His Sacrificial Luna

Chapter 4

Poppy

I left the party behind me, the clinking glasses, the false laughter, the weight of a hundred judging eyes. The grand hall’s doors shut with a final, hollow thud, sealing away the world where I was a prop, a disappointment, a ghost in a black dress.

I didn’t run. I walked. This wasn’t for them anymore. Not for my parents’ shamed glances, not for the pack’s whispered scorn, and certainly not for him. This was for me. To prove, to myself more than anyone, that I could finish something. That I was not just a vessel for other people’s pain, but someone who could choose her own sacrifice. I was done being scared of their warnings, of the cost. Let it cost everything.

I hope he gets what he wants.

The thought was a bitter pill, but it steadied me. He wanted her whole. He wanted his perfect, radiant Luna. Fine. He could have her. And I would be free of the torturous hope that had kept me breathing in this beautiful prison.

I pushed open the door to Jade’s chambers. The air was thick with the scent of dying roses and stale medicine. She was sitting up, propped against a mountain of lace pillows, her face pale as moonlight against the dark wood of the headboard. But her eyes—his favorite shade of summer green—widened when she saw me.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice instinctively softening. The healer in me, the sister, surged forward. I crossed the room, guiding her shoulders back down. “You need to rest.” My fingers brushed the damp hair from her forehead, tucking it behind her ear with a gentleness I hadn’t realized I still possessed.

She gave me a faint smile, all fragile edges. “Today is the gathering. I should be the one asking you that.” Her hand found mine, and her grip was shockingly strong, desperate. It was an anchor trying to pull me under.

I sat in the embroidered chair beside her, the silence between us filled with everything we couldn’t say. The jealousy, the love, the shared history twisted into this cruel knot.

“I’m here to heal you, Jade.”

The words left my lips on a whisper, but in my mind, Nyxaria let out a whimper of pure terror. Healing a papercut, soothing a fever—that was one thing. This… this was a cavernous sickness that had leeched the vitality from a vibrant wolf for months. It was a void. To fill it, I would have to pour myself in.

I remember when I pass out after merely healing an Omega kid. This one . . . can cost everything.

“W-What?” Her breath hitched.

“You deserve to lead the pack.” The statement felt true, even as it carved something out of me. She was born for it. She fit the narrative—the strong sister, the beloved one, the rightful Luna.

She shook her head, a weak, disbelieving laugh escaping her. “No. This is a dream.” Her gaze flitted to the bedside table, to a vase holding a single, crimson rose. It was wilted, petals bruised and curling inward.

The rose I’d seen Xerxes carrying yesterday, his offering to her. Even dying, she clung to it. A symbol of everything I was not.

“Sister…” Her voice broke.

And so did I. A hot tear traced a path down my cheek, then another. I wasn’t crying for her, or for him. I was crying for the sheer, suffocating unfairness of it all. My breath came in short, sharp gasps.

“Who knows?” I forced a laugh, shaking my head, the tears falling faster. “I might survive.” The lie tasted like copper. “I can’t… I can’t keep living the life you’re supposed to live, Jade. I’d rather die than spend another day in a skin that everyone hates.”

The confession hung in the sickly air. It was the most honest thing I’d said in years.

Her own breath grew ragged, a horrifying, wet sound. “I can feel it… my breath slowly leaving my body,” she whimpered, her eyes wide with a panic I knew too well. “I don’t think I have much time—”

I didn’t let her finish.

My hand flew to her forehead. Not gentle. Decisive.

The connection was instant and catastrophic.

It wasn’t like drawing out a fever. This was like placing my hand on the mouth of a volcano. A torrent of scorching, chaotic sickness roared into me. It wasn’t just disease—it was her fear, her longing for him, her terror of death, the profound wrongness poisoning her cells. My head swam, the room tilting on its axis. I couldn’t see her face anymore, just a blur of gold hair and green eyes.

Nyxaria screamed inside me. A sound of pure, animal agony. She was burning, her essence unraveling as I funneled the corruption into ourselves. I felt my own life force, bright and golden, rushing out to meet the black tide, neutralizing it, being consumed by it.

Jade’s hand clenched around mine, her nails breaking my skin. I gasped, my free hand flying to my own throat, as if I could claw air into lungs that were suddenly forgetting how to work.

The bond in my chest—the one Xerxes had so callously muted—gave a violent, spasmodic jerk. It was Nyxaria, trying to howl for her mate one last time, screaming into a void he had sealed shut. He would feel nothing. I would die alone, with only his chosen one as my witness.

Then, the world exploded.

A force of pure, concussive energy—not from Jade, but from within me—detonated. It was the last, desperate backlash of a wolf being murdered. It threw me across the room like a ragdoll. My body slammed into the ornate wall with a crack that I felt in my teeth, my bones, my soul. A scream was ripped from my throat, raw and endless.

Through the ringing in my ears, I heard her voice, clear and strong and vibrant with a health that moments ago was unthinkable.

“Oh God… you healed me.”

The words were wonderful. They were my epitaph.

Darkness surged up, not like sleep, but like being swallowed by the earth itself. My last sight wasn’t of my sister, miraculously whole. It was of that dying rose on the table, its final petal giving up and falling silently onto the polished wood.

Then, nothing.