THE SILENCE OF WITNESSES
536 Words
Seraphina discovered something terrifying during her first council meeting.
Everyone knew.
The elders watched Kael speak to her with thinly veiled contempt and said nothing. The beta, Darius, avoided her eyes altogether. Even the healer—an old she-wolf who once taught Seraphina to soothe pups—kept her gaze lowered, jaw tight with restraint.
The Alpha King’s word was law.
And laws were not questioned.
When Seraphina gently suggested sending aid to a border village suffering from sickness, Kael’s response was immediate.
“You presume authority,” he said sharply.
The room went still.
“I only wished to help—” she began.
He stood so suddenly his throne scraped against stone.
“You wish,” he cut in, towering over her, voice low and dangerous, “to remind me of my duties in front of my council?”
Her throat closed. “No, my king.”
He leaned closer, his shadow swallowing her whole.
“Then remember your place.”
The bond flared painfully in her chest—a punishment, sharp and searing.
She bit back a cry.
No one intervened.
Later, in the hallway outside the council chamber, Darius stopped her.
“My Luna,” he said softly.
She looked at him, hope flickering.
But he merely bowed his head.
“It would be wise not to anger the king.”
That was all.
She walked away with her heart breaking quietly inside her ribs.
That night, Seraphina wandered the palace gardens alone.
Moonlight spilled over silver-leafed trees and pale flowers that bloomed only in darkness. This was the place former Lunas had retreated to pray, to find peace.
She knelt beneath an ancient oak and pressed her palm to the earth.
“Why?” she whispered.
The ground did not answer.
But something stirred.
A faint hum beneath her skin. A warmth that was not Kael. Not the bond.
Something older.
She frowned, listening—not with ears, but with instinct.
The moon emerged from behind the clouds then, pale and watchful. For a moment, Seraphina thought she felt…seen.
The warmth receded as quickly as it came.
She told herself it was nothing.
The first open cruelty came two days later.
A servant spilled wine at Kael’s feet during a feast. The punishment was swift. Brutal. Public.
Seraphina stood frozen as Kael ordered the wolf dragged away.
“Please,” she said, stepping forward without thinking. “It was an accident.”
Kael’s gaze snapped to her.
Slowly, deliberately, he rose.
He backhanded her.
The hall gasped.
She fell to the floor, blood on her lip, the taste of iron flooding her mouth.
“Do not,” Kael said calmly, “undermine my rule.”
The bond burned white-hot, forcing her still.
He turned away as if she were nothing.
No one helped her up.
Later, alone in her chamber, Seraphina stared at her reflection in the mirror.
A bruise bloomed along her cheek.
She touched it with shaking fingers.
Something inside her shifted.
Not breaking.
Hardening.
If the moon would not save her…
She would learn to survive without it.
And somewhere deep beneath the palace stones, an ancient power stirred—
because the Moon had been watching after all.
- Writer
