His Sacrificial Luna

Chapter 5

Xerxes

The Void Circuit is where I belong. Not here. Not in this gilded cage of a party, surrounded by sycophants and allies who watch my every move for weakness. I should be tearing through the asphalt of the track, my new car an extension of my rage, the champion leaving everyone else in a cloud of dust and envy.

Instead, I’m sipping expensive whiskey that tastes like ash. My skin is crawling. My wolf, Wraith, is a writhing, frantic thing beneath my ribs, a constant, agonizing whimper I haven't heard since…

Fuck.

My gaze cuts across the room, landing on golden curls and a smug, searching face. Caleb. My rival. The new thorn in my side on the track, the future Alpha of the Silvermane Pack. He’s looking around like a lost puppy. Probably hunting for a scent of violets and desperation. For Poppy.

A cold laugh escapes me. He can look all he wants. Her pathetic heart is a locked box, and I hold the only key. She’d wither before she so much as glanced at another man with true intent. The thought should satisfy me. It doesn't.

A wave of nausea hits me, sharp and deep. My glass trembles in my hand. What the f**k is wrong with you? I snarl inwardly at Wraith.

You need her.

The three words are a detonation in my skull. The block is gone. The careful, cursed wall I’ve maintained to keep her agony at bay, to mute the constant hum of her unwanted presence in my soul… it’s shattered. And in the breach floods a torrent—not just of her pain, but of a vast, howling emptiness. An agony so profound it feels like my own bones are splintering.

It’s disgusting. It’s a vulnerability that could cost me everything. But the compulsion is a physical chain, yanking at my gut. I have to see her. Now.

I follow the pull, a slave to the bond I despise, and it leads me not to the hall, but to Jade’s chambers. My blood runs cold. If she’s in there, bothering Jade, causing her stress—

I shove the door open.

And the world tilts on its axis.

Jade is standing. Not lying pale and still, but standing. Radiant. Alive. She’s wearing the amethyst gown she always sketched for her triumphant return, the silk hugging the curves that had begun to fade. Her golden hair shines under the light, her sapphire eyes sparkling with a vitality that steals the air from my lungs.

“Jade?” My voice is rough, disbelieving.

My heart beats fast.

“Love!” The sound is music, the melody I’ve been dying to hear for a year. She runs to me, a vision of health and joy, and throws her arms around my neck. “I’m healed!”

I catch her, my arms closing around her automatically. She feels real. She smells of rosewater and life, not sickness and sorrow. My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic, discordant rhythm. I should be drowning in this moment. This is everything I’ve fought for, bled for, sacrificed for.

So why is Wraith screaming?

I hug her tighter, burying my face in her hair, trying to crush the wrongness inside me. “You’re back… really back,” I whisper, and my own voice cracks. There’s a searing pain in my chest, right beside the burst of joy. Agony and elation, twisted together like poisoned vines.

I force myself to pull back, to look at her. To see her. The color in her cheeks, the strength in her stance, the brilliant, unforced smile. She is perfection restored.

“I am alive,” she breathes, tears of joy tracing paths down her perfect face. She pulls me down, covering my face, my lips, in kisses. I taste her. She tastes… familiar. Like a favorite book whose ending I’ve memorized.

But the pages feel thin. The story feels… done.

“H-How?” My voice shakes. I can’t place this feeling—this gut-churning cocktail of triumph and dread.

Her eyes dart away, a flicker of something uncertain. “Come on! I want the world to see!” she evades, her excitement palpable. “My parents… they’ll be—”

“I am truly happy,” I interrupt, gripping her shoulders, my touch firm, maybe too firm. The Alpha in me needs answers. The man clinging to a dream needs to know what price was paid. “But tell me how this happened, baby.” I cup her face, and the sensation is dual: the soft, beloved skin under my palms, and a ghostly echo of another face, sharper, paler, etched with a pain I refused to acknowledge.

“Poppy…”

Her name from Jade’s lips is a spike driven through my sternum. Wraith howls, a sound of pure, undiluted torment. My throat tightens. What the f**k is happening?

“What about her? Did she—”

“She saved me.” Jade’s tears flow anew, but they’ve changed. They carry a weight. “I don’t know if she did it because she cared… or just because she wanted you to be proud of her.” Her voice drops to a pained mumble. “At first, she was so angry… so jealous of the attention you gave me…”

The words are a distant buzz. Poppy saved her. Poppy did this. The math is impossible. The power required… it would be a furnace, consuming everything in its path.

“Wait, but—”

“You don’t have to think about her anymore, Xerxes,” Jade says, her hands sliding to my shoulders, her touch meant to soothe. “I’m back. I will lead beside you now. She has left.”

Left.

The word is a vacuum, sucking all the air, all the warmth, all the false triumph from the room. My heart isn’t beating; it’s being punctured, slowly, by a thousand icy needles. The bond in my chest isn’t just open—it’s a gaping, ragged hole.

“Is she…” I have to swallow against a desert in my throat. I can’t look at Jade. I stare at the floor, at the shadow I’m casting. It looks broken. “Is she alive?”

Jade flinches as if struck. A sob wracks her frame, and she turns away, her shoulders shaking. “Please,” she staggers, the picture of grief. “I never wanted her to… I can’t even—”

I pull her to me on instinct. “Hey,” the Alpha command is gone, replaced by a hollow rasp. “Don’t cry.” I hold her, this woman I love, this miracle, searching her embrace for the anchor to steady this freefall inside me. It’s like holding smoke. The comfort doesn’t come.

Gently, I push her back, just enough to break the contact.

“I love you,” she whispers, her eyes searching mine for the man she remembers.

The words are ash on my tongue, but I force them out. They are the script of my life. “I love you too.” Then, the Alpha reasserts itself, raw and desperate. “But I need to know where she went, Jade.” It’s not a request. It’s a demand from a man who feels the foundations of his world crumbling.

I f*****g need her. The bond is a live wire, electrocuting me from the inside out. She has f****d me over one last, devastating time. Not by existing, but by vanishing. I need Poppy right now, or I will explode into a million worthless pieces.

“She disappeared after she healed me—” Jade starts, but I’m already moving.

I am a storm leaving the calm behind. I stride back into the throbbing heart of the gathering, my senses screaming, stretching out for a scent of violets and storm-air. Nothing.

My gaze finds Caleb again, surrounded by admirers, a smirk playing on his lips. He saw her last. He touched her. The jealousy that rips through me is primal, vicious, and entirely for the wrong woman.

I’m before him in three strides. “Oh, what’s up, man—” he begins, all casual arrogance.

“Have you seen my Luna?” The question cracks through the air between us.

His smirk widens. “Should be asking you that. You stole her from me on the dance floor.”

Rage, red and blinding. “I didn’t steal her, you bastard. She’s mine.” The possessive roar is out before I can stop it, my power rising in a suffocating wave. My hand aches to shift, to tear.

“Chill out, brother.” Viola’s hand is on my arm, her face a mask of concern. My sister. The one who provides the pills.

“I need the blockers. Now!” I snarl into her face, the desperation laid bare. “The bond… it’s… she’s gone.”

Understanding and panic flash in Viola’s eyes. She slips me the small, cursed pills. I don’t hesitate. I dry-swallow them, chasing the bitterness with a stolen gulp of wine from a passing Omega’s tray.

“s**t,” I gasp, dragging a hand through my hair. The chemical numbness begins to spread, a dam against the tidal wave. Wraith’s howls subside to pained whimpers. But it’s a temporary fix. A bandage on a hemorrhage.

The blockers only work if she’s near, if the bond has a physical tether to latch onto. Her absence isn’t just emotional; it’s a physical void the pills can’t fill for long.

The music dies.

A hush falls, then a collective gasp. All eyes turn to the balcony.

There she is. Jade. Resplendent in purple, a queen returned from the dead. The crowd erupts in cheers. “The real Luna is back!”

My eyes drink her in. She is everything I ever wanted. Statuesque. Powerful. Beloved.

And my soul is screaming for a shadow in a black dress.

Where are you, Poppy?

Desperate, foolish, I reach for the mind-link—the one I always kept muted, barricaded. I shove against it.

Silence.

Not the silence of a blocked channel. The absolute, infinite silence of a connection severed. Not by choice, but by… absence. No heartbeat. No breath. Just a void where a presence, constant and aggravating and mine, used to be.

My knees almost buckle.

“Alpha.” My Beta, Kieran, is suddenly beside me, his face grave. He doesn’t speak. He simply opens his palm.

On it rests a simple silver ring. The one I was forced to give her during the hollow bonding ceremony. The one she never took off.

I take it. The metal is cold. It holds no trace of her warmth.

My gaze lifts, traveling across the celebrating crowd, past the radiant Jade on the balcony, to my parents, to hers. They are all weeping. Tears of joy for their restored daughter. Tears of grief for the sacrifice that made it possible.

And my own eyes burn. God, she’s so f*****g beautiful but my heart aches so hella bad.

A single, traitorous tear escapes, tracing a hot path down my cheek. Wraith lets out a final, shattered whimper inside me, a sound of pure, unanswerable loss.

Not for Jade.

For Poppy.

And I stand here, the Alpha King in waiting, holding the cold proof of my crown’s true cost, and I have absolutely no idea how to heal this.