat in silence and stared at the gold-embossed parchment in my hand.
An invitation.
Alpha Cassius of the Blackridge Pack humbly requests the presence of the Lycan King at the baptism of his firstborn son and heir. Accompanying this invitation are three high-fertility she-wolves, a tribute to the Crown.
I crushed the parchment in my fist and tossed it into the hearth. The flames licked at the gold wax seal, melting the Blackridge crest into ash.
"A generous tribute," Knox murmured. My Beta stood behind my chair. "Cassius is desperate to favor."
"He is begging for a slaughter," I replied.
At twenty-four, I had torn out my father’s throat. I had hunted down my brothers one by one, painting the snow of the capital red in a single night. I had earned the title of The Reaper. For five years since, the continent had been locked in a state of perpetual, exhausted war.
And hanging over it all was the Moon Goddess’s curse on my bloodline.
No fated mate. No heir.
Every she-wolf who had ever been foolish enough, or ambitious enough, to share my bed had gone completely mad within a week. The two who had managed to conceive had died screaming, torn apart from the inside by beasts that were never meant to be born. I had accepted my fate long ago. I was a weapon forged for war, not a father.
"the invitation, my King?" Knox asked, his tone carefully neutral. "Will we ignore it?"
I watched the last corner of the parchment curl and turn black in the fire. My beast, usually a slumbering, violent mass of cold fury in my chest, stirred restlessly.
"No," I said slowly, a cruel smile touching the corner of my mouth. "We will attend this baptism. I want to look this new Alpha in the eye."
"To honor the pup?"
"To find an excuse," I corrected him, the Lycan slipping into my eyes, turning my vision a terrifying gold. "I pray to the Goddess that one of those tribute she-wolves is a Blackridge spy. It will give me all the justification I need to break the truce early and wipe Cassius’s pathetic pack off the map."
Rhea pov :
The floor of the dungeon was freezing, leeching the last remnants of body heat from my exhausted limbs. I huddled in the dark, the scent of damp earth and my own dried blood filling my nose.
Dawn was approaching. Under pack law, the guards would be down soon to march me to the border. It was an execution without the dignity of a blade.
I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the iron bars. I was ready. I had survived twenty-two years of torture; I could survive the frozen wilderness.
But then, a v pull snapped tight in my chest. It was raw maternal instinct clawed its way up my throat. Something was wrong. Because Cassius had been interrupted and never finished the formal rejection.
He is dying.
The thought hit me just as an unbearable pressure slammed into my skull.
Then suddenly dungeon doors crashed open. Two guards hauled me to my feet, dragging me up the spiraling stairs, through the grand halls, and shoving me through the double doors of the nursery.
The room was suffocatingly hot, filled with the scent of a dozen helpless healers. Selene stood by the mahogany crib, her perfectly curled hair in disarray, her face pale and frantic. In her arms, a tiny, fragile bundle was gasping for air.
His face was turning a horrifying, bruised purple. His breathing was terribly shallow.
Before I could even take a step, a heavy hand cracked across my jaw. The force of Cassius’s blow sent me crashing to the floor. My vision swam, copper flooding my mouth.
"You defective b***h," Cassius snarled, towering over me. His chest heaved with panic and rage. "Your bloodline is broken! Your genes are a defect!"
"Alpha, please," a healer begged, dropping to his knees beside me. "The pup’s is rejecting the formula. He needs direct contact with his birth mother, or his heart will give out!"
In my past life, I had sat beside that crib for seven nights. I had bled my own energy into his tiny body, refusing to sleep, refusing to eat until he opened his eyes.
But as I knelt on the cold floor now, wiping the blood from my chin, the way I looked at the newborn was entirely different.
The infant in Selene's arms was tiny and helpless. But when I looked at him, I didn't see a baby. I saw the arrogant twenty-two-year-old monster with dead eyes. I felt the phantom crush of his hands on my windpipe. I heard his voice calling me a w***e while he squeezed the life out of me.
If he dies today, voice whispered in my mind, none of it ever happens. The cycle breaks right here.
"Give him to me," I rasped, pushing myself up off the floor.
Selene clutched the baby tighter, her eyes flashing with territorial fury. "No! She’s a stray! She’s entirely too low to touch him—"
"He is dying, Selene!" Cassius roared, the stress shattering his usually composed facade.
Selene let out a sob. Desperation warring with disgust, she shoved the fading pup into my arms, treating me like a contaminated surface. The moment the child was out of her hands, she spun back to Cassius, immediately demanding the healers find another way, anything that didn't involve me.
They argued. The healers hovered around them.
No one was watching me.
I drifted backward, melting into the shadows of the nursery’s corner.
The baby in my arms was horribly still. His chest barely rose. He didn't smell like the Alpha he would become. He smelled like milk and fragile, fading life.
My hand, trembling uncontrollably, rose into the air.
Just let him fade, the voice in my head urged. Hold your hand over his mouth. Two minutes. That’s all it takes to save yourself twenty-two years of hell.
My palm hovered over his tiny, blue-tinged face. My heart hammered against my ribs, deafening in my own ears. I was a breath away from ending it.
And then, my body completely betrayed my mind.
A sudden, warm rush flooded my chest. The agonizing pressure in my breasts broke as my milk let down, soaking rapidly through the thin fabric.
The pup, a second away from slipping into the dark, twitched.
His tiny, flat nose flared. The last, desperate shred of dying instinct inside of him reached blindly for the scent of his mother's milk. He turned his head weakly into my chest, a heartbreaking whimper escaping his blue lips.
I froze. The monster from my memories vanished, replaced by the crushing, immediate reality of a starving baby.
My hand was still suspended over his mouth. My fingers curled inward, caught between the urge to smother him and the overwhelming instinct to pull him close.
"Luna Rhea—"
The horrified scream of a healer standing right behind me shattered the room.
"What are you doing?!”
- Writer
