BLESSING LUNA RISING

THE QUEEN'S JUSTICE

*CHAPTER 9: THE QUEEN'S JUSTICE*

The black ice dagger hummed in my hand.

It wasn't cold like ice should be. It was warm. It pulsed like a heart, in time with Darius's black crescent mark, in time with the silver fire racing up my arm. It wanted blood. Lycan steel always does.

Mara Blackthorn dangled from Darius's fist, her face purple, her perfect Alpha-mother mask finally shattered. Her feet kicked weakly now. Her hands had stopped clawing and were just hanging.

Below us, Kael was still forced to his knees by my command, but he was fighting it, crawling through the snow towards us, towards his mother, tears freezing on his cheeks.

"Elara, please! Don't! Please, I beg you! She is my mother, she— she did it for the pack—"

"For the pack?" My voice came out, and the snow around my feet melted into a perfect circle. The silver dust from my wings swirled faster. "You think poisoning a baby in her milk is for the pack, Kael?"

My mother, Lira, was still holding my other hand, her broken wing wrapped around my leg like she was trying to shield me even now.

Darius watched me. He did not interfere. His silver eyes were locked on my face, his expression... proud. Hungry. Like he was watching a star be born and he wanted to be the first thing it burned.

Seraphine, bleeding out her lie in the snow, cackled, her voice hoarse. "Kill her! Kill her, you wolfless freak! That's all you are! A killer! Just like your mother! That's why they tried to kill you at birth!"

Something in me snapped.

Not the anger. The smallness.

For nineteen years I had been small. Small voice. Small steps. Small enough to be overlooked. Small enough to be poisoned daily and told it was tea to make me sleepy. Small enough to be discarded in white lace in a muddy cottage.

I wasn't small anymore. My wings spanned twelve feet.

I looked at Mara. Really looked at her. At the woman who had tucked me in. Who had braided my hair while she poisoned me.

"You want me to kill you quickly, don't you?" I whispered to her, and my second voice — her voice, my Lycan — echoed underneath. "A quick stab. A clean death. An Alpha death."

Mara's eyes bulged. She tried to nod.

I lowered the dagger.

"No."

The word rang like a bell. The Lycan army, thousands of beasts kneeling in the snow, flinched.

"I am a healer," I said, and I turned the dagger in my hand so the blade pointed down, and I slammed it — not into Mara — but into the black ice at my feet.

CRACK.

Silver fire exploded from the impact point, racing across the black ice like veins of light. It hit Mara's feet, crawling up her legs. She screamed — not in pain, but in horror — as the silver light sank into her skin.

"What— what are you doing to me?!" she shrieked as Darius finally dropped her into the snow.

I knelt, my wings folding around us both, creating a private prison of moonstone light.

"I am not going to kill you, Mara Blackthorn," I whispered, my forehead almost touching hers, my silver eyes meeting her terrified black ones. "Death is what you wanted. Death is easy. Death is what you tried to give me for nineteen years."

I placed my glowing palm on her chest, right over her heart, where a werewolf's wolf lives.

"I'm going to take what you tried to take from me."

The silver fire poured out of me into her.

She howled. A true, agonized werewolf howl as her wolf — a sleek, black Alpha female wolf — was ripped out of her chest, not by claws, but by light. The wolf spirit thrashed, snapped at me, and then dissolved into silver dust that was sucked into my wings.

Mara collapsed, gasping, empty. Her eyes — once sharp with Alpha power — were dull. Human. Empty. The exact emptiness she had forced on me.

She was wolfless now. Permanently. The first wolfless Luna in the history of the packs. She would live, but she would never shift, never feel her wolf, never feel a bond again. She would be what she made me.

"Now you know how it feels," I said softly.

Behind me, Kael screamed as he felt his mother's bond snap through the pack link. He clutched his chest. "Mother? MOTHER?!"

Darius inhaled sharply. His hand came to the small of my back, steadying me as the huge expenditure of power made me sway. "Elara... you just performed Soul Severing. That's forbidden magic. Even I cannot do that."

My mother gasped, her broken wings trembling. "The White Queen's Justice. It only appears once every hundred years. My star... you are the true Queen."

I stood, my wings unfolding, silver dust pouring off them onto Mara's empty, sobbing form.

I turned to Kael, who was staring at his mother — alive, but empty — and then at me, his face a mask of pure terror and awe.

"You wanted me to be Luna, Kael?" I said, my voice carrying to the kneeling army on the mountain, to Magnus Vale's army still forced to kneel in the snowstorm. "This is what a Luna does. She protects. She judges. She does not kill when she can teach."

I stepped over Mara's body and walked to Seraphine, who was trying to crawl away, leaving a trail of blood in the snow.

Seraphine whimpered. "No... please... the baby..."

"There is no baby, Seraphine," I said, and I knelt and placed my hand on her stomach. Silver light flared, revealing only blood and empty womb, and the lingering shadow of a male werewolf who was not Kael. "There never was. Not Kael's. You bled it out weeks ago and lied. Your father's army came here for nothing."

Seraphine screamed as the truth was laid bare by light, visible to every wolf present.

On the mountain path, Magnus Vale roared as he saw his daughter's lie exposed.

Darius was behind me again, his black wings snapping open, covering me and my mother from the coming storm. His voice was pure ice and pride.

"You have passed judgment, my Queen. Now shall I pass mine on the army that dared to follow a false flag to my gate?"

He looked down at Kael, who was still on his knees, his mother wolfless at his feet, his fake Luna bleeding out her lie.

"Kneel to her properly this time, Alpha. Forehead to the snow. And beg her to let you live."

And Kael, the Alpha who had rejected me in white lace, pressed his forehead into the black ice at the feet of my wings and wept.

The war horn blew a fourth time. But this time, it was not Magnus Vale's army.

It was something larger. Something from the sky.

The White King's army had arrived. My father's army. Alive.