The Luna He Rejected Is The Millennium Wolf

Chapter 008

Sienna's POV

The kitchen smelled of damp stone and cloying grease, clinging to my skin like a film of filth that no amount of scrubbing could lift. I hauled the heavy platters into the rinse water with my knuckles raw and red, knowing it was a late night and the ceremony was only minutes away. The other omegas whispered near the pantry with voices low and frantic, speaking of a guest who was coming, a man with cold eyes that stripped the warmth from any wolf he looked at.

*Why hasn't he found me yet?*

"Keep your head down, Sienna," I muttered, inhaling the sharp acidic scent of the lye. "Just get through the stack. Don't look up."

The scrubbing was steady and mechanical, but I felt a strange buzzing lightness behind my ribs, a hum that didn't belong to the kitchen. I wondered if this was a dream, or if the Moon Goddess had finally dropped a scrap of mercy into my lap.

I let out a sound, half-laugh and half-gasp.

"Juvien?" I called, but she had been silent since the dream. No answer came, just a low rattling growl that vibrated against my own vocal cords to show she sounded completely exhausted.

I wiped my hands on a rot-stained rag and tossed it to the floor, needing to move and let the wolf breathe before I suffocated under the weight of these plates.

I slipped out through the service door, sliding my back along the cold exterior wall. I didn't even know why I was sneaking, since I didn't exist to them and they called me worthless, but my skin prickled with a sudden sharp urgency anyway.

Lucas stood near the light of the main hall, looking fine except that something was clearly off. He kept touching his chest while his wine glass trembled.

Ivy stood beside him with a smile so sharp and devious it seemed to claw at the air, while three noble ladies from rival packs dominated the space near her. One wore gold-threaded silk, her mated presence choking the room with a heavy absolute weight.

I turned the corner and hit the grass, leaving the air to slam into me cold enough to bite as I pulled my knees to my chest and stared at the star-dusted sky.

"Mom, you'd hate this," I sobbed, while the wolf inside pulsed in a slow aching rhythm that matched the flickering stars.

"It's time, Sienna," Juvien said, her voice rising not from my head but from the frozen dirt. "The bond is pulling. Break the chain. Shift."

My heart froze.

The law was absolute, dictating that a broken Luna could not shift because it was a death sentence. Her soul would be reduced to nothing, leaving her wolf to fade into that hollow purple color of the wolfless. I had seen a noble lady try it after her mate left, and she had died right here on the grass with her limbs twisted into shapes that weren't human or wolf.

"Is this it? Just more of your cruelty?" I murmured to the sky, my breath catching on my ribs in a jagged sharp gasp.

A shadow drifted behind me as Juvien's spirit-wolf manifested, appearing as a giggling spectral outline that made the ground beneath my palms vibrate.

"Go. Now. Before the clock runs out," she urged, her voice serving as a calm guiding weight in the chaos.

I closed my eyes as the pain tore into me, acting not as the fluid warm ache of a natural shift but as a violent structural failure. I stifled a scream by biting my tongue until I tasted copper, my lungs feeling far too small for the air.

Bones cracked slowly and agonizingly, snapping and reshaping under my skin like dry wood breaking.

Juvien paced around me like a ghostly sentinel. Her presence sent a spike of dopamine through my nerves, but it did nothing to dull the snapping of my bones.

*Focus. One more push. Don't let it stop.* Her whisper cut right through the white heat of the agony.

My spine groaned, bending under the weight of a change I wasn't built to survive, because this was not a true wolf but a spirit-wrought mockery. Even a dominant Alpha faced the Goddess's trials when they broke the laws of the moon, so I didn't cry out, focusing entirely on the rhythm of my own dying pulse.

*Breathe.*

A titan of white fur surged forward with teeth, snarls, and a massive hulking strength that made her bigger than any Alpha in this pack.

Then the world snapped.

I collapsed, caught half-human and half-wolf while my abdomen cramped in a sharp twisting agony that shook all four of my trembling legs.

"You're splitting. Sienna, hold on!" Juvien's howl was a desperate panicked sound.

My human flesh went limp as the extraction began, leaving my vision to tunnel into nothingness until the only thing left was the sound of an animal's heartbeat racing toward me from far away.

The scent of cedar and ice hit my nose.

I felt a shadow fall over me, thick, heavy, and humming with a power I didn't recognize. I tried to gasp to pull one last breath of cold air into my failing lungs, but my strength was entirely gone.

A pair of boots crunched on the frost-covered grass before a large calloused hand brushed the hair from my sweating forehead. The touch sent a jolt through my system, grounding my fading soul back into my skin for one agonizing second.

I looked up to see a man standing over me, his silhouette blotting out the stars while his eyes remained the last thing I saw, gray, stormy, and filled with a terrifying focus.

"Easy," he rasped.

It wasn't a comfort but an order, and as my eyes drifted shut, the world went completely black.

~~~~~~~~

Damien's POV

"She—"

My voice died in my throat as I looked down at the girl in the dirt, watching the moon mark on her wrist pulse with a dying light while a hammer struck my chest.

The sickness.

I knelt, letting my knees sink into the mud. I didn't even need to look for her, because the scent of her pack had been burning my senses since I crossed the border, leading me straight to this kitchen alley. She looked broken, so I leaned close to her neck, inhaling the scent of earth, struggle, and a beauty that made my stomach turn with a protective rage.

"Sienna?" I whispered, already knowing the truth.

I scooped her up, finding her body light, far too light, as her head fell back against my arm. The moment her fingers brushed against my chest, the frantic hitching of her breath began to smooth, showing that the sickness in her frame seemed to calm the instant we touched. My soul-piece. I had finally found her.

I didn't turn back toward the shadows. I walked straight toward the massive silver-gated entrance of the Silver Fang gala hall instead.

The guards at the entrance didn't even draw their weapons because they saw my face and the silver-haired girl in my arms, half-shifted and bleeding. They opened the gates in a frantic stumbling rush, looking anywhere but at me.

The heavy doors groaned as I kicked them open.

The air in the gala died instantly, the music skidding to a halt while the laughter was cut short, replaced by the sound of a hundred wolves drawing in a collective terrified breath.

I didn't stop, walking down the center of the hall as my boots echoed like thunder on the polished floor. I surged my aura in a crushing weight intended to drop every wolf in the room to their knees, though it flickered, focusing entirely on the girl I was holding.

Every eye in the room followed me in an absolute silence saved only by the sound of her faint steady breathing.

At the high table, Lucas surged to his feet so fast his chair hit the floor with a dull thud. He looked pale, appearing exactly like a man who had spent his life pretending to be a King while sitting on a throne of straw.

His eyes went wide the moment they landed on her, his hands visibly trembling as he gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles turned waxy and white.

"Sie… Sienna?"

He choked on the name, looking from me back to her with his jaw hanging open as if he were seeing a ghost.

"My Luna?"

The question hung in the air, pathetic and late. I stopped at the foot of the dais with the weight of her body grounding me, refusing to bow or speak. I simply let the full weight of my gaze settle on the man who had let her break.

The silence stretched, thick with the scent of his rising fear, leaving me without a need to say a single word because the girl in my arms was the answer to everything.

My blood burned.