Coming Back as Enemy's Luna

39. Guilt

= Mikael =

My gaze slid past the girl and settled on the three men standing several steps away.

It only took a second.

Their clothes were worn thin from years of use, fabrics faded and frayed at the edges. Dust clung to their boots, ground deep into the leather from constant travel and long days spent pacing markets and border towns. I recognized the look instantly.

Vendors.

The kind who knew how to haggle louder than they knew how to respect pack law. Men who thrived in crowded spaces, where voices overlapped and rules blurred, where they could hide behind noise and numbers.

I didn’t need to hear their side of the story to understand what had happened.

The pieces fell into place with unsettling ease.

“Believe me, Alpha,” the girl said again, her voice tight but steady.

The title pulled my attention back to her, but her focus had already shifted elsewhere. She’d turned toward Amara, her movements careful as she knelt beside her. Gentle fingers brushed away dried blood, examined the darkening bruises spreading along Amara’s skin. She murmured quiet reassurances—soft, steady words meant to soothe, not to be heard.

I heard every one of them.

Something cold settled in my chest.

I drew in a slow breath, measured and deliberate, letting it anchor me before anything reckless could surface. Authority demanded control. Anger could wait.

Then I turned.

My movement was slow and intentional as I turned to face the group of gammas now standing rigid beneath my gaze. I didn’t rush. I didn’t need to. Authority wasn’t proven through speed—it was proven through presence. And the moment I stopped, the shift in the air was immediate.

Every eye in the arena was on me.

The crowd, once loud and restless, had fallen into an uneasy silence. It wasn’t peaceful. It was the kind of quiet that hummed with tension, fractured only by low murmurs slipping from the edges of the stands. Whispers traveled fast, curling through the space like smoke, thick with speculation and disbelief.

Judgment moved even faster.

In a pack, it always did.

The gammas were focused on the other man—the one Amara had faced in the ring. They hovered around him now, steadying his weight, murmuring instructions as they helped him remain on his feet. He was tall and broad-shouldered, built like someone who had spent his life relying on brute strength and intimidation to win his battles. The kind of man who expected others to fold simply because he took up more space.

Now, his face told a very different story.

Swelling distorted his features, split skin traced ugly lines along his jaw, and bruises bloomed dark and deep across his cheekbones. Blood streaked down from his temple, drying in uneven smears that contrasted sharply against his skin. He looked dazed. Broken. Reduced.

Anyone seeing him like this—supported by others, barely upright—would have trouble believing what had just happened.

That every one of those injuries had been inflicted by a woman less than half his size.

The truth sat heavy in the air.

The contrast was impossible to ignore, and it said more than words ever could.

“I heard what happened,” I said, stopping deliberately in front of them.

The effect was immediate.

All four stiffened, their bodies snapping upright as if some invisible switch had been flipped. Soldier-like, precise, tense. Even the wounded gamma forced himself to straighten, despite the limp that betrayed him, each step a quiet testament to his effort. My gaze fell on him instinctively. His shoulders quivered ever so slightly under the strain, the way he tried to appear unshakable. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. Not once. Instead, they remained fixed on the cold stone floor, head bowed, posture a mix of shame and obedience.

“Is it true,” I asked, my voice even, measured, but carrying a sharper edge that I knew they could feel, “that you abused your authority against the vendors?”

At the sound of my words, the man jerked his head up as if stung. Panic flashed across his face, raw and unmasked.

“No, Alpha!” he blurted, voice trembling despite his effort to sound firm. “That enemy is lying!”

The words echoed too loudly in the chamber, bouncing off the stone walls, overbearing in their urgency. Too loud to be convincing. Too loud to hide the fear beneath them.

I studied him in silence, letting the moment stretch. The others’ stances were rigid, their unease palpable, but the gamma’s trembling shoulders, the way his fingers clenched at his sides, betrayed him far more than any words could.

I didn’t answer right away. I just…stared. Let my gaze linger, heavy and deliberate, letting the silence stretch between us until it became its own thing—thick, suffocating, impossible to ignore. I watched as a flicker of something—regret, maybe—crept across his face. Not denial, not arrogance, but that subtle, human hesitation when you realize you’ve overstepped.

It wasn’t the hesitation that drew my attention, though.

It was the way he had said her name. Amara.

My jaw tightened almost violently. How many times had I drilled it into everyone’s head? How many times did I have to make them understand her place, her role in this pack? Every misstep, every careless word, felt like a c***k in the order I’d fought to uphold.

Slowly. Purposefully. I raised my right hand, letting it lift to shoulder height in a measured arc. The wounded gamma’s eyes tracked the movement automatically, unthinking, instinctive. His breath hitched, shallow, betraying the tension in his chest. He was waiting—for a command, for a reprimand, for a sentence. Waiting for me to make the first move.

I stepped closer. Not hurriedly, not nervously. Slowly. Close enough that my presence alone pressed down on him, like gravity had shifted to favor me. I could see the way his shoulders tensed, the way his hands curled just slightly, waiting for what was coming next.

“What is your name?” I asked, my voice low, measured, smooth—but underneath it, coiled like fire, burning with every unspoken word, every ounce of warning.

He swallowed. His eyes flickered away for just a moment before meeting mine again, trapped under the weight of the question and the authority behind it.

The other three gammas faltered the moment they saw me. Boots scraped against the stone floor as they instinctively stepped back—then another, then another—each movement hesitant, shaky, betraying the unease simmering just beneath the surface. They weren’t used to being in the middle of an Alpha’s gaze, and they certainly weren’t used to me. Relief flickered across their faces that they hadn’t been involved in the earlier confrontation, though it did little to mask their growing apprehension.

“G–Glen,” one of them stammered, voice trembling. “Glen… Alpha Mikael.”

I fixed him with a look that carried no warmth, no rage—only indifference. And in my experience, indifference cut deeper than anger ever could.

I moved my fingers.

A small, almost lazy gesture, deliberate in its simplicity, meant for someone behind me. A silent command. No words necessary. Anyone with the eyes to see and ears to understand would know. The vendors would know. They would come.

“Care to explain your side of this?” I asked, my tone calm but deliberate, smooth and dangerous. Each word measured, sharp enough to leave its mark. “Specifically… why you’ve been demanding security payments from our vendors.”

I folded my arms slowly across my chest, letting the motion linger, deliberate. A simple movement—but heavy with unspoken threat. The kind of warning that didn’t need to be shouted. The kind that left the room tense, waiting for an answer, knowing that any misstep could tip the scales.

Glen swallowed hard, so violently that I could see the movement in his throat. His eyes flicked past me for a fleeting moment, just a second, toward something—or someone—behind my shoulder, before he jerked his gaze downward, fixating on the cold, unyielding stone floor.

“I—I was only following the usual agenda, A-Alpha,” he stammered, the words tripping over each other like clumsy feet. “A-asking for security payments f-from the vendors…”

Every syllable reeked of lies, of excuses poorly rehearsed. I could hear the falsehood clinging to his voice, sharp and awkward. I let out a long, slow sigh, heavy enough to sound like disappointment and threat all at once.

Footsteps rang behind me, measured and deliberate, each tap of boot against stone echoing like a drumbeat. I didn’t turn. I didn’t need to. I could feel them—presence settling behind me, rigid and watchful, the kind of presence that made you want to bend the knee before you even knew why.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, before one of the vendors finally stepped forward. His voice cut through the tension, sharp with frustration, and the words he spat out carried all the anger he’d been bottling up.

“We’ve already paid the monthly fees,” he protested, his voice shaking with frustration. “So why are we being forced to pay weekly now? No one told us about any changes. There was no notice, no announcement—nothing.”

His words echoed through the room, sharp and defiant.

The other two vendors didn’t hesitate to jump in. Their voices overlapped, each repetition heavier than the last, a chorus of confusion, anger, and…fear. It wasn’t just frustration—it was panic masking itself as outrage, a fragile attempt to reclaim control over something already slipping from their hands.

I let out a quiet scoff, the sound cutting through the chaos like a blade.

Glen flinched.

It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but I noticed. He took a half-step back, shoulders curling inward, as if trying to make himself smaller, trying to shrink out of sight. That single instinctive movement—quick, guilty, telling—spoke louder than any words ever could.

“I—I’m sorry, Alpha!” Glen stammered, the apology tumbling out as he dropped to his knees before me, hands pressed to the floor in submission.

It wasn’t confusion.

It wasn’t a mistake.

It wasn’t ignorance.

He’d been caught. Flat out. And the weight of what came next—the consequences, the reckoning—was entirely his own doing.

I let the silence stretch. Let the moment hang thick between us. Let him feel the gravity of his actions before any words were spoken.

This wasn’t negotiation. This wasn’t compromise. This was accountability.

And Glen? He was learning that the hard way.