Coming Back as Enemy's Luna

38. Arena

= Mikael =

I shouldn’t be anywhere near this.

I knew that the moment I felt the pull in my chest—the instinctive urge to step in, to act. This wasn’t my place. This wasn’t my fight. Getting involved would only invite questions, speculation, whispers that would spread faster than truth ever did. Not that their opinions mattered. They never had.

Still… this crossed a line.

It went against everything I believed in—everything I’d drawn boundaries around to keep order intact. I was supposed to observe, not intervene. To lead from above, not wade into chaos.

And yet, before I could rein myself in, my body moved.

My strides were deliberate as I pushed forward, cutting through the outer ring of onlookers. At first, no one recognized me. I was just another figure forcing their way through the mass of bodies and raised voices. But recognition didn’t come through faces—it came through instinct.

The air shifted.

My presence rolled outward, sharp and undeniable, and the crowd felt it before they saw me. Conversations faltered. Laughter died mid-breath. One by one, people stepped aside until the gathering split cleanly down the middle, opening a narrow path straight toward the center.

Toward the problem.

I told myself I wasn’t interfering. I was only trying to understand what was happening. That’s all.

But the lie didn’t hold the moment I saw her.

Amara stood—or rather, barely remained standing—her shoulders heaving as she struggled for breath. Blood streaked her skin, a deep gash visible where she’d taken a hit she shouldn’t have had to endure. She looked exhausted. Wounded. Pushed far beyond what should have been allowed.

Alarm hit me fast and hard.

What the hell was she doing in the arena?

And worse—why was she fighting one of my elite?

A gamma to be exact! .

My jaw tightened as I reached the center and stopped short, placing myself squarely between them. The air thickened instantly, tension snapping tight like a drawn wire.

“What the hell is going on here?” I demanded, my voice cutting clean through the noise.

The arena fell silent.

“Miss Amara!”

The shout barely faded before a young girl rushed to her side, hands trembling as she tried to assess the damage. Around them, movement erupted—voices overlapping, bodies shifting. Only then did I notice the gamma being dragged a few steps away, his friends crowding around him in equal urgency.

For a split second, I had thought Amara was the only one bleeding.

I was wrong.

His condition was just as bad—no, worse. Bruises darkened his skin, blood streaked across his knuckles, and the way he leaned into his friends told me he was fighting to stay upright. Somehow, I hadn’t seen it at first. Somehow, my eyes had gone straight to her.

I turned fully toward Amara, my brows knitting together as I closed the distance between us. Anger flared fast and sharp, fueled by something far more dangerous beneath it. The image of her injury flashed through my mind, the deep wound along her side that hadn’t even finished knitting itself back together.

She shouldn’t have been here. She shouldn’t have been fighting. She was supposed to study, right? So why the hell is she here and fighting?

“What the hell were you thinking?” The words tore out of me before I could stop them. “Why are you fighting when your wound hasn’t even healed yet?!”

Too late now. The restraint I should’ve had snapped clean in half.

“You have a deep wound, Amara,” I continued, my voice dropping into a hiss as I leaned closer. “It hasn’t been a month and that wound could reopen at any moment. Did it ever cross your mind to let yourself heal before you decided to throw yourself into a fight?”

The girl beside her was crying openly now, hands slick with blood as she tried to tend to Amara’s injury, her sobs quiet but desperate. And standing there, watching it all unfold, the anger in my chest twisted into something heavier.

“It… it wasn’t her fault, A-Alpha Mikael…”

The girl’s voice trembled, thin and unsteady, as if each word cost her courage. She stood with her hands clenched in front of her, shoulders drawn inward, eyes fixed on the floor like she expected it to c***k open beneath her at any moment.

“She—she saved me,” she continued, rushing now, afraid I might cut her off. “When those gammas were abusing their power against us… against the vendors. It was fine. Really. Please don’t scold her.”

My brow furrowed instinctively. The words didn’t land right. They scraped against something in my chest and left confusion in their wake. I shifted my focus fully to the girl, studying her face, the fear etched into her expression far too deeply for someone who claimed everything was fine.

“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice low, controlled—but no less dangerous for it.

She swallowed hard before explaining. Haltingly at first, then in a rush, she told me how Amara had stepped in when a gamma had been extorting the market vendors—demanding “security payments” under the guise of pack protection. How he’d used his rank like a weapon, threatening those who couldn’t fight back. How the gammas under him had followed orders without question.

And how Amara had stopped it.

With every word, heat crawled up my spine. By the time the girl finished, my jaw was locked tight, my hands curled into fists at my sides.

This wasn’t new.

Abuse of power had been a disease rotting this pack long before I ever wore the Alpha mark. I had seen it as a warrior, despised it as an illegitimate child, and sworn to erase it the moment I took the throne. And I had. The first thing I did as Alpha was purge the corrupt—the ones who mistook rank for entitlement, authority for cruelty.

Or so I thought.

Apparently, a few pests had survived the culling.

Pests arrogant enough to believe I wouldn’t notice. Or worse—pests who thought I wouldn’t act.

The thought made my blood boil.

If they believed they could hide behind titles and terrorize their own packmates without consequence, then they were about to learn just how wrong they were.