BLESSING LUNA RISING

THE WHITE KING LIVES

CHAPTER 10:

The fourth horn did not sound like a horn.

It sounded like the sky tearing.

Every head snapped up — Lycans, kneeling werewolves, my broken mother, Kael with his forehead in the snow, even Darius. His black wings, which had been shielding me, snapped wider, instinctively covering my mother and me completely, his body going rigid with a protective snarl that vibrated through his chest into my back.

Through the blizzard, through the black clouds that never left Nocturne Keep, light broke.

Not moonlight. Not sunlight. White fire.

And in that fire, wings. Hundreds of them. No — dozens. No — five. Five sets of wings, vast and scarred and blazing with the same moonstone silver as mine, cutting through the storm like knives through paper.

They landed in the courtyard in a formation that shattered the black ice, throwing snow fifty feet high, forcing even the Lycan warriors to shield their eyes.

At the front was a male. Not Darius's midnight black. Not my newborn silver. White. Pure white hair to his waist, white wings that spanned twenty feet, each feather tipped with scars that glowed. His face was like mine, but carved from winter itself, older, with silver eyes that had seen centuries. His chest bore a white crescent, not black, and it was cracked down the middle.

He saw me, and his knees buckled.

"Elara," he whispered, and his voice broke the storm. "Lira? Lira, you kept her alive?"

My mother, behind Darius's wing, sobbed — a sound I had never heard from her, a sound of nineteen years of grief cracking open.

"Aeron," she choked. "You live. They told me the Vale pack killed you."

Darius did not move his wings. He kept us hidden. I felt his heart hammering against my wings. Not with fear. With fury. Old fury.

"Lower your wings, Darius Nocturne," the white-haired male said, his voice suddenly cold, Alpha to Alpha, King to King. "You are shielding my daughter from her father."

Daughter.

The word hit the courtyard harder than my command to kneel.

Kael, still forehead to the ice, made a strangled noise. Mara, wolfless and empty, whimpered. Seraphine had passed out in her own blood.

Darius slowly, deliberately, folded his black wings. Just enough to reveal me. He kept one wing around my mother, one arm around my waist, possessive to the last second.

"I was shielding her from the storm your army brings, White King," Darius said, his voice low, lethal, respectful only in form. "The storm you should have brought nineteen years ago when they stole her."

Aeron's silver eyes flared, and the crack in his white crescent pulsed with pain. "You think I did not search? You think I did not burn every southern pack to ash looking for her? For Lira? Magnus Vale told me my mate and pup died in childbirth! I mourned them for nineteen years! I—"

He stopped, because I had stepped forward.

Out of Darius's arms. Out of my mother's shadow. My twelve-foot wings, still new, still shedding silver dust, beat once, and I was standing in the open snow between the two Kings.

The White King. My father. And the Lycan King. My fated mate.

Both of them looked at me like I was the only light in the Wastes.

"Are you... are you my father?" I asked, and my voice was small again. Nineteen-year-old Elara, not Queen Elara. The girl who had never known a father's arms.

Aeron fell to his knees. A King. A White King who had ruled before Darius was born, falling to his knees in the black ice, in front of his daughter who he thought dead.

"The healers told me you didn't breathe," he whispered, tears of silver light actually falling from his silver eyes, sizzling where they hit the snow. "Your mother was bleeding out. Magnus Vale's Luna — Mara — she took you from Lira's arms while I was fighting his wolves outside the den. She said you were stillborn. She wrapped you in wolfsbane leaves to hide your scent so I would never smell you were alive."

He reached a trembling hand towards my wing, but stopped, afraid to touch.

"You have her wings, little star. But you have my mother's fire. The fire I thought died with our line."

Behind me, Darius made a low sound, and I felt his hand come back to my back, between my wings. Claiming. Grounding.

"She is alive," Darius said to Aeron, his voice softer now, but still iron. "But she was not breathing when I found her in that cottage. Her fated mate —" he spat the words towards Kael, still kneeling "— had rejected her, marked another female over her wounds, and left her wolfless in a human town to die. Her heart was stopping from heartbreak. I gave her my mark to keep her alive. She is mine now, Aeron. By ancient claim law. You cannot take her."

Aeron's eyes snapped from me to Darius, silver fire igniting. Two Kings, one old, one in his prime, staring at each other over their daughter, over their mate.

"I am not taking her," Aeron said slowly, his wings spreading, mirroring Darius's. "I am asking her."

He looked at me again, and all the King left his face. Only father.

"Little star, you were born during the White Eclipse. The Moon Goddess herself named you. You were prophesied to be the last White Queen, to end the war between Lycans and White Lycans. I thought you dead. If you want to come home with me, to the White Sanctuary, where your mother and I can keep you safe, where no Alpha will ever poison you again — I will carry you there myself. Darius Nocturne cannot stop me."

"Safe?" Darius laughed, and it was a terrible sound, black ice cracking. "Safe in a Sanctuary that has been hiding while the world hunts them? You call that safe? She was safe with me for five minutes and she already made an Alpha army kneel. She severed a soul. She is not a child to hide, Aeron. She is a Queen who judges. And she has already chosen."

Both of them looked at me.

The entire courtyard — thousands of Lycan warriors, fifty kneeling enemy werewolves, my broken mother, Kael sobbing, Mara empty, Seraphine bleeding — all looked at me.

The girl who five days ago owned one white lace dress.

I looked at my father, his white wings scarred from nineteen years of searching. I looked at my mother, broken but alive. I looked at Kael, who had discarded me.

And I looked at Darius, whose black crescent was burning, whose silver eyes were begging me not to leave, whose mark on my wrist was the only thing that had kept my heart beating.

I took a breath, and the silver fire in my veins, the fire that had just severed a soul, settled.

"I... I don't want to be safe," I whispered, and my wings beat, lifting me an inch off the snow, silver dust raining down on both Kings. "I want to be free."

I turned, and placed my hand on Darius's black crescent.

"And I want them to pay. All of them. Magnus Vale's army is still on my mountain. And they came to take me."

Darius's smile was slow, savage, and utterly devoted. He looked over my head at my father.

"Then we make them pay together, White King."

He turned to his army, his voice booming across the Wastes, his black wings snapping open to twenty-five feet, dwarfing even my father's.

"MY QUEEN HAS SPOKEN! NO ONE LEAVES THIS MOUNTAIN UNTIL SHE ALLOWS IT!"

My father rose, his white wings snapping open too, and for the first time in a hundred years, White and Black flew together, circling above me, as Magnus Vale's army finally broke truce and charged up the mountain.

And Kael, still kneeling at my feet, grabbed the hem of my furs and whispered, "Elara, please, take me with you. Don't leave me with them." watch?