Claimed By A Midnight King

Chapter 2

Vivian's pov

I woke up with the taste of blood in my mouth.

Rough hands dragged me upward, my knees scraping against the rough stone of the courtyard. The cold night air whipped across my face. I blinked through the swelling in my eye, realising I wasn’t in a cell.

I was in the centre of the citadel square.

The entire pack had gathered under the glow of the rising blood moon. Hundreds of eyes stared down at me with pure, unfiltered hatred. Whispers of traitor, their, and curse escalated into screaming demands for my blood. Someone spat, the warm saliva hitting my cheek.

The guards threw me violently to the marble base of the high balcony.

I fell hard, my wrists screaming in pain. I looked up, my vision swimming. Standing in the elevated dais was the Alpha king, his face carved with fury. Beside him stood the High Commander, Sofia, and …Damian.

“Vivian of the fading bloodline”, the king's voice boomed, silencing the crowd. “You were caught desecrating our sanctuary, attempting to steal the Sunstone and plunge our lands into further darkness just as your father did twelve years ago”.

“No!” I croaked, my throat raw. I tried to push myself up, but a guard drove the heel of his boot into my back, pinning me to the stone. “I didn’t steal! I was asked to hold it! I was—“

“Silence! You stupid omega!” Sofia’s father, the High Commander, stepped forward. Sofia stood right behind him, wearing her saintly smile. I could tell she looked entirely bored with my tears, twisting a lock of her hair around her fingers.

I looked frantically at Damian. Tell them, I begged him with my eyes. You promised me. You gave it to me. Tell them the truth.

Damian looked down at me from the balcony. His face didn’t hold anger. Instead, it held pity, which was so much worse.

“An Alpha cannot harbour a thief, father”, Damian’s voice rang out. “ I tried to show this cursed girl mercy over the years out of pity for her wretched state. Clearly, she mistook my charity for weakness and used it to bypass the guards”.

No… that wasn't what he said in the kitchen. That wasn’t the way he looked at me when he kissed my forehead.

Then the realisation hit me hard. The sweet words in the kitchen. Telling me to sneak to the Whispering falls in the dead of the night. They had planned this. All of it. He needed a reason to get rid of me so he would marry Sofia and take the throne. And I had walked right into the slaughterhouse, holding the knife for him.

“Execute her!” A woman in the front row screamed.

“Burn the traitor! Another voice joined in, until the entire square was chanting my death.

The alpha king raised his hand, his eyes burning with disgust. “Your father's treason cost us the sun. Your treason will cost you your head. Guards—“

No, Father," Damian interrupted, raising a hand to the crowd. He played his role perfectly—the wise and kind prince. "Her blood is cursed. Spilling it here would only make our land worse and increase the decay. Exile her. Send her to the Dead Zone. Let the Shadows take what belongs to them."

The King looked at his son, a flicker of pride in his stern eyes. He nodded slowly. "The Prince has spoken," he announced to the mocking crowd. "Vivian, daughter of the traitor, you are stripped of all clan protections. You will be sent to the Dead Zone, never to come back."

I couldn't scream or even cry. The deep, sickening betrayal left me feeling empty inside. The boy I had loved for six years hadn’t just abandoned me; he had planned my punishment and called it mercy.

"Take her to the border of the dead zone," Damian ordered, his golden eyes finally meeting mine. There was no love left in them—nothing at all. "And get ready for the severance ceremony.

The guards dragged me up by my hair. I didn’t fight them. My legs dragged against the cobblestones as they pulled me away from the light of the square, past the screaming faces of my pack, and toward the dead zone that marked the edge of the world.

The guards dragged me to the edge of the Whispering Falls, where the water crashed violently against the sharp, icy rocks below. The cold night air whipped through my thin, tattered linen dress, stinging my skin, but that chill was nothing compared to the icy fear coursing through my veins.

They tossed me into the mud. I didn’t try to rise. My body was exhausted and bruised from hitting the stone floor of the Great Hall, and my head still throbbed from a spear strike and the lingering effects of Sofia’s poison.

I heard footsteps crunching on the frost-covered grass.

Damian came into view, with Sofia beside him. He had pulled up his fur-lined cloak hood, hiding his face in shadow. Sofia clung to his arm, her eyes shining with a twisted excitement.

“You could have just behaved like a good little Void and stayed in the dirt,” Sofia mocked, looking down at me as if I were a decaying corpse.

You convinced yourself that you could bask in the light, but this is the fate that awaits those who dare to fly too close to the sun," she remarked coldly.

I turned away from her, unable to meet her gaze. Instead, I sought comfort in Damian's golden eyes, hoping to find a glimpse of the boy who had bandaged my head in the lunar gardens and kissed me only hours earlier. But there was nothing there, only a chilling emptiness.

"The elders demand that the severance be complete," Damian stated flatly, his voice devoid of any emotion. He slowly drew a small silver dagger from his belt—the very kind used for blood sacrifices.

Damian stopped a foot away from me. His face didn't reek of anger. He looked at me with pity, which was even worse.

“I'm not going to kill you, Viv”, he said, raising the dagger in his hand. The silver blade caught the first crimson ray of the rising blood moon. “But you can't stay”.

Before I could scream, he moved faster. His hand clamped on my mouth as I tried to fight my way out. I thrashed, my fingers clawing at his arms. But I was just a weak wolf

The blade came into view, catching what little light remained.

My heart paused, waiting and bracing for the pain. For the kind of hurt that bleeds and ends quickly.

Instead, he pressed the flat of the silver blade against the mark on my collarbone—the blank space where a mate mark should have been.

A wave of fear washed over me as I stumbled backward until my shoulders pressed against the damp rock of the cliffside. “Damian, please,” I pleaded, tasting blood on my tongue. “You know I have a weak wolf to even protect me out there. This is a death sentence.”

“Hold her down,” he ordered with an unsettling calmness.

The guards forced my head back, and Damian pressed the flat edge of the silver ritual dagger against my collarbone. The space where my mate Mark was supposed to be. His lips brushed my ear, so close that I could sense the warmth of his breath.

"I told you tonight would change everything," he murmured. Then, raising his voice for others to hear, he declared: "I, Damian of the Sun... renounce you. Now go, before the council realises you’re still breathing”.

Immediately I heard those words, a searing agony exploded in my chest. I felt a piece of myself, the part that's still hoped, the part that still remembered his laughter. I felt it shrivel and die.

“Now!”, Sofia whispered, leaning in close.

A piercing pain surged through my chest as I felt a part of myself, the part that still held onto hope, the part that cherished his laughter wither and fade away.

“Get out! Sofia whispered, leaning in close as the guards released me. “Run into the dead zone. Run before we change our minds and hang your head on a spike”.

I stumbled backward, the harsh jeers of my tormentors cutting through me like a knife. Their taunts echoed relentlessly in my mind long after their voices faded away. My body reacted instinctively, and before my courage could catch up, I fled into the cold, engulfing darkness of the forest.

The metallic taste of blood coated my throat, but there was no visible injury; it felt like it was coming from within. held onto my shirt over my heart, gasping and crying until I had no tears left, just an empty feeling inside.

I reached out to brace myself against an ancient oak, but the moment my hand touched the bark, it disintegrated into ash.

I stared at my pain. A faint violet glow was pulsing beneath my palm.

A deep, resonant vibration trembled through the ground beneath me.

"Run!!" my wolf whispered, her voice a dying ember. “The shadows… They aren't empty."

I turned toward the dark tree line of the north, my breath hitching as a twig snapped.

A pair of silver eyes ignited in the darkness, ten feet away.

I tried to scream, but a gloved hand slammed over my mouth, smelling of old blood.

A cold voice whispered directly into my ear, sending a chill down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

“Don’t make a sound, little Sun girl," the voice murmured. “The king has been waiting a very long time for a piece of the sun to fall."

The world tilted as a black stone was pressed against my temple—

And then, there was only the dark.