Rejected Luna: Desired by the Lycan King

Chapter 3

"Watch out! Get out of the road!"

The frantic scream echoed again, piercing through the fog of my shattered mind. The blinding glare of the headlights filled my vision, and the deafening screech of tires burned into the quiet night. The massive black car skidded, its heavy frame tilting violently as the driver slammed on the brakes.

With a final, agonizing groan of rubber against asphalt, the vehicle came to a dead halt. The bumper was mere inches from my knees.

The driver’s side door flew open, slamming shut with a force that rattled the chassis. A tall, burly man in a tailored black suit stormed out, his face contorted in pure rage.

His alpha aura flared—potent and aggressive—but compared to the agonizing pain of my severed mate bond, it felt like a tickle.

"What the hell is your problem?!" he shouted, marching right up to me. "Are you blind? Are you trying to get yourself killed? Didn't you see a three-ton vehicle coming straight at you?!"

I didn't answer. I couldn't. I just stared at him, my breathing shallow, my mind spinning.

Seeing my silence as defiance, the man growled, reaching out to grab my shoulder to shove me out of the way. "Move, you crazy—"

Before his hand could make contact, my instincts took over. Survival, feral and deeply ingrained from my twelve years in the wilderness, kicked in.

I lunged forward, snapping my hand out, and clamped my fingers around his wrist with an iron grip.

The driver froze, his eyes widening in shock at my speed.

But I wasn't looking at him. My nose twitched. As I pulled his wrist closer, a scent hit me. It wasn't the smell of the pine trees, or the rain, or his alpha scent. It was something buried deep beneath his skin. A faint, sickening odor.

It smelled like rot.

Not the decay of dead leaves or spoiled meat, but a spiritual, toxic rot. The Black Lung of the soul. The Rot—a rare, ancient disease that slowly binds a wolf, wrapping around the beast inside like poisonous vines, suffocating it, and slowly killing the host from the inside out.

I leaned closer, sniffing his wrist intently, my wolf tilting her head in my mind. Then, I let go of him, stepping back.

"You’re perfectly fine," I murmured, my voice hollow but steady. "Just severe fatigue, an overworked heart, and a bit of stress. But it’s not coming from you."

My head snapped toward the back of the car. The scent wasn't originating from the driver. It was pouring out from the tightly sealed, tinted windows of the luxury vehicle.

The heavy, suffocating stench of the Rot was radiating from the back seat, so thick I could practically see it bleeding into the air.

Driven by an inexplicable, magnetic force, I bypassed the driver and began walking toward the rear door, my nose sniffing the air.

"Hey! Get back!" The driver recovered from his shock and threw his body in front of me, completely blocking the door. His eyes flared a dangerous, glowing amber.

"Stop your filth right now! Do you have any idea who is inside this car? You are standing in the presence of the Lycan King!"

The Lycan King.

Caleb’s words flashed through my mind: 'The Lycan King is visiting our pack .' He wasn't supposed to be here yet. He was early.

But as the driver spoke, a strange, overwhelming force took hold of my chest. It felt as if a hand had reached into my throat, pulling words out of me that I couldn't stop even if I wanted to.

"His lungs are burning," I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth in a cold, monotone cadence. "Every time he takes a breath, it feels like inhaling broken glass. His wolf is dormant, locked behind a wall of black decay, unable to heal him. He wakes up sweating in the middle of the night, coughing up black bile, and the veins in his chest are turning a bruised, necrotic purple."

The driver’s face completely drained of color. The aggressive aura he was throwing around vanished, replaced by a sudden, paralyzing terror. He stared at me as if he were looking at a ghost. "How... how do you..."

"The Rot is eating him alive," I finished, the strange force finally releasing its grip on my lungs. I blinked, shaking my head to clear the sudden dizziness. I looked at the dark windows of the car, then back at the trembling driver.

"Tell him to find a High Healer. And fast. He has less than three months before his wolf suffocates completely."

Turning away from the car, I felt the phantom ache of Caleb's rejection flare up in my chest again. I didn't care about kings, or packs, or the diseases of strangers. I just wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear. I took two steps down the dark road, ready to fade into the forest.

"Stop."

The voice didn't just vibrate through the air; it shattered the night. It was a deep, gravelly baritone laced with an ancient, terrifying power that made the very ground beneath my boots tremble. My knees buckled slightly under the sheer weight of the command, forcing me to halt.

Slowly, the heavy, tinted glass of the rear window rolled down.

The interior of the car was dark, but as the moonlight shifted, it illuminated the man sitting in the back seat. My breath caught. He looked like a Greek God carved from dark marble. Broad shoulders, a sharp, aristocratic jawline shadowed with stubble, and eyes that glowed a piercing, hypnotic silver.

His long, dark hair fell slightly over his forehead, and even sitting down, his presence was absolutely suffocating.

He leaned slightly toward the open window, his silver eyes tracking me from my messy hair down to the torn, mud-stained ceremonial dress I was still wearing.

"For someone dressed in a tattered wedding gown, you are incredibly bold," the King murmured, his voice smooth like velvet but dangerous like a hidden blade.

I kept my jaw clenched, refusing to show fear, even as my inner wolf whined at the sheer dominance radiating from him.

He tilted his head, a ghost of a humorless smirk playing on his lips.

"You just diagnosed the most well-kept secret in the Lycan kingdom without even touching me. The Goddess knows how many royal healers I have executed over the past year simply because they failed to identify what was wrong with me, let alone offer a cure. They claimed it was a curse. They claimed it was old age. But you..." He leaned closer, his silver eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying intensity. "You smelled it."

"I am not a healer," I said bluntly, my voice devoid of emotion. "I just know what death smells like."

I turned to walk away again, completely spent, but his next words stopped me dead in my tracks.

"I don't care what you call yourself," He commanded, his silver eyes flashing in the dark. "I want you."