THE UNSCENTED LUNA

The Crimson Blockade

Chapter 4: The Crimson Blockade

The screech of the carriage wheels cut

through the night like a dying rabbit.

The violent momentum threw me forward off the velvet seat. Before my head could smash into the mahogany partition, Kael’s arm shot out like an iron bar, catching me across the chest and slamming me back into the cushions.

"Stay down," he commanded, his voice vibrating with a lethal drop in pitch.

Outside, the obsidian stallions shrieked, their massive hooves trampling the stone highway as the royal vanguard scrambled into a defensive perimeter. The unmistakable sound of dozens of broadswords drawing from their scabbards echoed through the thin wooden panels of the carriage.

"Your Majesty!" Darius’s voice roared from the front of the line, stripped of its usual military precision. It was raw, frantic, and laced with absolute dread. "We have a situation. The highway is blocked."

Kael didn't hesitate. He kicked the carriage door open, the heavy wood swinging back with a violent crack. He stepped out onto the iron stairs, blocking my view with his broad back, but he didn't close the door behind him. The air that rushed into the cabin was no longer filled with the crisp scent of the forest—it was burning with hot sulfur, ozone, and a suffocating, hyper-aggressive scent of crushed blood-oranges and iron.

I crawled to the edge of the seat, peering past Kael’s hip.

Standing in the center of the moonlit imperial highway, completely blocking the path to the capital, was a contingent of forty elite warriors. They wore heavy armor bearing the crimson crest of the Bloodfang Vanguard—Darius’s personal secondary division.

And leading them, mounted on a towering, snow-white dire wolf, was a woman.

She was stunningly beautiful, her long, flame-red hair whipping wildly in the wind against her polished crimson breastplate. Her eyes were a piercing, luminescent amber, glowing with an erratic, volatile light.

*Lady Teresa.* The Commander of the Bloodfang Vanguard. And Darius Kane’s fated mate.

But right now, she didn't look like a proud noblewoman. She looked like a wolf driven to the absolute brink of madness. Her chest heaved violently under her chest piece, her fingers clawing at the reins of her mount so hard her knuckles were bleeding.

"Darius!" Teresa screamed, her voice tearing through the silence of the highway. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated agony. "What did you do? What did you do to our bond?"

Darius stood twenty paces ahead of the carriage, his massive warhorse shifting uneasily beneath him. For the first time since I had met the feared War Commander, his posture was shattered. His head was bowed, his massive shoulders trembling under his armor. The dominant ozone scent radiating from him was fluctuating wildly, trying desperately to reach out to the woman across the road, but the invisible thread that had connected their souls for years was completely severed.

"Teresa..." Darius rasped, his voice cracking. "Lower your weapons. You are blocking the King’s transport. This is treason."

"Treason?!" Teresa unleashed a wild, feral laugh that dissolved into a choked sob. She ripped her broadsword from her back, pointing the gleaming steel directly past Darius, straight at the royal carriage. Straight at me. "The moment you stepped into this sector, my soul ripped in half, Darius! The pack bond burned to ash inside my chest! I felt you choose another. I felt our fated thread snap!"

The forty warriors behind her shifted, their weapons lowered toward the King's guard. The tension was a powder keg, waiting for a single spark.

"It wasn't a choice," Darius roared, his voice filled with a desperate, self-loathing agony as his grey eyes flashed violently. "Teresa, stand down! I am ordering you as your Superior Commander!"

"You are nothing to me anymore!" Teresa shrieked, her amber eyes locking onto the open carriage door. She sniffed the air frantically, her face twisting into a mask of pure horror as her nose encountered the absolute vacuum around me. "There is no scent... there is nothing there! You broke our divine bond for a blank ghost? A wolf-less freak?!"

She kicked her dire wolf, the massive white beast lunging forward at a breakneck sprint. She didn't charge Darius. She bypassed him entirely, her sword raised high, aiming straight for the carriage cabin.

"Teresa, no!" Darius screamed, lunging his horse forward to intercept her, but he was too slow.

Kael stepped down from the carriage stairs, his golden eyes flashing amber as his royal alpha aura exploded across the highway, forcing several of the front-line horses to rear back in terror. "Lower your blade, Lady Teresa, or I will end your lineage tonight!" Kael bellowed.

But Teresa was beyond the reach of an Alpha’s command. The pain of a severed fated bond had driven her wolf into a psychotic frenzy. She ignored the King entirely, her white mount leaping over the stone barricade, her blade coming down in a lethal arc meant to cleave the carriage—and me—in two.

My heart stopped. The golden warmth in my chest didn't just prickle this time; it roared, reacting to the lethal threat, reacting to the sheer chaos of their clashing wills.

I didn't think. I didn't plan. I threw myself to the door of the carriage, leaned out into the crimson moonlight, and let my voice explode from the deepest void of my soul.

“**KNEEL!**”

The word shattered the night like a thunderclap.

It didn't carry the sound of a human girl. It carried a heavy, ancient, thrumming vibration that flattened the grass for miles. A shockwave of pure, golden energy rippled outward from my chest, tearing through the highway.

The snow-white dire wolf froze mid-air, its front legs buckling instantly as it slammed into the stone road, sliding to a brutal halt inches from the carriage stairs. Teresa was thrown from the saddle, crashing heavily onto the hard pavement, her broadsword clattering away into the dark.

But the command didn't stop with her.

Across the highway, all forty elite warriors of the Bloodfang Vanguard were violently forced onto their knees, their armor clanking loudly against the stone as their bodies refused to obey them. Even Kael Vance’s royal guards collapsed to the dirt, gasping for air under the crushing weight of the absolute voice.

Darius’s horse dropped to its knees, and the War Commander himself stumbled off the saddle, hitting the ground on one knee, his chest heaving as he stared up at me in absolute terror and worship.

Even Kael, standing directly in front of me, stiffened violently. His knees trembled, his massive frame locking up as he fought with everything his royal lineage possessed just to keep his joints from snapping under my command. He didn't fall, but he was paralyzed, his golden eyes wide with a sudden, profound realization of what I truly was.

Silence swallowed the highway. Nobody moved. Nobody could breathe.

In the center of the road, Teresa lay in the dirt, her body trembling violently as she tried to lift her head against my invisible pressure. She looked up at me through her tangled red hair, her amber eyes no longer filled with rage—only a deep, paralyzing horror.

I stood on the carriage ledge, my chest heaving, my white dress fluttering in the sudden, dead wind. The golden aura hummed softly around my fingers, a silent queen looking down at an army of apex predators brought entirely to their knees by a girl with no wolf.

From the shadows of the roof above, a soft, slow clapping broke the terrifying silence.

Soren dropped down effortlessly from the ceiling, landing right beside me on the stairs, the only one unaffected by the command because his rogue soul answered to nothing. He looked at the kneeling army, then turned his mismatched blue and green eyes to me, a wicked, ecstatic smile stretching across his face.

"Oh, little moon," Soren whispered, his voice the only sound on the frozen highway. "You just showed the entire empire exactly who wears the crown."