The Luna He Rejected Is The Millennium Wolf

Chapter 018

Sienna's POV

"Impossible. She's wolfless. How can a human bear the mark of the Moon Goddess?"

Clara's voice cracked, a jagged sound in the stagnant air of the warehouse as she stammered, her fingers trembling while she pointed at the shimmering mark on my skin. The air felt thin, smelling of ozone and the sour, metallic tang of fear.

I kept my arm locked with my muscles screaming, knowing that beneath the skin, the "blessing" was nothing but a hollow glow—a desperate trick of the light fueled by the ring's humming resonance. My mind instinctively started drafting an exit, calculating the seconds until the shimmer wavered and died, because if Duke looked closer, the illusion would shatter and I would be gutted where I stood.

Duke rose from his dais, and instead of moving like a man, he moved like a landslide—silent and absolute. His face remained a mask of analytical cold, but a subtle twitch tightened the corner of his jaw to offer the only sign that reality had just stepped outside his calculations, revealing a flicker of something far more dangerous than anger: genuine interest.

"The white wolf mark is not on her." The Beta's voice cut through the silence, running sharp as a razor.

Duke didn't speak, simply signaling the guards with a sharp flick of his wrist instead. A heavy hand slammed into my shoulder to shove me toward the exit, leaving the iron chains to rattle in a rhythmic, metallic taunt against the stone floor. As I was forced right past Clara, she leaned in with her skin radiating a bitter, frantic heat.

"You really think you're special, don't you?"

I didn't give her the satisfaction of a blink, letting the guards drag me away as my boots scuffed through the dirt until the heavy steel doors of the hostel groaned shut behind us, locking out the moonlight. Hours bled into a grey, shapeless stretch of waiting, and when night finally came, it brought no relief.

The hostel was a cavern of damp stone and the smell of unwashed fear. The red-haired girl leaned close to me, her eyes searching mine with a look I couldn't quite pin down—somewhere between hope and mourning.

"What about your sister?"

The question hung between us, heavy and cold, though she didn't answer immediately. I watched the way her throat worked as she swallowed, her gaze drifting toward the high, barred windows where the moonlight couldn't reach.

I sighed, turning away to face the rough stone wall while the other girls huddled in a tight circle on the opposite side of the room. One girl with a long, jagged scar across her knuckles led the low, frantic drone of pack laws, her voice sounding like dry gravel while her hands shook as she recited, exactly as if the words were a spell that had already failed her once.

"She's dead." The red-haired girl's words were followed by the silent, heavy tracks of tears through the grime on her cheeks.

"What? In the warehouse... you said she was here."

"I had to say something," she sobbed, her shoulders collapsing under the heavy weight of the lie. "You look just like her, and that's why I did it. She was framed for a theft and thrown into the arena to fight a shifted wolf, so I couldn't watch it happen to someone else."

I reached out until my hand found her shoulder, feeling the thin fabric of her shirt run damp with sweat while a hollow ache bloomed in my chest, proving I wasn't a hero in this story—I was just a ghost of a girl she had already lost.

"I'm sorry. I had no idea."

"I heard Alpha Damien is your mate." A girl with a sharp, angular face emerged from the shadows, smiling even though her hands wouldn't stop picking at her collarbone until the skin there ran raw and bleeding.

"Yeah. He is."

"Nice. But do you even know why you're in this hole?" The sharp-faced girl tilted her head, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial rasp. "As a Luna of the Blood Moon Pack, you're a long way from home, aren't you?"

"Leave her alone," the red-haired girl snapped.

"Shut up, bitch."

"Your job is to serve," the other continued, her tone sharpening. "Training starts tomorrow with an arena battle, so I wonder how long a human lasts against a real wolf."

A sharp, rhythmic pounding against the steel door cut the conversation completely dead. The door groaned open to let three guards march in, tossing hard, moldy chunks of bread at our feet as if we were livestock. One guard, a massive brute with a permanent scowl, grabbed the red-haired girl's jaw to bruise the skin as he forced a piece of bread straight into her mouth.

My heart hammered against my ribs while my fingers curled into fists, my nails digging into my palms until the skin nearly broke.

"Eat up, trash, because if you fail tomorrow, you're done." The guard smirked, his eyes bleeding into a toxic, reptilian green as they landed directly on me. "Human. You're the one who made Clara look like a fool, and she wasn't happy about that."

He leaned down to sniff the air near my neck, smelling of wet dog and tobacco while I met his stare with a breathing pattern that remained slow and deliberate.

"I'm here to deliver a message, because you need to learn some discipline."

"Message received," I said, keeping my voice steady. "You done?"

"On the floor. Now."

I didn't move, forcing a hot, stinging c***k to echo through the room as his palm collided with my cheek. My head snapped to the side as the metallic tang of blood flooded my mouth instantly, but I stood up slowly, locking my eyes onto his with a predatory focus while my internal road map recalibrated to show the route was now straight through him.

"You actually did it."

The guard uncoiled an electrified wire from his belt, leaving the copper tip to hiss with a pale blue glow as he raised his arm with muscles tensing.

I didn't wait.

My hand shot out, leaving my fingers to snap shut around the live wire mid-air. Static sent my hair floating while the ozone ran thick on my tongue, allowing me to step into his personal space to slide my leg behind his, slamming him into the stone floor with a sickening, heavy thud.

He groaned, the sound turning into a guttural snarl as fur sprouted from his pores until a massive black wolf stood where the man had been, lunging with claws extended to rip the life from my chest.

I braced for the impact, but the red-haired girl moved first, lunging forward as her eyes met mine for a split second with a look of terrifying clarity.

You have to survive.

The wolf's claws buried themselves deep into her chest, causing her to gasp with eyes that went wide and glassy, and I caught her before she could hit the floor.

"Stay... with me..."

"Live, Sienna," she choked out, her blood running warm against my hands. "Be the monster they're afraid of."

Her blood was cooling against my palms while I counted to ten in my head, using the method my mother taught me to calm a spooked horse. I got to four before the wolf growled, knowing I wasn't a monster since monsters didn't count heartbeats or feel the cooling blood and wish for ten more seconds of warmth.

The door shut at six.

The ring in my sleeve went ice-cold, because whatever it had lent to the illusion, the kill had spent it completely. A sudden, violent heat surged through my veins as the ring's hum stopped, revealing the Eucharist bond as Damien's life force flooded muscle it wasn't built for, burning out as fast as it ignited.

The black wolf prepared to spring again, but I moved with a speed that defied logic, locking my hands around his furred throat before his paws could even leave the ground.

I squeezed until his claws raked my sides as he thrashed, but I refused to let go, feeling his trachea collapse under my thumbs like a dry twig. I counted his heartbeats against my palms—four, five, six—until they stuttered and stopped.

I dropped the carcass and turned.

"Look at her eyes," the sharp-faced girl stammered, her voice rising high with terror as she backed into the wall, her raw collarbone scraping stone without her even noticing the pain. "They're silver."

Silver—just like Juvien—but Juvien was gone, leaving the dissonance to land like a stone in dark water. I didn't know what it meant, but the terror on their faces told me more than enough.

My strength vanished as quickly as it had arrived, and though the steel door was still locked because he hadn't opened it, Duke was suddenly simply standing where the empty space had been. His shadow on the stone looked completely wrong, stretching out in too many angles.

Before I could hit the ground, a warm, steady hand clamped around my waist while Duke's familiar, clinical voice resonated directly in my ear.

"Silver eyes. Interesting. You shouldn't have those anymore."

I watched him study the wolf carcass exactly the same way a smith studies iron before the hammer hits, and as he tightened his grip, his voice dropped to a whisper.

"Try not to die tomorrow, because I'd hate to waste such a sharp blade."

His hand was warm even though his shadow was wrong, leaving me unsure of which one to believe.