The Rogue Queen's Reckoning

The scent of my father's blood reached me before his scream did. I was halfway across the Moonfire courtyard when the first howl split the night, not the ceremonial howl of celebration, but the guttural, desperate sound of a wolf fighting for his life. My feet stuttered to a halt, silk slippers skidding on damp stone as my wolf surged beneath my skin, clawing to get out. Something's wrong. The festival lanterns cast dancing shadows across the ancient stones of Silvercrest's main hall, but those shadows were moving wrong, too fast, too violent. Another scream. A woman's this time. I knew that voice. "Mother" The word barely left my lips before the doors to the great hall exploded outward in a shower of splinters and glass. Bodies tumbled through, pack members I'd known since childhood, now sprawling across the courtyard in twisted, unnatural angles. Some weren't moving at all. My wolf roared inside me. Danger. Run. FIGHT. But I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Because standing in the shattered doorway, backlit by flames that were already consuming the curtains inside, was my mate, Ronan. His ice-blue eyes found mine across the courtyard, and for one crystalline moment, I thought, prayed, this was some terrible mistake. That he was here to protect us. To save us. Then I saw the blood on his hands. Dripping. Fresh. Still steaming in the cool night air. "Kiera." His voice was calm. Too calm. Like he was greeting me at breakfast instead of standing ankle-deep in the c*****e of my pack. "You shouldn't be here." My legs finally remembered how to move. I stumbled forward, my eyes scanning the bodies scattered like broken dolls across the stones. Elder Matthias, throat torn out. Young Sera, barely sixteen, her eyes staring sightlessly at the moon. And there…. No. My father lay crumpled at the base of the hall's entrance, his ceremonial robes soaked crimson. His chest still rose and fell in shallow, gurgling breaths. He was alive. Barely. I ran. "Father!" My knees hit stone beside him, hands hovering uselessly over the gaping wound in his chest. Too deep. Too much blood. My healing abilities were nothing compared to this, I could mend cuts and broken bones, not…. not this. His hand caught my wrist with surprising strength. His lips moved, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth. "Run... Kiera... the prophecy... he knows..." "Don't talk. Please don't…." My voice cracked. Tears blurred my vision as I pressed my hands against the wound, desperately channeling what little healing power I had. Silver light flickered weakly from my palms, but the blood kept coming. "I can fix this. I can" "You can't." Ronan's voice came from directly behind me. Close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body, smell the copper-tang of blood on his skin. My skin. We were mated. Bonded. I should have been able to sense his emotions, his intentions, but there was nothing, just a cold, empty void where our connection should have been. I turned slowly, still kneeling in my father's blood. Ronan looked down at me with something that might have been regret. Or pity. It was hard to tell through the blood spattered across his face. "Why?" The word came out broken. Small. "The prophecy" "What prophecy?" I surged to my feet, silver light crackling around my fingers. My wolf was screaming now, demanding I shift, demanding I fight. But this was Ronan. My mate. The man I'd pledged my life to three months ago under this same moon. His jaw tightened. "A silver-blooded Luna will bear children who will destroy the Alpha who wears the Black Crown." He reached up, touching the iron circlet he'd commissioned last month, the one I'd thought was just symbolic. "I can't let that happen." The ground tilted beneath me. "You're killing my entire pack because of some, some fortune teller's riddle?" "It's not a riddle." His eyes hardened. "It's a guarantee. Your bloodline carries something ancient. Something dangerous. And I won't – I can't let you destroy everything I'm building." Behind him, his warriors emerged from the burning hall. I recognized them, wolves from Bloodridge Pack, his pack, wolves I'd shared meals with, laughed with. They wouldn't meet my eyes now. "Ronan." My father's voice was barely a whisper, but it cut through the night like a blade. "You're... a coward... killing children... for a crown..." Ronan's expression didn't change. He nodded to one of his warriors, a massive brute named Kael who stepped forward and, with one swift motion, crushed my father's skull beneath his boot. The sound would haunt me forever. I screamed. Didn't remember shifting. Didn't remember launching myself at Ronan. But suddenly I was airborne, claws extended, silver fur bristling with fury and grief and a rage so pure it burned. I never made contact. Something slammed into me mid-leap, another wolf, dark as midnight and we hit the ground in a tangle of teeth and claws. Pain exploded across my ribs as fangs found purchase. I twisted, snapping at my attacker's throat, but more wolves piled on. Too many. Too strong. "Don't kill her yet," Ronan ordered. His voice sounded distant, muffled by the blood roaring in my ears. "I want her to watch." They dragged me, still in wolf form, still fighting back toward the burning hall. Through the flames, I could see shapes. Bodies. My mother slumped against the council table, throat torn out. The elders, all dead. Everyone I loved, everyone who'd ever mattered…. Gone. "The prophecy said your children would destroy me." Ronan crouched beside my pinned form, and I saw something flicker in his eyes. Not quite regret. Not quite satisfaction. Just... emptiness. "So I'll make sure you never have any." He nodded to Kael, who raised a silver blade, the ceremonial knife used for bonding ceremonies, now repurposed for murder. The blade came down. White-hot agony tore through my abdomen. I howled, the sound more animal than wolf, as silver poisoning spread through my bloodstream like liquid fire. Silver didn't just wound wolves, it destroyed us from the inside out. And a blade that size, that deep…. I would die. Within minutes. Good, some distant part of my mind whispered. Let it end. Let this nightmare end. But then…. The world folded. There was no other word for it. Reality bent, twisted, and suddenly I wasn't in the courtyard anymore. I was falling through darkness, through cold, through something that tasted like ancient magic and desperation. I hit solid ground with a bone-jarring thud, human again, naked and bleeding in a forest I didn't recognize. The silver wound in my stomach should have killed me already. Would kill me soon. But I was alive. Somehow, impossibly, I was alive. A figure emerged from the shadows, ancient, silver-haired, wrapped in moonlight and power. "Grandmother?" I choked out, not believing my eyes. Maeve Nightfall had been dead for ten years. I'd attended her funeral. I'd mourned her. "Not dead, child." Her voice was exactly as I remembered, sharp, knowing, uncompromising. "Waiting. And now, saving." She knelt beside me, pressing gnarled hands against the silver wound. Magic….real, ancient magic, the kind that came from bloodlines older than the packs themselves flooded through me. The silver burned, resisted, but slowly, agonizingly, began to dissolve. "You're pregnant," she said flatly. The world stopped. "What?" "Three months. Triplets." Her violet eyes bored into mine. "The prophecy children. The ones Ronan just tried to murder inside you." Three months. Right after the mating ceremony. I hadn't even known, hadn't sensed… "They're alive?" My hand moved instinctively to my stomach, to the place where the knife had…. "For now." Maeve's expression was grim. "But Ronan will hunt you. He'll hunt them. And if he finds you before they're born, before they're strong enough..." She didn't finish. Didn't need to. I stared up at the canopy of strange trees, my body broken, my pack slaughtered, my mate revealed as a monster. Every instinct screamed at me to curl up and die. To let the darkness take me. But beneath my palm, beneath layers of skin and muscle and magic, I felt it, a flutter. Three tiny heartbeats, fragile as bird wings. My children. Ronan had taken everything. My family. My pack. My home. He'd tried to take my life. But he'd failed. And that failure would cost him everything. I looked at my grandmother, at this impossible ghost made flesh, and felt something cold and sharp settle in my chest where my heart used to be. "Teach me," I whispered. "Teach me everything. Magic, combat, survival. Everything I'll need to destroy him." Maeve's lips curved in a smile that was all teeth and promised violence. "Oh, my darling girl," she purred, helping me to my feet. "I was hoping you'd say that." Behind us, in the distance, I heard the howls. Ronan's warriors, hunting for my body. They'd search all night. They'd find nothing but ash and blood. Let them search. Let them think me dead. When I returned and I would return, it wouldn't be as Luna Kiera, the gentl e, idealistic fool who'd believed in honor and love. I would return as something else entirely. Something they should have killed when they had the chance.